Salsify VS Akeneo: An In-depth Comparison [2024]

Salsify VS Akeneo: Which is the better platform? When it comes to choosing a product information management platform, some of the popular tools out there are Salsify and Akeneo.

Selecting the right PIM platform is a critical decision for any business. Once you commit to a platform, you’re essentially entrusting it with the entire spectrum of your product information. 

Choosing the right PIM platform is far from the everyday decisions we make, such as selecting our daily attire.

A PIM platform is more like a long-term partnership. The choice you make profoundly impacts your day-to-day operations, data management, and overall business performance. 

So, Salsify or Akeneo? Which is the best platform? 

Salsify focuses on enhancing product experience and Akeneo aims to deliver omnichannel experience.

So, if you had to pick a tool there are a bunch of things to consider. 

Salsify VS Akeneo: A Quick Comparison

Let’s do an in-depth breakdown below and dive deep.

What is Salsify?

Salsify is a product experience management platform that helps brands, retailers, and online businesses win the digital shelf by efficiently managing product data. With Salsify you can centrally store product data, enrich it, collaborate within Salsify, and syndicate it to different channels.

What is Akeneo?

Akeneo is a product information management system that enables retailers and brands to deliver omnichannel experiences to customers across every touchpoint. It aims at helping online retailers deliver a consistent product story no matter which platform they sell on.

Salsify VS Akeneo: Which tool should you choose?

1. Mapping your objectives with the platform

Before choosing a tool for your business, you must understand your objectives and see the fit of the tool for your business. 

Salsify:

It caters to mid-sized to large enterprises. Salsify’s scalability makes it suitable for businesses with a growing product catalog and the need for a flexible and powerful PIM solution. You can choose this platform if your goals are:

• The need to expand and reach across various channels and marketplaces. In that case, you can benefit from Salsify’s extensive channel syndication capabilities
• Salsify is a strong choice for businesses that require advanced workflow automation to streamline collaboration and approval processes
• For organizations placing a high priority on data quality, Salsify’s data validation and enrichment tools can help in creating accurate and high-quality catalogs

Akeneo:

It is suitable for small to mid-sized businesses seeking a customizable PIM solution to manage their product information efficiently. You can choose this platform if your goals are:

• Businesses with unique product data management requirements that need a lot of customization may find Akeneo compelling
• If you want to achieve an omnichannel presence, Akeneo would be the right choice
• If consistent branding and better storytelling are on top of your goals, Akeneo would make more sense for you

2. The features of Salsify and Akeneo

Understanding the features of the platforms you are evaluating is the crux of a meaningful comparison. Let’s scroll and roll!

Salsify features:

• Salsify boasts an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy for users to navigate and manage product information
• The platform offers robust import and export capabilities, facilitating seamless data transfer in various formats
• Salsify provides tools for data validation and enrichment, ensuring the accuracy and completeness of product information
• Advanced workflow management capabilities help streamline processes, collaboration, and approval workflows within the platform
• Salsify supports extensive channel integration options, allowing businesses to syndicate product information across various channels and marketplaces
• Salsify provides a robust API for integration and automation, allowing for seamless connections with other systems

Akeneo Features:

• Akeneo features a clean and user-friendly interface, facilitating easy navigation and management of product data
• The platform focuses on maintaining data quality, offering tools and features for validation and enrichment
• Akeneo supports multiple channels and marketplaces, including Salesforce clod, Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce, Shopify, and more 
• Akeneo offers connectors for popular integrations, facilitating seamless connections with other software and tools
• Akeneo can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud

3. What do the real users of these platforms think

The true test of any platform lies in the hands of its users. The diverse perspectives of businesses using Akeneo and Salsify can offer valuable insights into how these platforms perform in the real world. 

Akeneo:

The overall sentiments of Akeneo customers are quite positive as they seem to be pleased with the simple UI of the platform and its ability to help users create and syndicate products swiftly.

Source: Capterra

However, many users were not happy with the DAM capabilities of Akeneo, and quite a few needed help with onboarding. There is also disappointment around how the workflow management is not very comprehensive in Akeneo.

Salsify:

Like Akeneo, the overall sentiments of the users are positive for Salsify. In a nutshell, according to the G2 crowd, the aggregate sentiments look something like this:

4. Salsify pricing VS Akeneo pricing

Akeneo has three pricing plans: Community edition, Growth edition, and Enterprise edition. Salsify on the other hand has custom pricing.

Akeneo’s pricing:

Akeneo’s community edition is a free forever plan that offers a bunch of features including centralizing product data, catalog enrichment, digital asset management, and more. The growth edition starts at $25K annually and it is a saas product. It offers a bunch of features that are included in the community edition and additionally – automatic updates, early access to the latest PIM features, customer success manager, and more.

The enterprise edition has a custom quote and offers advanced features.

Salsify pricing:

Salsify has a custom quote and the pricing criteria look like this:

Factors Influencing Pricing:

• Number of seats
• Number of product records
• Support agreements
• Entitlements (add-ons for enhanced functionality)

Subscription-Based Model:

• Salsify follows a SaaS subscription model
• Pricing is customized for each customer

Average Cost:

• Smaller customers: $2000-5000 per month
• Larger enterprise customers: Higher costs for a global instance

Other popular PIM tools you must consider

The Salsify vs. Akeneo face-off has shed light on the distinct strengths of each PIM platform, allowing businesses to make informed decisions based on their unique needs. Whether you lean towards Salsify’s intuitive interface or Akeneo’s robust customization, the key takeaway is the importance of aligning your choice with the specific requirements of your business.

And while the spotlight has been on these industry giants, it’s worth noting that there are alternatives in the PIM arena. These popular PIM tools include:

• PIMworks
• Plytix
• InRiver
• SalesLayer

Take, for instance, our very own PIMWorks – a solution tailored to seamlessly integrate with your workflow, providing a user-friendly experience and powerful features to optimize your product data management.

✅ You can centrally store and manage your product data

✅ Manage your vendors and suppliers through a unified space

✅ Create deep workflows to enable collaboration between internal and external stakeholders

✅ Enrich your product catalogs automatically. PIMworks automatically fetches the right product data and updates your missing attributes

✅ Personalize your content to meet the unique requirements of each channel

✅ Syndicate products and take them to the market within minutes

✅ Enable a two-way sync with deep integrations. PIMworks is integrated with Amazon, Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and more

You can take a free 30-minute demo and explore PIMworks for yourself!