9+ Top Creative Platforms: Ranked & Reviewed (2024)

Struggling to figure out which creative platform is best for you?

With so many solutions available, most marketers and business owners can have a difficult time choosing between them.

And it doesn’t help that you don’t fully know what a digital asset management software solution has to offer until you test it.

But finding the right creative software shouldn’t be that difficult.

Make life easier for yourself by checking out this review of the top creative management platforms, and find the one that can optimize your creative process.

An Overview of Creative Platforms

Before looking into the top creative management tools, let’s clarify a few key things about these solutions.

What Is a Creative Platform?

A creative management platform (CMP) is a solution that combines several features designed to manage and facilitate a company’s creative processes.

It’s one platform where you can upload all your marketing materials, edit or create new ones, publish them, run paid ads, and even monitor campaign performance.

Why Are Creative Platforms Important?

A creative management platform aims to support your needs at different marketing campaign levels.

The exact benefits you can get from these tools depend on their features, but they generally strive to save you time and money.

Do I Need a Creative Platform?

Creative management platforms can be a useful tool for:

• Marketing agencies
• Creative directors
• International teams
• Hybrid workplaces
• Design agencies (for both print and digital)

Anyone who needs to manage a high volume of creative files and wants a streamlined way to monitor their advertising efforts can benefit from creative management platforms.

The Best Creative Platforms at a Glance

Here are two common questions about creative automation and management platforms answered:

Which Is the Best Creative Platform?

Ziflow is the best creative platform. 

It’s ideal if you produce content in-house and want a simpler way to gather feedback, track file version, and ensure changes are implemented correctly.

Which Is the Best Free Creative Platform?

Miro offers the best free plan when compared to other creative management platforms.

Though many other of these tools also have free forever plans, Miro’s version provides the best access to its suite.

Features to Look For in a Creative Platform

Companies can have different expectations from creative management platforms, and it’s crucial to consider your specific needs before choosing.

For instance, print-on-demand companies could require e-commerce features that help them easily share their design prints with vendors for customization.

Media agencies would need a way to communicate within their department and monitor content creation.

But apart from such activity-specific features, a good creative platform should also provide:

1. Management Tools

These tools should make it easier for companies to keep track of their digital assets, whether it’s videos, ad variations for paid campaigns, or other creatives.

They should allow you to update files across multiple platforms in real-time to ensure everyone on the team can access the same information and reduce manual labor.

2. Scalability Options

Switching between creative management platforms can be tricky, so it’s worth looking for solutions you can use for a long time.

As your business grows, having a creative platform that scales allows you to keep all your operations moving forward even as your needs change.

Even if you need to upgrade your plan, scalable software is a cost-effective solution for your creative management needs.

3. Collaboration and Sharing

A good creative platform should ease collaboration at multiple levels:

• Members of the same team
• Different departments
• Outside collaborators
• End customers

Such tools should provide a simple way for people to work together, view, and leave feedback on creatives.

Access to files should be easy to manage by establishing different user roles, the files they can see, and the activities they can perform.

4. Support and Onboarding

Creative management platforms are most often intuitive and designed to help end users quickly learn the ropes.

Still, if you require advanced features and need these tools for several departments, they can get more complicated.

You may need special onboarding to help your team get started or priority support to fix issues as soon as they appear.

5. Integrations

The perfect software is usually created through third-party integrations, so look at what these tools allow as final criteria before signing on.

Integrations let you create a custom solution for your company and streamline several other processes, such as sales, advertising, project management, and more.

Best Creative Platforms: Our Top 3 Options [Ranked & Reviewed]

First, let’s look at the three best creative management platforms that can help move your creative process in the right direction:

1. Ziflow: Our Pick

Ziflow is a creative management platform designed to facilitate creative collaboration between various teams in a company.

The platform focuses on streamlining feedback so the creative process remains flowing until the project is completed.

If you’re handling different video editing projects, Ziflow aggregates all relevant feedback for all videos in one place.

Editors no longer have to switch between their email, private chats, or other communication channels to know how to optimize an asset.

Ziflow Key Features

• Automated Creative Workflow: Ziflow can put many manual tasks on autopilot and save teams time and resources.
• Project Visibility and Tracking: The software allows all relevant team members to view key stages of a project’s development, read feedback, and track member activity.
• Version Management: Ziflow removes the confusion as to which digital file version is final or not. It also has an integrated comparison tool to see if the requested edits have been implemented.
• Third-Party Integrations: The software can be customized through several available integrations, such as Google Drive or Dropbox.

