Pluspunten
Upon first use, you'll see that Swivle has a flexible UI with ability to toggle between masonry, thumbnail, list and filmstrip views. You can open and close panels to customize your view or change it depending on the task at hand. Don't need the folder browser or filter panel? Close them.
What's great about the UI is that it feels like it's simple, but it's actually very powerful with beneficial little details, e.g. the "show files in subfolder" option which just makes browsing that much more helpful.
The ability to create collections is great as a function separate from the browser, so you can assemble assets into your own custom groups without needing to duplicate assets or create folders. And then there's the ability to share a Collection via a share link, so outside agencies can get access to just those assets. This is a nice middle ground before giving full access as a portal user. And on that note, Portals is a great feature too for granting larger scale access to assets.
Lastly, customer service is superb and engaged, and genuinely seems to care about your issues.
Minpunten
If you're working in a folder with a lot of assets, it can drag your browser a little bit when trying to scroll.
There doesn't appear to be support for the HEIC image format yet (as far as generating thumbnails). Most people think assets are high-res JPGs or TIFs, and that makes sense, but we often take a lot of behind-the-scenes iphone photos at shoots, and treat them as assets, and give agencies access to them for marketing and things. So we've had to convert to JPG prior to upload, which isn't a big deal, but it's just an extra step.
Before Swivle, the marketing team estimated a loss of 5 hours per week searching for assets living on 3 different servers and an undetermined number of Google Drives, Dropboxes, individual drives, etc. Often after an asset was located, we often still had to do investigative work to learn who is in the image, where it was taken, when, do we own the copyright, does the image illustrate the correct program, etc?
Now we are spending less than 1 hour per week searching for assets, and we do no investigative work because all of the information we need is in the metadata.
Pluspunten
I never say "I wish Swivle had X" because it has everything I need.
Intuitive interface
Compatible with all file types our team uses
Preview and download in various pre-set sizes
Drag-and-drop uploads
Customizable metadata input
Excellent filtered search tool - quickly find the ideal assets for every project - search tool even works within PDFs!
Ability to track copyrights and copyright expiration dates
Easy folders/collections/tagging tools for organization
Affordable for a medium-size nonprofit
Minpunten
I found the initial plan/purchase options a little confusing, as far as how many seats we got for how much money. The final contract was very satisfactory, but it took awhile to get there.
Easier to search and find the right files, also more efficient for different tasks. We compared many different digital asset management systems and Swivle was the most flexible solution at a very reasonable cost and easy to set up. You can start using it within a day, not within weeks as with other DAMs you need to set up in your company's own network structure.
Pluspunten
We first purchased Swivle to organize our picture library, but now also use it for all the PDFs of our different publications, videos and for our freelancers to submit data to the editorial office. It's easy to use and doesn't require lots of knowledge for new users. Working gets more and more flexible and individual and therefore it's great to have all the data in the cloud. Customer support also works perfectly, I always got good advice and helpful answers within a short period of time.
Minpunten
There are different ways to set user rights and you can create groups and rules all of it can become a bit complicated and it's sometimes hard to actually look through.
Thanks Martin for your response! In Q3 or Q4 of 2017 we will release our new version of the Management Console, where we have greatly improved the way to set user rights, groups and rules.
We use Swivle to provide marketing assets to our sales force, and as a home for our video and photography assets in house. It’s great!
Pluspunten
It’s flexible. We have a private collection of assets and public collection.
Ease of use. Many non technical users on my team contribute assets and have no issues using the app.
Value. Good value considering what you get with higher priced competitors.
Service. I get the support I need and have had the opportunity to give input when testing enhancements.
Minpunten
It’s not as easily usable on mobile. Opportunity to enhance.
Pluspunten
We're a media company, so the ability to organize our photos and have it easy for everyone on the team to access was a must. Swivle met all of that (we've been using them since they were Elvis), not to mention their customer service is top notch. Anytime we run into issues OR worse, someone accidentally deleted the whole file, Swivle was there and helped us to restore and find the file we needed. They're super transparency about their maintenance time too, which we really appreciate. We especially love the folder sharing option or having a client directly upload photos to our folder.
Minpunten
Nothing at all. Maybe someway they can help us to bulk-tagging photos in our archives instead of having us going through manually of each photo.
Thanks for the kind words about our product and our service. Much appreciated!
