Top 10 Product Information Management (PIM) software in 2019 | PIMworks
Investing in product information management (PIM) software could be an overwhelming decision to arrive at. The reason being, every retail business is unique, ranging from the type of product sold, to the number of channels catered to, and the number of SKUs dealt with. Therefore, shortlisting the best fit is quite a daunting task.
As PIM solution providers ourselves, we decided to further penetrate the market and present to you all the crucial piece of information you’d ever need to help you pick the right one from the lot.
This guide will help you understand the top 10 product information management software (PIM) software in the market — an overview of the tool, the highlights, pros, cons, and the pricing plans in detail.
Salsify is a product experience management platform that specializes in delivering a digital brand experience. They have an intuitive UI and the process of creating a product and syndication to channels is quite simple. Salsify has a 30-day free trial and a personalized demo for you to try and check out the product. Not many PIM players in the market have a freemium model. So, if you are convinced with the claims of Salsify and willing to explore the product, it is a win-win with the free trial model.
You can also enjoy some strategic integrations in this PIM software that help you simplify and make product experience management seamless.
Pros:
- Create a centralized repository for all your product content
- Import product information and digital assets from multiple sources
- Syndicate content in the right format to multiple channels
- Monitor market changes through actionable analytics
Cons:
- PIMs are quite complex to understand and work with. A deeper tutorial is what the support materials lack that helps users understand the product better. However, these can be easily fixed or are probably work-in-progress by the Salsify folks
- Bulk edits are really a lifesaver. It would be easier if this feature is a lot simpler and easy to use.
Pricing:
Salsify has not published the subscription plan on its website. However, they have a customized pricing scheme. If you are interested, you can write to them and get a quote upon communicating your business requirements.
You also have a 30-day free trial and a demo.
With three unique solutions in their product experience management suite — Akeneo onboarder, PIM, and Franklin Akeneo is definitely an end-to-end PIM software. It is an open source PIM system and the import engine allows you to pull data from any source. Once you onboard the product, you can define data attributes, complete product sheets, translate data into another language, and also add media files.
Pros:
- Store and organize all kinds of data like images, videos, and files with product data asset manager
- Discover the rules engine to configure attributes or automated classification
- Go to previous versions with “History version reverse”
- Manage advanced rights for people inside the company for different departments, language, and brand and outside the company for translators, suppliers, and partners
Cons:
- There is slight grumbling going on around about how the import/export processes are not very user-friendly. Not just that, the management of permissions also does not seem to be a very breezy task to do
- Akeneo does not seem to handle the integrations very well
Pricing:
Akeneo is offered in three editions — Community, Enterprise, and Cloud. While the community edition is free the other two are subscription-based. You can check out the detailed pricing plans here.
If Akeneo sounds interesting you can take a guided tour. You can also take an online demo that is already set-up with sample data.
Plytix is a robust and powerful system. It is an intuitive and easy-to-use tool that helps managing product experience across multiple channels. Its fully customizable catalog software enables the building of error-free catalogs. The catalogs also offer B2B catalog management. Also, marketing teams can be benefitted by product analytics that helps in making informed marketing decisions.
Pros:
- Plytix is for both small businesses and large enterprises
- A single source of truth for all your data — that enables unlimited users to work on your product data at the same time
- Edit on the fly is a note-worthy feature that allows direct editing of product-label in the table-view
- Efficient content management through intelligent data filtering
- Allows syndication of contextual and optimized content
- Track product-level metrics across all online channels
Cons:
- Video guides seem to be what the users would expect to see to guide them better. It is probably already on their roadmap!
- While bulk edit feature is great, the ability to bulk edit attributes directly when you view them on the list would make it a lot more seamless.
Pricing:
Plytix has a free trial model.
They have three editions in their pricing range — free, pro, and enterprise. The pricing is structured based on the feature limitations. They have a forever $0 free plan. The pro plan is $830 /mo that is billed annually, and the enterprise plan with a custom offer. You can check out the complete plan here.
Combining data management and experience management, Pimcore makes the lives of product and marketing teams a lot easier. Creating contextual content and compelling web content is made simpler by breaking up data silos.
It is an open source software and the solutions are largely classified into data management, experience management, and Pimcore platform. Data management constitutes PIM, DAM, MDM, and CDP. Experience management has WCM and digital commerce platform.
Pros:
- Can create a new product data model using the web-based data modeling engine
- The advanced workflow management helps to streamline business processes
- Pimcore data validation helps in monitoring the quality of product information
- Organization, aggregation, classification, and translation of rich product information based on a flexible and agile data model
Cons:
- The CMS module can be improved
- Also, the process of image uploading seems like a lengthy process to deal with
Pricing:
You may want to request the vendor to get a custom quote. The pricing information is provided by the vendor. However, you can take a guided tour or an online recorded tour.
You can head over here to get more information about the product demo.
Informatica is a scalable and flexible PIM software. It has an intuitive UI that allows efficient collaboration with internal and external teams. It allows seamless management of digital assets and complex product data regardless of the format. The automated data quality checks ensure standardization and enrichment of product data.
