5 Best Digital Asset Management Plugins for WordPress

Digital asset management (DAM) is a system that stores, catalogs, and distributes digital files such as images, video files, and audio files. A successful digital asset management system gives you the flexibility and control to efficiently create, upload, access, edit, and share digital assets with others through a centralized, secure location.

Digital asset management plugins for WordPress work similar to file storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox, however, they offer much more than file uploading and sharing features. WordPress also offers some basic digital asset management features that let you upload digital files from within WordPress which, for most business users, is just not enough. 

Fortunately, you can easily upgrade your WordPress digital asset management system using a WordPress plugin that delivers all the digital asset management features you need to efficiently manage your files.

In this post, we’ll run the rule over some of the best WordPress digital asset management plugins that enable you to store, share, and organize your digital assets.

What is digital asset management?

By default, WordPress gives you access to a basic digital asset management system in the WordPress Media Library that you can use to upload files and documents. However, it doesn’t offer any cataloging, accessing, or sharing features that you’d expect to get with a traditional digital asset management system. 

For instance, when you upload a digital asset to the WordPress Media Library, you can’t assign taxonomies or label files to ensure easy access in the future. These are all essential DAM features.

As a business owner, you need an excellent WordPress digital asset management plugin that lets you catalog your media files and share them with others in a secure way.

Now that you know why you need a robust DAM system for your WordPress website, let’s go over our handpicked selection of WordPress digital asset management plugins to help you find the one that best fits your needs.

5 Best Digital Asset Management Plugins for WordPress

Here, we’ll run the rule over some of the best digital asset management plugins that can help you improve how you store and manage digital files on your WordPress site and share them with other people. 

#1: Filr

Filr is a robust WordPress digital asset management plugin that helps you store, protect, and share files through your website. It comes with powerful asset management and security features out of the box like filename encryption and file expiration based on specified dates or the number of downloads.

Once you’ve uploaded your files, you can display them using simple shortcodes. In addition to this, you’ll be able to block direct access to your files by configuring your custom file directory or adding global protection through the index.php or .htaccess file.

Key features:

• Filr enables you to prevent unauthorized users from accessing your digital assets and secure your digital files so only the right people can view them.
• You’ll be able to create a document library and upload any number of files directly to your WordPress site’s front-end.
• You can group your digital assets including videos, audios, and PDFs based on lists and easily manage and track them on the back-end.
• Filr lets you distribute files through your WordPress site in two ways: offer individual downloads that allow users to download one file at a time or zip multiple files into a single archive file so users can download all of them in one go.
• You can customize the appearance of your file libraries by changing colors, borders, font sizes, and box-shadows.
• Restrict file access by the user (e-mail) or user role
• manage your files in folders in a modern and UX-friendly way
• provide a live search and pagination solution to display hundreds of files within a library
• password-protect ZIP files for maximum security, encrypt file names, and completely shut down external access to files
• Prevents uploaded files to be visible as an attachment by uploading only to secured folders and blocks Google and other search engines from indexing your files accidentally

#2: File Manager

File Manager is a user-friendly WordPress digital asset management plugin that helps you organize and protect your WordPress files. It lets you add, modify, delete, access, and distribute files and folders directly from your WordPress site’s back-end.

In addition to this, File Manager is a great alternative to FTP and cPanel for transferring your data assets quickly and in a secure way. It also offers a number of integrations with other applications including Google Drive, Github, and Dropbox.

Key features:

• You can easily upload, copy, move, rename, create, edit, and delete files and folders on a remote server.
• File Manager lets you upload files of all sizes as well as create, archive, and extract files in rar, zip, tar, and gzip formats.
• You’ll be able to quickly view all file details and properties by right-clicking on a file and selecting ‘Get Info’.
• Its drag and drop upload interface helps you add one or more files directly from your desktop or Windows Explorer.
• The uploaded files including images, pdfs, and zip files can be viewed in your folders and can also be accessed from the native WordPress Media Library.

#3: Brandfolder

Brandfolder is a digital asset management tool that enables designers and creatives to manage and distribute their files and documents. Its intuitive, cloud-based, single location allows you to store all your digital files and share them with your team members and clients. Brandfolder supports integration with a number of applications including WooCommerce, Shopify, Gmail, HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, Canva, and Slack.

Additionally, Brandfolder uses AI to help you monitor how your files are performing by generating insights about file views, downloads, and shares. It also comes with powerful search functions so you’ll be able to quickly locate required assets. 

Key features:

• You can easily edit your Brandfolders directly from the WordPress dashboard.
• Brandfolder’s privacy controls and user-level permissions let you secure your digital assets to ensure only authorized people have access to them.
• Its Media Library integration (Brandfolder Browsers) lets you quickly import files from your Brandfolders to be used in pages or posts.
• You’ll be able to embed your Brandfolder on widgets, menu bars, posts, and pages using its ‘Popup Embed’ feature.
• Using Brandfolder, you can track who’s using your digital files, where they’re being used, and what your best-performing digital assets are.

#4: Enhanced Media Library

This WordPress media management plugin is an excellent tool if you want to easily search and categorize your digital files. You’ll be able to quickly search through your library using categories and tags, and add filter-based categories to posts and pages using shortcodes.

Its intuitive and simple-to-use interface allows you to quickly organize your digital assets, add disallowed file types, and automatically update galleries every time new assets are uploaded to the library.

Key features:

• Enhanced Media Library lets you categorize your media files by creating your own taxonomies such as folders, topics, authors, countries, and projects.
• You can easily manage the plugin options like configuring filters to control which images are displayed.
• You’ll be able to reorder media files, edit their titles, filenames, and captions, and bulk select items to edit your Media Library faster.
• It enables you to create dynamic galleries and playlists based on a tag, category, or date. This way, whenever a media file is added or removed from the group, the gallery will be updated dynamically.
• This plugin lets you control which files can be uploaded to the Media Library. You can also filter media files using file type filters.

#5: Canto

Canto is a popular DAM solution that helps organizations centralize, manage, share, and secure their digital media assets. It is a simple yet powerful media management system that lets you quickly search through your image library, assign metadata to batch uploaded photos, and limit permissions on albums and folders. You can also create customizable sorting options to search through your Media Library alphabetically, by date, or file type.

It offers integration with applications such as WordPress, Google Drive, MailChimp, Slack, and Marketo.

Key features:

• It comes with a powerful facial recognition feature which means you no longer have to tag the same people over and over.
• Canto’s ‘Smart Albums’ feature helps you automatically sort your media files by keywords, tags, and file types. 
• Canto lets you create three different user roles namely Administrators, Contributors, and Consumers – all with varying functions. This way, you can set permissions for roles as to who can upload, manage, view, edit, and/or remove content on your website.
• Canto lets you securely share your media assets with team members and clients. You can also set expiration dates on emails and share links to protect sensitive files while making them available for sharing and collaboration.

Conclusion

On its own, WordPress lacks native digital asset management features. However, by using the right digital asset management plugins, you’ll be able to access, catalog, and share your digital assets in a secure way.

Also, be sure to check out our roundup of the 7 Best Document and File Management Plugins for WordPress in 2020.