Pluspunten
Easy to organize and easy to share internally and externally. Clients can easily share images and files with our company that we all can access. The creators seem to take into consideration customer feedback to make the software better quality and easier to use.
Minpunten
Organizing how photos/files are viewed is limiting. There is an option to sort by 5 stars but it takes extra steps to get there and there aren't any other ways to mark important images. Upload takes a long time, even though we have a fast internet connection.
Thanks for your kind words! It's much appreciated.
I would love to discuss your limitations on organising the files. I might be able to point out an existing way that could help you.
In June 2018 we will release Cloudfront Transfer Acceleration. This will significantly increase the upload speed, no matter where you are in the world.
Pluspunten
The ability to provide great value at a reasonable cost is where Swivle stands out for smaller to medium sized businesses. I'm able to push information quickly and efficiently to multiple parties through this platform. The UI is simple and easy to use; it looks professional; and it has greatly improved our internal processes to increase productivity.
Minpunten
My only real complaint at the moment is that the portals are not optimized for mobile browsing. As a team that has a remote based sales staff, who often travel and work from their phone, this makes it difficult for them to push information to their customers.
Pluspunten
We use this site as a digital asset management system for our publishing company. We've used lots of different options for our storage needs and they have all been too expensive, slow, inaccessible or lousy user experience. I love that we are able to access our files anywhere in the world. We also use their tagging feature. Before we switched to Swivle, the organization of our more than 150,000 files was nightmarish. Now, it's an ease.
Minpunten
Honestly, I have no complaints about the software. Anytime we have an issue, we let their customer service team know and they are able to help us out.
Our small team consists of multiple external people, we don't share an office. Before we were always searching for files, and using file sharing services to transfer assets. Now everything is organized in 1 place. You can easily find the right files, and because it is in the cloud it is of course always available.
Pluspunten
It's really easy to get started with Swivle, there is no big learning curve. The interface is easily understood. Our designer loves the InDesign plugin, because now we have all our layouts available in the cloud, with automatic versioning. The request upload feature is great for working with freelancers, and the build in share feature eliminates the need for other file sharing services!
Minpunten
The user interface is very easy, but the admin interface could be a bit simpler. When you set up new users and their access rights, there are a lot of different options which take a while to get used to.
Thanks for the great review. Currently we are working on improving the admin interface. In our new version we have simplified the configuration of users, groups and rules.
Pluspunten
I found this tool while looking for setting up a digital asset management base for the team in my company. We had Google Drive but turns out it had loads of visibility issues, access control and was too costly to manage. Swivle was solving most of it that we were truly looking for. Since we bought the license, me and my team mates have been using this religiously and literally selling it as one thing to go to for the other teams in the company. We are slowly making progress and soon enough it should be the only tool being used here in Cure.fit.
Minpunten
I feel the UI can be lot better as its very primitive at this point. Folder views, filters for search, naming multiple files, sharing files with external teams needs to be lot more dynamic and thought through.
Hi Sushant,
Thanks so much for taking the time to review Swivle. It's highly appreciated!
I'm really curious about your thoughts how we can improve the UI. I will contact you directly about this.
Thanks again!
Pluspunten
easy to learn,
Allows us to organize and quickly find digital assets
Minpunten
Some things I'd like to see:
- a "duplicate" function (in addition to "copy") that copies the asset into the exact same folder, instead of restarting at the root directory and requiring navigation every time an asset needs copied.
- InDesign integration that automatically connects to Swivle, instead of needing to manually reconnect assets every time.
- InDesign asset reconnection where you can select individual assets in InDesign to connect to Swivle, instead of a blanket "connect all" option.
It helped me to have the overview over the magazine en to search for pictures when I need them.
Pluspunten
easy to use and to find what I need on the moment I need it
Minpunten
Difficult to understand the full product and what it can do more
Swivle is a great tool for our organization, we have thousands of photos and while it is taking a while to curate and tagging them properly, we immediately saw the results.
It is very easy to use and it optimized my departments' workflow substantially.
Pluspunten
The Portal works quite well, and the fact that I can share a link to a particular collection with external parties is great.
We are also making a lot of use on the Upload requests.
Minpunten
- Price is a little steep
- Folder Sharing would be a nice add
- When uploading in big numbers, sometimes there is issues
We use it to archive every job in the cloud. Now everything is fast exessible thru the cloud.
