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So close to great

Submitted Jan. 2, 2021
5
End-User Experience
The tool was relatively easy for the team to adopt and use.
4
Administrator Experience
The tool was relatively easy to set up to meet organization's requirements.
5
Customization
You can customize the administrator and user interface of this tool to your specific needs.
3
Basic Features
The "out of the box" features were as expected.
4
Average: 4 (1 vote)
Innovation
New functionality or feature improvements are regularly introduced.
5
Average: 5 (1 vote)
Reporting & Analytics
You can access, use and report data in useful ways.
5
Average: 5 (1 vote)
Customer Service
The customer service experiences are timely, helpful, and resolved to satisfaction.
3
Average: 3 (1 vote)
Advanced Features
These features clearly differentiate the tool from other options.
4
Average: 4 (1 vote)
Integration
This tool ntegrates well with other systems.
4
Average: 4 (1 vote)
Vendor Maturity
The company offers training and user groups or similar foundation of support for the tool.
Number of Staff Regularly Using the Tool: 
2-5
Organization Type: 
Agency
Primary Job Function: 
Content Strategy
Years Using Tool: 
5+ years
Organization Revenue: 
$1,000,001-$5,000,000
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There are so many things to love about GatherContent.

  • Your content can be fully structured. You can build fields (plain text, basic html, single- and multi-select lists, attachments) that match your CMS.
  • You can add custom workflows. Need a legal review? Add in a step. Have 14 rounds of required edits? That's fine, too. Each stage can be clearly marked off, and notifications let the next person in line know it's time to start work.
  • Everything is in one place. No more spreadsheets to track Word/Google docs.
  • Integrations are (mostly) plug-and-play. There's an existing array of plugins for most CMSs, meaning that migrating content is mostly a matter of configuration, rather than code.

If you're building a site that's mostly a brochure + a basic blog, GC is great. If you're building an e-commerce site, GC is absolutely an essential tool.

But for me, there are a few things that keep it from being a must-have.

  • Images. If you're need to insert images inline with text, GC is really clunky. (Think WordPress-style shortcodes everywhere.) Better image handling has been "on the roadmap" for 6 years now. I'm not holding my breath that this improves.
  • Alt text. GC doesn't support mapping to alt text fields out of the box. A good developer can extend the connector modules to allow this, but it's not fully plug-and-play.
  • Relational data. This isn't supported at all. You can't hyperlink between posts or add manual related content until you've moved to the CMS.
  • URL fields. GC doesn't support them.

The upshot: if you're working with a site that consists mostly of fully-structured content, then GC is absolutely worth the investement. If you're working with a site that has a lot of editorial content, then it's a coin toss whether it will truly save you much time.