The Best MRM Software List
Here’s a shortlist of the best MRM software:
Marketing resource management software can help companies organize and plan their extensive list of marketing tasks and initiatives. A recent study shows that 23% of marketers intend to spend $100k to $500k on content - 16% plan on spending up to $5,000,000! This same study shows that 43% of businesses have over 20 team members involved in content creation, and 76% plan to hire more staff.
But how does this help you? If your business is snowballing, you must manage your marketing assets to ensure your teams use them properly. Marketing resources management (MRM) software can help you manage your company’s website copy, digital assets, blog posts, and branded assets - in essence, anything that features your business branding, tone of voice, visuals, or imagery. In this article, I put together a list of the best MRM software to help you manage your marketing resources.
How I Selected the Best MRM Software
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best MRM software for this list? To build this top 10 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of MRM software with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of marketing experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
If you have general questions about MRM software or how to pick the best MRM software for your organization, take a look at our frequently asked questions section below. Or, you can skip directly to my detailed software summaries, if that's what you need the most.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best MRM software for this article:
Usability:
Anyone in your organization should be able to use the software you’re implementing to manage your marketing assets. I look for marketing resource management software that can help your teams easily coordinate marketing efforts. These systems should help speed these efforts up as well. The features MRM software provides your teams should accelerate team coordination by eliminating unnecessary back-and-forth communication.
User Interface:
Your MRM software should be simple for team members to find the resources and features they need when building and publishing new marketing campaigns. An intuitive user interface will help your team members enhance marketing efforts quickly. I look for platforms with straightforward, clean navigation that allows users to find what they need immediately.
Workflow Optimization:
The marketing resource management software your businesses should help your teams eliminate burnout. It does this by giving everyone visibility on how long the marketing initiative will take to complete. I look for software that provides straightforward time-tracking capabilities and a workload view. This should help your business enable intelligent task allocation, excellent planning, and fewer delays.
Software Integrations:
Effective platforms will connect with other third-party software already providing functions outside of their own. I look for platforms that offer multiple integrations across project management tools, calendars, communication applications, and billing software. They should also allow users to build custom integrations by using an API or through Zapier.
Pricing:
MRM platforms typically provide various subscription tiers that can fit your company’s budget. The price of these tiers will depend on the specific features and capabilities the vendor provides for subscribers. But the only way to determine if the platform is right for you is through a free trial or demonstration. So, I look for software with varying subscription tiers and vendors that allow new users to experience the MRM tool before making a financial commitment.
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Overviews Of The Best MRM Software
Here’s a brief description of each of the MRM software that are featured on this top 10 list.
Frontify
Best for cloud-based style guide templates
Frontify is a cloud-based platform that helps businesses improve brand consistency with style guide templates.
Why I picked Frontify: The platform enables users to create unique style guidelines that specify how teams should design brand assets and the components and elements they should have. You can use Frontify to edit your style guides by uploading images, logos, icons, fonts, color palettes, videos, and notes. You can keep all assets in a central location so all team members can find what they need immediately.
Frontify helps any sized business promote cross-team collaboration by keeping everyone involved in a project updated about ongoing tasks using workflows and project overviews. It organizes all aspects of your brand’s creative process to enhance your teams’ productivity for quicker project rollouts, unified digital environments, and reusable patterns. Frontify can also help you track asset usage and ensure your investments pay off throughout all campaign and promotion channels.
Frontify Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a brand portal, design system, style guide templates, brand asset management, creative collaboration, digital and print templates, document comparison, file sharing, and brand asset creation.
Integrations include Highspot, SharePoint, Jira, Gelato, Wrike, Contentful, Celum, Zapier, Tray.io, HubSpot, Figma Plugin, Sketch, Okta, and Slack.
Frontify offers custom pricing upon request. Frontify offers a 14-day free trial for new users. The vendor also provides a free platform demo.
Pros
- Very user-friendly.
- Responsive customer support.
- Keep your brand consistent.
Cons
- Some functionalities have bugs.
- Set-up process is somewhat unintuitive.
Pimcore
Best open source MRM software
Pimcore helps your business centralize and harmonize your company’s marketing information for free.
Why I picked Pimcore: It offers a comprehensive marketing resource management solution to help you simplify and manage your digital assets effectively. It’s an open source solution, so your teams can easily locate, use, and share files for free. There’s also an endless amount of customization you can implement when using the platform to fit your digital asset management needs.