And we don't have to worrie about backups.
Pluspunten
The interface is clean and simple. The uploading action is a simple drag and drop.
Rules you can make for viewers in the management console.
Minpunten
Some files are not supported yet in the software. For example scans of a camera with the extension.fff
swivle was helpful in our transition from our prior photo database... product works great!
Pluspunten
this is the most affordable ... most simple photo database we could find on the market ... for a small company, it was exactly what we needed!
Minpunten
no complaints... again simple to use... simple to keep up to date w/ our daily photos!
Pluspunten
We are an agency of photographers in Argentina and we found in Swvile a definitive solution to archive, organize and share with our clients all our production of thousands of photographs as an image bank
Exceeds extensively to all other file sharing services as its interface allows you to find and view files easily and quickly
Another of its strengths are the tools to share and deliver your work with your clients through personalized portals
It is also a great solution for people who want to have all their files online, organized and with easy access at any time and anywhere.
Minpunten
It can still improve its interface and some search tools like its filter system but I recognize that they are making adjustments permanently as they receive feedbacks
Useful for sales to share images with people who are outside of the organization.
Pluspunten
Easy to use compare to other image management application
Minpunten
Interface. Not compatible with small screen desktop. Lots bugs, constantly refreshing the page.
An easy implementation and a quick ROI
Pluspunten
I have evaluated 4-5 different DAM solutions but Swivle is by far the most complete solution. Low starting cost and easy to add on users and features as you go makes it perfect for an evolving business. The Brand portal, ability to send upload requests and tag images is great. Its easy to create filter on files needing retouch etc.
Minpunten
Actually, I have found none so far. It´s working great and considering the features available that other DAM solutions only make available in their enterprise offerings, Swivle stands out.
Pluspunten
It gives us a way to have users find images by typing a keyword instead of thumbing through hundreds of photos in dropbox that aren't organized in any way.
Minpunten
It is slow. It seems the more photos that are uploaded the more difficult it is to move through the system with ease. Also the folder structure isn't that intuitive when it comes to searching. It should be able to search within all folders even if you have one folder selected. This has confused people in the past.
Pluspunten
This is our company's first DAM software. My favorite feature is the vast amount of meta data options. It's a lot easier for our sales reps to search for images by typing in a keyword instead of searching through a bunch of images. Overall I have found it very easy to use and great deal for the price.
Minpunten
I wish there was an easier way to download files. I also would like the option to send links with expiration dates, and the ability to drag and drop images and other media directly into apps.
Thank you for your review! Creating share links with expiration dates and ingesting by drag and drop are already in place. We are also eager to learn what kind of easier way of download options you are envisioning. Please reach us out if you like a product demo or a call to discuss.
Pluspunten
I have been looking for a program to properly store our 20,000+ photos for years. Coming across Swivle made all the difference and has sped up our team's productiveness immensely. It is easy to use and tag, then find what you need later. Game changer.
Minpunten
It takes a lot of time to implement if you have a decent number of photos because you have to manually tag each one (unless it's tagged in the photos metadata).
Pluspunten
It's easy to use, easy to provide password-protected access to our front-facing library.
Minpunten
The organization of the management pannels and how to minimize them isnt as intuitive as Id like so it takes some learning to maximize screen size. I also wish that I could make the images even smaller so I can scroll through more photos faster.
We've searched an easy to use dam for our budget. Swivle providing all the needed functions and our staff is very happy to us it.
Pluspunten
- Easy to use
- intuitive User Interface
- Web based
- Easy to set up
Minpunten
Medias are in the cloud. If the internet connection is down, no access is possible. But this case is (fortunately) very rare
Pluspunten
I like how you can add tags to photos to make searching easier. I also like the collection function, so you can easily share photos with someone who does not have access.
Minpunten
I think the interface when viewing photos could be better. It feels like I can't view a large number of photos on the screen at once when I'm scrolling through.
Pluspunten
I like the visual format of this software so it's easy for the end user to find files and references when digging for information.
Minpunten
So far I don't have any cons on the software as we are still exploring and getting familiar with the new digital tool.
Can't really ask for a better DAM for the power and storage offered at the price. So many other competitors may have a massive suite of features, but they seem to want your soul in exchange. Swivle really just gives you what you need, and stays out of your way.