Ziflow Pros

• Intuitive solution for all creative teams
• Can integrate digital fingerprints on assets to claim ownership of them
• Facilitates marketing materials development from the first draft to approval
• Powerful APIs for developers

Ziflow Cons

• May display minor inaccuracies at times regarding file versions due to bugs

Ziflow Pricing

• Free Forever: Ideal for freelancers. The free version provides all basic features like version comparison and management, Final Cut Pro X extension, unlimited reviewers, and more.
• Business: Costs $40/month per seat (starts at five seats). It’s ideal for small to mid-sized companies that need advanced features, like the Ziflow AI chatbot, proof briefs, or two-stage workflows.
• Enterprise: For large companies looking for multi-stage workflows, batch reviewing, advanced branding, and controls. Contact the Ziflow team for a custom quote.

Conclusion: Should You Choose Ziflow?

Ziflow is one of the best creative management platforms out there.

Even the free version streamlines digital asset management and production and allows freelancers to quickly gather feedback on their work as they’re juggling with several clients.

It’s also a great solution for digital advertising agencies and any business with any type of creative workflow. Ziflow enables efficiency at a high level.

2. Canto: Runner-Up

Canto is a creative management platform that allows you to gather all your digital files in one place.

If you have assets like photos, videos, copy, and are finding it difficult to keep track of them, a service like Canto is just what the doctor prescribed.

It helps users find the right files using AI-powered search functions and allows them to share them with relevant team members or third parties through links and customized sharing portals.

Canto Key Features

• Facial Recognition Search: Canto provides several ways to find the files you need. If you’re looking for a specific team member, its facial recognition feature can identify all relevant files instantly. The feature can also be turned off whenever necessary.
• Files and Collections: You can organize all your digital files in collections or folders and control who sees them, if they can move into the next development stage, and more.
• User Roles: Control exactly who can access a specific folder or collection and what they can do with it. It also facilitates collaboration with third parties.
• Security: Canto secures your assets with constant threat monitoring to detect and quickly respond to any suspicious activity registered on the platform.

Canto Pros

• Intelligent and advanced file-searching features
• Enhanced collaboration between members and third parties
• Detailed reporting

Canto Cons

• Price information isn’t public

Canto Pricing

Canto claims it has the “simplest pricing model on the market,” but you’ll have to reach out to it directly to get a custom quote and more information.

However, it offers a free trial to test its service.

Conclusion: Should You Choose Canto?

Canto is for anyone struggling to organize their marketing materials, no matter what industry their business is active in, be it healthcare, retail, manufacturing, or even the non-profit sector.

3. Wrike: Also Great

Wrike is a creative management platform designed to help team leaders keep track of their projects at all stages of development.

It provides essential support for small online businesses in the creative sector that need to optimize anything, from their digital advertising strategy to improving their performance and tapping into better analytics.

Wrike presents itself more as a work management platform, so its features aren’t limited to the creative process.

IT departments, engineers, project managers, and other professionals also have several useful features.

Wrike Key Features

• Custom Request Forms: Wrike can provide custom forms you can send to clients or relevant parties to gather project feedback in one place. Once the information is there, the tasks are automatically organized in the team’s dashboard.
• Project Tracking: If you have multiple teams working on the same project, Wrike allows them to view a chart of the production stage so everyone is always up to date.
• Built-In Proofing Tools: All comments and edits of creative assets are gathered in one place to simplify the approval process. The creative teams can always know what changes need implementing, while the creative directors have a simple way to double-check if they were made.

Wrike Pros

• An all-around great project management tool
• Diverse range of features suitable for multiple teams
• Advanced reporting and analytics
• Can integrate with multiple platforms, such as Slack, Zoom, Google Suite, etc.
• Is available both as a desktop and mobile app

Wrike Cons

• No integrated chat features
• Some integrations may have delayed notifications
• Costly for larger teams

Wrike Pricing

• Free: Offers access to the mobile, desktop, and web app and major project and task management features.
• Team: Ideal for 5-25 users, offers unlimited projects, tasks, forms, and 50 automated actions for $9.80/month/user.
• Business: Up to 200 users and includes everything in the Team plan plus artificial intelligence risk prediction, file and video proofing, and guest approval for $24.80/month/user.
• Enterprise: Everything in Business for unlimited users plus advanced security. Custom pricing.
• Pinnacle: Everything in Business for unlimited users plus advanced analytics and management features. Custom pricing.

Conclusion: Should You Choose Wrike?

Wrike is a great tool to manage your marketing materials and optimize project and task management. Even the free version provides great access to its core features.

While it can get expensive for larger teams, if you need enhanced collaboration capabilities and the use of advanced AI technology, the cost is worth it.

