Adobe's asset management tools are easy to confuse. Each has its place, so here is how they compare.
Brand Portal vs Asset Share Commons
Functionally, Brand Portal and Asset Share Commons do similar things: they make assets stored in AEM Assets available to users without giving them access to what should stay protected. Both are simple to set up and configure, so implementation effort is small.
Brand Portal is licensed by Adobe. It is a secure, cloud-based service for on-demand asset distribution to internal teams, external partners, agencies and resellers for marketing. Customization is very limited. More in AEM with Brand Portal.
Asset Share Commons is a technical reference implementation of asset share functionality, built with AEM best practices — a reference for AEM developers building asset sharing. The source code is on the project's GitHub page; it is unlicensed and comes with no warranty. Being open source, it can be extended and contributed to.
Dynamic Media vs Brand Portal
Dynamic Media combines asset management with rich media delivery: you create, adjust, brand and deploy interactive viewers with the WYSIWYG Viewer Designer. It is the evolution of Scene7 (Dynamic Media Classic), a standalone product Adobe acquired and rebranded as Dynamic Media with more features. Its features include:
- a single interface and platform for managing images and video
- seamless integration with AEM
- merchandising features
- a robust, proven delivery platform
Brand Portal, a cloud-based SaaS offering, helps you acquire, control and securely distribute approved creative assets to external parties and internal business users on any device. It makes asset sharing more efficient, speeds up time to market, reduces the risk of non-compliance and unauthorized access, and integrates easily with AEM.
Final verdict
Dynamic Media is for collaboration and file sync with Adobe Creative Cloud applications and for rich media delivery; Brand Portal and Asset Share Commons are for sharing assets with people outside the core team. Both support asset operations and approval workflows, so choose after you understand the requirements.
For the lighter DAM option, see Assets Essentials vs AEM Assets as a Cloud Service.