We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Most of our competitors in this document management review roundup focused on managing the storage and classification of typical business documents as well as the workflow around those files. Hightail sets itself apart by focusing on a narrower audience, namely that of creative businesses, such as ad agencies or graphic design shops. To work there, Hightail has had to focus its feature building efforts around the needs of slightly different "documents," largely images and video files. The company was acquired by OpenText back in February of 2018 and has since revamped its pricing structure, which now begins at $12 per month for its Pro tier. If your company's focus is on creative deliverables, then Hightail Business is well worth a look; however companies with more general document needs would do better to look at our Editors' Choice winners in this space, Ascensio System OnlyOffice and {ZIFFARTICLE id="337616"}}Microsoft SharePoint Online. Hightail Pricing Since its acquisition by OpenText, HIghtail has changed its pricing structure, dividing its offering up into 4 pricing tiers. There's an always-free tier, called Lite. While this is relatively feature poor, it might be enough for very small shops or solo operations. File size is capped at 100 megabytes (MB) in Lite while overall cloud storage space for an account tops out at 2 gigabytes (GB). Next is the Pro tier, running at $12 per month. This tier is also aimed at more of a solo operator, but supports files up to 25GB and unlimited account storage. It also adds more capabilities around security and support. The first tier really usable by multi-employee businesses is the Teams tier, which runs $28 per user per month. Here, you also get unlimited account storage with support for file sizes up to 50GB. There's also a far richer feature set around security, automation, and editing. Disappointing for many, however, will be that you won't get an Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator plug-in unless you opt for Hightail's highest pricing tier, Business. You get all the goodies here, including not only Adobe plug-ins but also priority support, single sign-on (SSO), and the ability to handle file sizes up to 100GB. Unfortunately, this tier's pricing is apparently "custom," which usually means you'll need to negotiate with a Hightail sales rep. Document Management for Creatives Most document management suites rightly focus their features on tasks that are commonly performed on office documents, such as in-browser editing and change tracking. Even the advanced security and compliance features built into higher-end suites such as Microsoft SharePoint Online are all designed for a typical business scenario in which users are performing typical document tasks such as copying, editing, moving, printing, or sharing. While Hightail Business can work with standard office documents, that's not its forte. Where document management suites such as Ascenscio System OnlyOffice and Microsoft SharePoint Online let you comment on word processing documents and spreadsheets, Hightail Business provides tools to highlight portions of an image or a section of a video to provide context for comments. These tools can also be leveraged on some standard office document formats, letting you highlight portions of a document and apply comments. But just don't expect to be making edits to the document inline. Hightail Business works with the following file types: MOV, JPG, PNG, MP3, DOCX, PPT, Adobe Illustrator (AI), and PDF. Hightail Business offers a couple of different options for organizing files. Projects are the top-level organizational entity and are ideal for targeting a specific customer or product. Spaces provide an additional level of management capabilities and can either be added to a project or used on their own. Both entities let you manage access, such as which team members can contribute and who is involved in the approval process. At the end of a design effort, spaces can be archived and removed from view but saved for reference. Meanwhile, projects are simply deleted and disappear into oblivion. Streamlining the Creative Process Whether you're a one-person creative shop or a member of a corporate design team, a large portion of your workload probably involves communication with customers to ensure design choices meet with their approval. It's also likely that you've experienced a communication issue with your customers, where somehow the design requirements were lost in translation and some amount of redesign had to take place. Hightail Business can offer some tools to enhance this back-and-forth with customers through the use of approval requests. By selecting the customers' files, you can send an approval request to the customers, asking for them to accept the changes you've made or provide comments on areas that still need work. You can also manage permissions on spaces as a whole, letting customers or team members follow progress and interact in real time. Another common task for creative professionals is receiving files from customers to be used in their artwork or video. This could be anything from corporate logos to voice-over scripts to photographs. Due to the nature of the file types being worked with, email isn't an optimal file transfer method due to file size. One option Hightail Business supports is integration with cloud storage solutions such as Dropbox Business, Google Drive for Work, or Microsoft OneDrive for Business. Using these options would let customers share their files by using these services, at which point you could access them within Hightail Business. Another option Hightail Business provides is its uplink feature. Uplink lets you configure a custom URL, which you can provide to customers for them to directly upload files into your Hightail Business instance. To upload files you can select the files, drag and drop and import them. Once uploaded, you can move files to a space or project, make comments, or view revision history. Your uplink can be configured with file retention, letting you automatically remove files after a period of time. Hightail Business isn't just about interacting with customers, though. Team tasks can be managed by using a to-do list within a space. These to-do lists can be assigned to team members along with a due date and a reminder. Team members can mark to-do items as done, and progress can be tracked within the space. It's not as comprehensive as a true project management solution, but for basic work management tasks it's a handy addition. Artists Are People, Too Hightail Business doesn't aim to directly compete with Microsoft SharePoint Online or even Ascensio System OnlyOffice, as it's focused squarely on creative types looking to streamline the work they perform and to make customer interaction more efficient and effective. Its features, such as approval requests, uplink, and to-do lists, will enable your creative team to prioritize work and facilitate both team and customer communication. This will increase your chances of creating content that exceeds client expectations. Bottom Line: Hightail Business is a document management solution aimed mainly at creative businesses, so it focuses on large files like images and videos. It has a rich feature set in this regard, though if you want to really enjoy its full scope, you'll need to opt for its highest pricing tier.

weiterlesen: RSS Quelle öffnen