Notable Mentions: Other Creative Platforms to Check Out

If the previous creative management platforms don’t address your core needs, check out these other great tools:

4. Google Marketing Platform: Most Powerful Platform

If you’re already using Google products in your business to create invoices, communicate with your team, and for digital ad production, then the Google Marketing Platform may be the next stop your company needs to enhance its processes.

It’s a unified marketing and analytics tool that helps teams make better decisions with their campaigns, manage their assets, and keep track of their marketing channels.

Why Is Google Marketing Platform a Great Option?

Google Marketing Platform provides tools for both small businesses and enterprises to create, launch, and monitor their campaigns.

Working with Google’s ecosystem is an efficient way to optimize digital ads since you can connect all relevant data in one place and use it to make better decisions with your ad campaigns.

This alone makes the solution one of the most powerful creative management platforms around, especially if most of your conversions come from Google Ads.

Drawbacks to Google Marketing Platform

The platform has a slight learning curve, especially if you’re unfamiliar with Google’s products.

It’s a fantastic solution for large enterprises with the resources to invest in employee training, but smaller start-ups could need more time to figure out how to leverage it.

Google Marketing Platform Pricing

Google Marketing Platform provides basic analytics and optimization features for free. These are designed to support the needs of small businesses.

If you need enterprise-level features like 360 Campaign Manager or Search Ads, you can contact the Google team for a custom quote.

5. Monday Work Management: Best for Project Management

Monday Work Management is a creative management platform specifically designed to facilitate marketing and creative work.

It’s a fantastic solution for marketing agencies and businesses who need a way to improve asset development from idea to result.

Monday Work Management allows you to have the end goal of your campaigns in clear view and ensures you can work toward achieving it.

Why Is Monday Work Management a Great Option?

This creative platform can help agencies successfully manage everything, from digital advertising production to events, strategic planning, content calendars, and more.

Users can collaborate with both internal and external parties, set different goals for projects, and even track the process to ensure the task is delivered on time and doesn’t exceed the budget.

Drawbacks to Monday Work Management

Monday’s dashboards can aggregate all relevant data of a project in one place, but for complex ones, the interface can get cluttered.

This makes it difficult to effectively track key metrics.

Monday Work Management Pricing

• Free Forever: Up to two seats, offers unlimited docs, three boards, and over 200 workflow templates.
• Basic: Everything in the Free plan plus unlimited free viewers, 5GB file storage, and unlimited items for $10/month/seat if billed monthly.
• Standard: Everything in the Basic plan plus timeline and Gantt views, guest access, and up to 250 automation a month for $12/month/seat if billed monthly.
• Pro: Everything in the Standard plan plus private boards and documents, time tracking, and chart view for $20/month/seat if billed monthly.
• Enterprise: Everything in the Pro plan plus several enterprise-level features like automation and integrations. Custom pricing.

6. Bannerflow: Best for Ad Personalization

Bannerflow is a great solution to improve your creative workflow through automation.

It can save resources during digital ad production and can remove a lot of repetitive work from the process.

This creative platform helps you manage your campaigns to increase conversions through several features like real-time publishing and live feed data.

Why Is Bannerflow a Great Option?

Bannerflow’s best feature is enhanced ad personalization. The tool helps you deliver highly targeted digital ads created right in its integrated Creative Studio.

These ads help you stand out from your competition and get better results with your digital advertising efforts.

The creative platform also provides automation features that help you scale your ads in minutes, generating extra digital assets you can post on a variety of marketing channels.

Drawbacks to Bannerflow

The platform has a steeper learning curve that prevents users from tapping into the full capabilities of Bannerflow right away.

Bannerflow Pricing

Bannerflow has a subscription model, but you’ll need to contact its sales team for a custom quote.

7. Creative Force: Best for Retailers

Creative Force helps optimize and elevate content for those in the retail industry.

While it’s not exclusively a creative management platform, it provides several ways to organize and keep track of your creative assets.

It also keeps track of different file versions, lets you oversee the production process, and collaborates with different parties.

Why Is Creative Force a Great Option?

Creative Force helps retailers get a singular ecosystem to help them run their business at most levels.

On the creative assets side, you can gather all your relevant materials in one place, work on new versions, and even share the projects with others.

On the business side, Creative Force helps you manage vendors, track and manage product samples, and scan product barcodes with a smartphone to get more information about it.

Drawbacks to Creative Force

If you’re starting an e-commerce business, Creative Force isn’t the ideal solution for you. It’s a costly tool designed for bigger retailers with higher budgets.

Start-ups and small businesses likely can’t afford it. If that’s you, we recommend checking out other creative management platforms on this list.