Pimcore helps small, medium, and large businesses manage their marketing assets with a unique interface. It’s contextually driven, which makes it easy to control and enhance your digital assets. This can help optimize your teams’ performance, leading to a straightforward experience.
Pimcore Standout Features and Integrations
Features include file management, metadata management, image and video conversion, workflow management, digital asset delivery, asset experience portal, brand hub, asset sharing, direct asset editing, and print publishing.
Integrations include Oracle NetSuite, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, JetRails, Alumio, Celum, Hostripples, Sitecore, and Interserver. Pimcore also provides an API that allows you to make custom integrations with your systems.
Pimcore is free to use. Pimcore offers a demo to interested users.
Pros
- Excellent role-based access control.
- Free for all users.
- Flexible and scalable platform.
Cons
- Needs better document search functionality.
- Complex for new users.
Canto
Best user-friendly MRM software
Canto provides your marketing teams with a user-friendly marketing resource management platform to easily secure and share brand assets.
Why I picked Canto: The vendor has over 25 years of experience in marketing resource management solutions. Canto is simple for your teams to use when organizing digital assets and ensuring everything is readily available and on-brand. It provides your business with a centralized library that ensures everything you need is right at your fingertips - no more digging through an endless number of folders.
Canto works for marketing teams across all industries, enabling them to easily manage digital assets. You can use the platform to automate manual workflows by simplifying content creation, asset handling, and establishing steps for different processes. The version control tools enable you to manage your assets’ version histories and track all changes.
Canto Standout Features and Integrations
Features include folders and albums, smart albums, intelligent tags, personal collections, easy search, file filters, facial recognition, expiring share links, digital asset portals, visual file previews, document presentations, and detailed reports.
Integrations include Box, Canva, Drupal, Dropbox, Adobe After Effects, Figma, Hootsuite, Egnyte, Google Drive, Mailchimp, monday, Slack, Wrike, WordPress, and Zapier.
Canto offers custom pricing upon request. Canto does offer a free trial but doesn’t specify its length.
Pros
- Straightforward interface.
- Excellent customer support team.
- Highly customizable.
Cons
- Can be overwhelming for users.
- Uploading files can take time.
IntelligenceBank
Best for advanced search & filtering of media
IntelligenceBank helps users search an enormous number of files in seconds by using AI.
Why I picked IntelligenceBank: Your teams can use the platform’s search capabilities to quickly find everything they need for a new marketing campaign. The filtering system and AI can help with the search functionality by categorizing all marketing resources. IntelligenceBank enables you to set permission-based access to ensure only the right people can use and change specific assets.
IntelligenceBank is a good fit for medium and large businesses that require a straightforward content creation and approval workflow. The platform enables you and your team leaders to ensure team members stay on-brand before starting a new task by using IntelligenceBank’s pre-approved creative template functionality. You can use the Smart Highlights feature to compare multiple versions of your assets to make better decisions regarding updates.
IntelligenceBank Standout Features and Integrations
Features include multi-channel asset tracking, digital asset management, content sharing, content lifecycle management, asset library, media conversion, asset tracking, asset usage auditing, impression ROI, and metadata management.
Integrations include Salesforce, Microsoft 365, WordPress, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft SharePoint, Adobe Photoshop, Outreach, Drupal, Outfit, Sitecore, and Templafy.
IntelligenceBank offers custom pricing upon request.
Pros
- Simple onboarding process.
- Customizable user experiences.
- Excellent collaboration capabilities.
Cons
- Difficult navigation.
- Can be slow.
Bright
Best MRM for startups and agencies
Bright helps startup businesses and agencies control their digital assets and manage their brand’s identity.
Why I picked Bright: Your startup or agency can use Bright’s features for its specific asset operations. It supports all image, video, and document formats and allows users to crop, resize, and convert files before downloading. You can customize bright to match your company’s specific requirements. At the same time, its security will help prevent data loss and control access to the system.
Bright is a perfect option for small startups and agencies that want enterprise-level features such as facial recognition technology to enhance search functionality. It can help your teams eliminate manual tasks and avoid extra costs when managing marketing resources. Bright also provides consultants and an onboarding team to assess your specific requirements to create a unique interface that fits your brand and implement it across your business.
Bright Standout Features and Integrations
Features include digital file support, bulk upload and update, duplication detection, content delivery network, asset editing, asset metadata, multilingual options, user permissions, rights management, audit trails, and auto-tagging.
