Canto
Maximize the value of your digital content
About Canto
Founded in 1990, Canto is one of the original DAM providers and creator of the famous Cumulus DAM. Today, Canto’s cloud-based solution is used by many organizations as the “single source of truth” for their images, videos, and other media. The platform emphasizes ease of use, a critical factor noted by users. Canto’s interface is relatively simple to navigate, making adoption easier across departments than some heavier DAMs. Users can upload assets, add metadata, and quickly retrieve assets via its robust search. Notably, Canto includes AI image recognition and facial recognition to automatically tag content, e.g., identifying people or objects in photos. This helps save time on tagging and improves discovery. Core features of Canto include asset versioning, commenting and approval workflows, and sharing portals.
Portals in Canto are like branded mini-sites where you can publish selected assets or collections for specific audiences. Permissions are straightforward, and you can set up different user groups with access rights, even allowing external collaborators limited access for uploads or approvals. Another strength is metadata and organization, with configurable metadata schemas and advanced search filters. Many users praise that “being able to search and find files in seconds has been amazing,” even with large libraries.
Canto also features workflow automation capabilities. In terms of extensibility, Canto integrates with tools such as Adobe InDesign, CMSs, and Microsoft Office, and offers an API for custom integrations. Canto’s heritage gives it a strong reputation for reliability. They have global offices and a network of partners, ensuring that support and customer success resources are readily available. Over 2,500 companies use Canto, including well-known brands in retail, manufacturing, higher ed, and nonprofits. It’s often the DAM of choice for organizations that have outgrown basic cloud storage but don’t necessarily need a fully custom enterprise solution – Canto hits a sweet spot of robust features with a focus on brand management use cases.
Canto Pricing
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Canto offers a few package tiers but does not list prices publicly – it typically provides a tailored quote based on user needs and storage requirements. Historically, Canto’s pricing has been mid-range in the DAM market, often appealing to mid-sized businesses as a more accessible option than some competitors that cater exclusively to enterprises. They typically offer packages such as Professional and Enterprise, which differ in terms of the number of user seats, advanced features, and support levels.
Generally, you can expect Canto pricing to start around several thousand dollars per year for a smaller implementation. Some third-party data suggests starting prices in the low five figures annually. Canto does not offer a free plan, but they do provide trials upon request. They also offer a monthly subscription option in some cases, but most businesses opt for annual licenses for better rates.
One highlight is that Canto’s pricing is typically all-inclusive in terms of features, rather than numerous add-ons. However, for very advanced needs, such as additional PIM functionality, you need to pay extra. When it comes to users, Canto often allows unlimited “consumer” users and charges for “power” users (those uploading and managing), which can make it cost-effective for wide distribution.
Canto Reviews
"I really like how easy it is to upload, organize, and tag photos. The facial recognition feature is great when dealing with lots of photos of people, like we do at the university. It is amazingly accurate and will recognize people from photos when they were 20 years younger. It's very easy to search for photos." Source
"Now we have fully implemented it across our organization, and I hope Canto continues to grow and improve the product because we hope to use it for years to come." Source
"Canto is our first DAM for our community college. I appreciated the support team and their quick responses." Source
"Prioritizing Payment Over Customer Support: A Frustrating and Disappointing Experience" Source
"Everything is a nightmare. Even our professional graphic designer was unable to use it for our team. We immediately asked to cancel Canto, but Canto refused, and even after one year, they still keep sending us invoices and never responded to our emails to cancel this scam." Source
"It took 40 minutes to download a 133 MB ZIP." Source
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Canto FAQs
What is Canto?
Canto is a digital asset management (DAM) software platform. It provides a centralized repository for all your digital files, such as images, videos, documents, graphics, and tools to manage those files. With Canto, you can upload assets, add metadata, organize them into albums/folders or by tags, and quickly search for and retrieve content. It also facilitates sharing assets with others and ensuring that everyone uses the correct, up-to-date versions. Think of it as a highly organized digital library for your company’s content, with collaboration features built in
Who uses Canto?
Canto is used by a wide range of organizations, including corporate marketing teams, creative agencies, universities, nonprofits, and government departments – essentially anyone who has a lot of visual or rich media content to manage. It’s particularly favored by marketing and communications teams that need to maintain brand consistency and improve efficiency. Companies that don’t have a whole IT department dedicated to DAM often choose Canto because it’s cloud-based and relatively easy to administer. We also see smaller teams using Canto if managing media is critical to them, as well as huge global brands using it across thousands of users – it scales well for both. In short, if you have more digital assets than you can comfortably track in a regular cloud folder, and multiple people need access to those assets, you are in Canto’s target audience.
What are Canto’s key features?
Some key features of Canto include a Central Library with structured folders and albums, AI-powered search, Smart Albums and Portals, Collaborative Commenting and Approvals, Version Control, Branding Guide features, Reporting and Analytics, and security and permissions. Additionally, Canto’s metadata handling is very flexible: you can create custom fields (e.g., product SKU, photographer name) and batch assign metadata. It also integrates with common tools – e.g., there’s an Adobe Photoshop plugin to drag images from Canto, a PowerPoint integration to insert images from Canto, etc. One more neat feature: Facial Recognition can identify the same person across photos, so you can quickly find all images of a specific individual. Overall, Canto’s features are geared to make organizing easy and retrieval instant, while keeping content secure and on-brand.
Is Canto cloud-based or on-premise?
Today, Canto is cloud-based (SaaS). They host your DAM on their servers (with options for US, EU, etc., for data residency). In the past, Canto (the company) offered on-premise solutions (like Cumulus), but the current product, referred to as Canto, is primarily a web application you access via browser. This means you don’t have to install anything on your servers as Canto takes care of updates, security, backups, etc. You can access it anywhere with the internet. For organizations with specific needs, Canto can also be deployed in a private cloud or on-premises environment, but this would require a special arrangement (most clients choose the SaaS option for convenience). The standard offering includes AWS-backed cloud storage, where your files reside. It also means updates roll out regularly, which users have noted – new features appear quite often without needing a complex upgrade process on the user’s part. If you have an older on-premises Canto (Cumulus), the company encourages migration to the cloud version for enhanced functionality and ease of use.
How does Canto handle sharing files with people outside my organization?
Canto provides a feature called “Portals” for external sharing. A Portal is like a lightweight, branded website that you can create from within Canto to distribute assets. For example, you might have a Media Portal for press journalists to grab approved images, or a Distributor Portal where partners download product shots. You can customize the portal’s look and choose which assets appear there. Portals can be public and are useful for things like a public media gallery, or private if you want to restrict access. The nice thing is that when assets are updated in Canto, the portal can reflect those updates. Besides portals, you can also share individual files or selections via share links directly. These links can be password-protected and set to expire at a specific time. You can also allow or disallow downloading of original files from those links. So, in daily use: if a colleague at an external agency needs a file, you either add them as a limited user in Canto, or more commonly, send them a quick share link with the content they need. This approach ensures that you still control the content (you can revoke the link at any time) and track what’s shared. It’s much better than emailing large attachments or using separate transfer services, because it keeps things within the DAM’s purview.
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