Creative Force Pricing

• Team plan: Access to all features but limited to 20 full-time users and 20 day pass users. Costs $2,900 a month.
• Enterprise: Offers premium-level features, but you need to contact its sales team for a custom quote.

8. Bannerwise: Best for Creative Production

It supports your digital advertising needs by allowing you to create assets tailored for specific marketing channels and publish them with ease.

Why Is Bannerwise a Great Option?

Bannerwise helps optimize digital ads by tailoring visual imagery to your specific target audience.

You can generate any ad size with a click, automatically scale elements, and ensure brand consistency on all your digital assets.

It’s a great solution for media agencies needing a creative automation solution that allows them to cater to the needs of multiple clients.

Drawbacks to Bannerwise

Bannerwise can be costly, but the major drawback is that some of its features are only available as add-ons.

If you need API connections or to host your HTML5 creatives on its servers, these will cost extra.

Bannerwise Pricing

• Free Trial: Bannerswise lets you test the full suite for seven days.
• Standard: Unlimited creatives, create and publish on all advertising platforms, one user included for $299/month.
• Professional: Everything in the Standard plan plus one extra user, premium DSPs, and onboarding for $499/month.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, and you can request only the features you need from its suite.

9. Miro: Best Free Creative Management Platform

Miro helps you stay on top of your marketing plan and monitor the entire process from start to finish.

It’s a great tool for creative directors and marketing teams to work on the same project together.

Miro’s features are also optimized for hybrid work, allowing people to work in tandem no matter where they’re physically located.

Why Is Miro a Great Option?

Miro provides several templates to start optimizing your creative workflow from the second you log in.

Its whiteboard features help take the brainstorming process online, allowing all team members to contribute their ideas even if they’re not in the office.

It also offers digital asset management features to support teamwork and implementing marketing campaigns. And all of these perks are included in the free plan.

Drawbacks to Miro

The idea of taking physical instruments digitally (like the whiteboard) is innovative, but it can be tricky to use.

Miro’s interface gets clunky at times, and most users need a while to get used to it.

Miro Pricing

• Free Forever: Unlimited users, three editable boards, over 1000 templates, and over 100 app integrations.
• Starter: Everything in the Free plan plus unlimited boards, custom templates, and private boards for $8/month/user if billed monthly.
• Business: Everything in the Starter plan plus unlimited boards for every team member and client and unlimited guests on private boards for $16/month/users if billed monthly.
• Enterprise: Designed for at least 30 users and comes with custom pricing.

10. AdCreative: Best for Social Media Advertising

AdCreative is a creative platform designed for social media marketing agencies.

It uses artificial intelligence to generate visual elements for your ad campaigns, no matter where the ads will run.

It’s a great way to automate your creative content and get multiple ad variations in just a few clicks.

Why Is AdCreative a Great Option?

This solution is ideal for agencies with a lot on their to-do list but not a lot of resources to execute their ideas.

AdCreative smooths out the production process for ads and generates images in any size and for any platform.

It’s creative automation at its best and allows you to track your top-performing ads inside the tool if you connect your ad account to it.

Drawbacks to AdCreative

AdCreative is a newer platform, so it still has a few kinks to smooth out.

The process isn’t fully automated, and you’ll need to double-check the generated ad images to make sure they meet your requirements before you send or publish them.

AdCreative Pricing

AdCreative has three main types of plans, but they each come with four additional sub-plans.

• Startup Plans: Starter ($21/month), Premium ($44/month), Ultimate ($74/month), Scale-Up ($111/month).
• Professional Plans: Starter ($141/month), Premium ($186/month), Ultimate ($299/month), Scale-Up (Custom).
• Agency Plans: Starter ($499/month), Premium ($699/month), Ultimate ($899/month), Scale-Up (Custom).

The creative platform also uses a credit-based system for downloading assets generated on the platform. These credits refill every month.

Each plan offers access to all main features but to different extents.

Other Options Relevant to Creative Platforms

• Companies That Pay for Ideas: Have a great product or service idea but don’t have the resources to build your business? You can sell them to these companies instead.
• Best Freelance Artist Websites: Use your creativity to build a new career using these freelance artist websites.
• Top Online Writing Sites: If you’re a creative person who likes to write, check out these top sites where you can earn money writing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrapping Up

Ziflow stands out against all other creative management platforms thanks to its fantastic asset management and collaboration features.

Canto is a close second, but Ziflow took the lead thanks to how it can streamline feedback and handles version tracking.

Our top choice ticks every box, from allowing third-party integrations to providing campaign management solutions and great support.

Is Ziflow the right solution for your business? Sound off in the comments, and let us know your thoughts.