Integrations include Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office 365, WordPress, SharePoint, Figma, Google Workspace, Sitecore, Sketch, Ziflow, BrandStencil, and Drupal.
Bright costs from $1,179/month plus set-up fees. Bright offers a 14-day free trial to new users.
Pros
- Easy to use and understand.
- Very intuitive and flexible.
- Simple to locate digital assets.
Cons
- Very expensive.
- Some features need improvements.
Lucidea
Best for museum & archive asset collection management
Lucidea provides a flexible collections management system called Argus to ensure accessible, visible, and relevant archive asset gathering.
Why I picked Lucidea: The Argus platform from Lucidea helps museums and galleries enhance asset curation and offer public access to exhibits and objects. It also provides mobile access to your team members and visitors. The system’s portal and collection management elements can enhance operational efficiency and strong partnerships between your institution’s departments.
Lucidea is a good fit for any museum and archive institution to increase access to its asset collection. It can help your teams catalog and manage your photos, artifacts, and objects. The platform offers powerful search capabilities to make your collection discoverable on search engines.
Lucidea Standout Features and Integrations
Features include collection management, web and mobile portals, asset search, workflow management, and request management.
Integrations include an API to enable connections to various third-party systems.
Lucidea offers custom pricing upon request.
Pros
- Customizable reporting.
- Vendor provides user training.
- Easy to implement.
Cons
- UI is slightly outdated.
- Complex admin portal.
OnTrack Workflow
Best for localizing & personalizing content
OnTrack Workflow improves marketing localization and personalization by enabling teams to edit, customize, and deliver content assets.
Why I picked OnTrack Workflow: The platform simplifies how your business manages marketing assets while maintaining your brand’s integrity. Your teams can access approved content, logo, and creative material libraries at any time. They will have the flexibility to customize your business’s marketing assets by editing colors, fonts, images, and sizes.
OnTrack Workflow helps any business view which assets people use most and who’s using them. This information can help your teams plan, design, and create marketing collateral more efficiently. You can also use the platform to ensure teams are using marketing assets correctly throughout your company.
OnTrack Workflow Features and Integrations
Features include an online portal, workflow management, brand compliance, reporting and analytics, document comparison, conversion tracking, contact management, audience targeting, file sharing, and access management.
Integrations include Salesforce, Mailchimp, Barracuda Cloud Archiving System, and an API to connect the platform to your current systems.
OnTrack Workflow offers custom pricing upon request.
Pros
- Excellent customer support.
- Customizable templates.
- Easy to use.
Cons
- Needs more asset-sizing flexibility.
- Editing assets can be complex.
Percolate
Best MRM software for enterprises
Percolate enables enterprise organizations to control all aspects of their marketing lifecycles.
Why I picked Percolate: The platform offers solutions to help your enterprise introduce visibility to your marketing processes, improve work effectiveness, and develop marketing content and campaigns. Percolate offers your organization a central dashboard where you can store all marketing tasks, information, assets, and work in progress. Your teams can use the software to simplify content and asset production while ensuring everything meets your branding standards and adapt the collateral to various scenarios.
Percolate helps enterprises accelerate growth by breaking down silos, automating processes, and unifying your organization. It gives your team an overview of all campaigns and activities through its calendaring system. You can use the platform to coordinate a unified customer experience, reduce production expenses, and understand your marketing’s impact.
Percolate Standout Features and Integrations
Features include content management, compliance maintenance, content delivery, in-app search, content library, content customization and distribution, and performance insights.
Integrations include Salesforce, Clari, Allego, Drupal, Dropbox, Aprimo, Bynder, Box, BambooHR, Zendesk, SalesLoft, Microsoft Office, Okta, Outreach, and Netsuite CRM.
Percolate offers custom pricing upon request. Percolate provides a demo to interested users.
Pros
- Makes campaign planning easier.
- Simplifies content development and reviews.
- Notifies users regarding collateral’s impact.
Cons
- Complex learning curve.
- Some processes aren’t automated.
ResourceSpace
Best free marketing resource management
ResourceSpace is a free marketing resource management platform that stores digital assets on the cloud or on-premise.
Why I picked ResourceSpace: It’s an open source marketing resource management that enables businesses to organize, manage, share, and download brand assets. The asset search functionality allows your teams to locate assets based on resource numbers, descriptions, and keywords. You can configure the platform’s interface to suit your company’s needs and create unique links to ensure authorized stakeholders have access to your collateral.