Pros:
- Manage digital assets and complex product information
- Superior supplier collaboration with an embedded self-service portal
- Automated data quality checks ensuring product information quality
Cons:
- The onboarding process was not very breezy.
- There are no adequate guides to help you explore the product
The visual interface is not very appealing
Pricing:
Informatica has a 30-day free trial plan. Learn more about it here.
Riversand’s PIM software helps businesses manage and govern product information efficiently. It helps develop highly collaborative and efficient digital supply chains, reduce manual processes, and get products to market faster. Streamline digital asset creation and syndicate the right content in the right time.
Pros:
- Eliminate manual workflow through smart automation. Streamline communication with vendors, internal and external teams
- Personalized product experience and tailored recommendations
- Out-of-the-box connectors for rapid content syndication to third-party platforms
- Rich and error-free product content across all channels
Cons:
- The support teams seem to be not very proactive
- The visual interface is not very appealing
Pricing:
Riversand does not have a pricing plan published online. You may want to get in touch with the vendor to get a quote. However, you can also book a demo through their website.
A scalable and flexible platform that is a single source of truth for all your product information. Easily access product data feeds from external systems and you can manage, control, and schedule content for specific channel requirements. You can utilize inRiver for your marketing activities to create compelling product descriptions, efficiently collaborated, and shorten time-to-market. It facilitates the creation, management, and distribution of rich product information across touchpoints in multiple languages.
Pros:
- A holistic view of product information
- Manage, optimize, and schedule your content for specific channel requirements
- Create rich, consistent, and compelling product stories
- Utilize rule-based intelligence to improve conversion rates
- Publish/Edit rich product information to any sales channel
Cons:
- Lacks import of data from other sources
- The UI is not very appealing, particularly the dashboard
- Integrations with other software is quite difficult
Pricing:
You can get a custom quote by writing to the vendor.
However, you can also schedule a demo. Learn more about it here.
Agility PIM helps in creating the right content, in the right context, and at the right time. It combines PIM and MDM capabilities to centrally view and manage content. The dynamic workflows of this PIM software enable smooth collaboration. It helps reduce time-to-market and streamline the process of data aggregation, content enrichment, and syndication to multiple channels. The data validation tools help in syndicating accurate content to multiple channels. This enables introducing products quickly to the market.
Pros:
- Streamlines process of sourcing product information, enrichment, and syndication to multiple channels
- Helps in contextualizing content for different channels
- Rapidly expand product ranges and SKUs
- Real-time performance analytics by product range or brand
Cons:
The pricing data is not available and hence does not help you choose a concrete plan
Pricing:
They have no pricing information published. You can get in touch with them to obtain current pricing.
It is a PIM and MDM enabled platform aimed at creating differentiated customer experiences. Enterworks’ PIM is a comprehensive solution that aggregates product information from multiple sources and helps in centrally managing them. It is a 360-degree solution, meaning, you can onboard, cleanse, synchronize, and publish data — all through this platform.
Pros:
- Manage complex business processes and content through a drag-and-drop interface
- Collaborate between business, technical users, internal and external users by creating workflows
- Store, categorize and manage digital assets
- Utilize digital channel accelerators to reach marketplaces, multiple touchpoints, and social networks
- Syndicate and update rich product information to multiple channels
- Supports multilingual, multi-country and multi-cultural content
Cons:
- There are some bugs and fixes that hinder the smooth use of the tool
- There aren’t adequate demo video content or guides to walk you through the product, especially when you start
Pricing:
They have no pricing information published. You can get in touch with them to obtain current pricing.
Contentserv is all about creating personalized product experiences. Their solutions are diverse covering — product information management, master data management, digital asset management, and marketing experience management. The solution helps you reduce time-to-market, improve data quality, and drive better business results. Task management is made seamless by creating workflows and utilizing intuitive interfaces for collaboration and approvals.
Pros:
- Automate product onboarding from legacy tools and supplier feeds
- Enables collaboration by the creation of workflows
- Utilize powerful editing tools to enrich product information
- Complex data models for quick retrieval of relevant information
- Ensure content quality with rule-based classification and normalization
Cons:
- There aren’t adequate demo video content or guides to walk you through the product, especially when you start
- The pricing data is not available and hence does not help you choose a concrete plan
Pricing:
They do not have the pricing information published, however, you can get in touch with the vendor to get a quote.
They also have a free demo spanning for 14 days. You can check out more details about the plan here.
Wrapping Up
Investing in product information management (PIM) software could be one of the most strategic decisions your team has to make. As every business and their requirements are unique, there is no one PIM software that can serve them all.
Depending on a lot of needs and other critical repercussions the choice can bring, you have to be very careful in evaluating the best PIM software.
There are a set of standards and grounds for comparisons that should help you identify the most ideal fit.
Check them out here.
If you may have to make the most rational choice, you cannot completely rely upon the online reviews or web copy claims. And this is exactly where we hope this post has helped. We have tried to understand the market, the key players, what the users feel about the product in addition to our research.
If we have missed out your favorite PIM vendor, feel free to comment below, we’d love to add them!
See what sets PIMworks apart from the other tools.
Originally published at https://pimworks.io on May 23, 2019.