ResourceSpace is an excellent choice for commercial, academic, and not-for-profit organizations looking for a simple solution for collecting and sharing files. It enables your teams to improve efficiency and collaboration by freeing up resources. Open source licensing means there aren’t any fees, but there are paid plans if you require more functionality.
ResourceSpace Features and Integrations
Features include customizable user experience, AI tagging, metadata tools, asset management and sharing, permission control, multiple user privacy, global search, workflow actions, and actionable analytics.
Integrations include Microsoft Active Directory, OAuth, OpenID, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Vimeo, YouTube, Falcon.io, WordPress, RightMarket, BrandStencil, and VisionAI.
ResourceSpace costs from $351/month when billed monthly or $4,215/year. ResourceSpace offers a free forever subscription tier.
Pros
- Highly configurable, simple interface.
- Allows public and private album creation.
- Provides quick asset recall.
Cons
- Some features require technical knowledge.
- Uploading files can be complex.
OpenAsset
Best for architecture & construction MRM
OpenAsset helps architecture and construction firms manage digital assets and create better proposals.
Why I picked OpenAsset: It’s a cloud-based platform that enables architecture, construction, engineering, and real estate businesses to store, organize, use, and share crucial assets. The software uses AI and a project-based structure to help your company improve asset tagging, search capabilities, and batch asset edits. OpenAsset’s primary focus is eliminating the hassle of locating assets and placing them in a straightforward central system - saving your team’s time and energy so they can focus on operating your business.
OpenAsset helps construction and real estate organizations design marketing collaterals, bid proposals, and other crucial documentation by using brand templates, image specifications, and a drag-and-drop tool. The platform enhances workflows and helps you create documents and collateral quickly and efficiently. You can also use OpenAsset to store employee data and align them with the projects they worked on - develop employee summaries fast to use when creating bids and proposals on the platform.
OpenAsset Standout Features and Integrations
Features include asset storing and organizing, project search, marketing asset creation, and collateral sharing.
Integrations include monday, Wrike, Basecamp, WordPress, Slack, HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM, Asana, Dropbox, Trello, Box, Google Drive, Zapier, and Okta.
OpenAsset offers custom pricing upon request.
Pros
- Customer account managers.
- Access assets from anywhere.
- Provides excellent product consistency.
Cons
- Needs more automation features.
- No user access options.
The Best MRM Software Summary Table
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Frontify Best for cloud-based style guide templates | Not available | Pricing is available upon request | Visit Website |
2 | Pimcore Best open source MRM software | 3-month trial at cost | Pricing available upon request | Visit Website |
3 | Canto Best user-friendly MRM software | 15-day free trial | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
4 | IntelligenceBank Best for advanced search & filtering of media | Demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
5 | Bright Best MRM for startups and agencies | Not available | Visit Website | |
6 | Lucidea Best for museum & archive asset collection management | Not available | Visit Website | |
7 | OnTrack Workflow Best for localizing & personalizing content | Not available | Visit Website | |
8 | Percolate Best MRM software for enterprises | Not available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
9 | ResourceSpace Best free marketing resource management | Not available | From $332/month | Visit Website |
10 | OpenAsset Best for architecture & construction MRM | Not available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
Other Options
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best MRM software list:
- 4ALLPORTAL
Best MRM software for managing & editing image-based digital assets
- Bynder
Best for implementing integrated ecosystems.
- MediaValet
Best for accessing assets anywhere in the world.
- Marvia
Best for customizing and publishing marketing assets.
- Brandfolder
Best for AI-powered smart asset search.
- Beam
Best for brand governance.
People Also Ask
Here are a few of the most common questions I come across when people ask me about using MRM software tools:
What is Marketing Resource Management Software?
What Are The Benefits Of Marketing Resource Management Software?
What are the Key Features of MRM Software?
Making the Business Case for MRM Software
As I outlined, the best marketing resource management software will deliver multiple time and efficiency savings. By centralizing asset control, management, and budgetary functions, the MRM software you choose will provide your business with a platform where your teams can coordinate and get the best from each other and external partners. This should make it a worthwhile investment for your business.
Hopefully, this guide cleared up the mystery of marketing resource management software. If you need more tools to help with your business’s marketing, sign up for our newsletter. Here, you’ll get the latest and greatest information on marketing and leadership, including updates from various experts and tool suggestions you can implement in your organization.