At Mate, we don't see ourselves as direct competitors to the industry giants - we focus on addressing specific needs that may not be fully covered by other platforms. That's why it's crucial for companies to fully understand their own requirements and choose the software that suits them best. With our software comparison, we want to help you find the software that exactly matches your requirements so that both sides benefit equally. To do this, we first present them to you in a brief portrait, comparing content creation, brand management and team collaboration.‍

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1. In Brief

Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool that can be used to quickly and easily create professional content such as flyers, visuals for social media posts or presentations based on numerous templates.

Making Canva a convincing choice: Canva allows any layperson to produce graphics. The tool is like a simplified version of Adobe Creative Cloud. By clicking through and trying it out, Canva users immediately learn all the important functions and experience limitless creativity.

Target group: private individuals and marketing teams (not entire organizations)
Focus: design without design knowledge

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Frontify

Frontify is a cloud-based brand management platform that combines brand guidelines, design templates and digital asset management in one place.

Making Frontify a convincing choice: As an all-in-one solution, Frontify enables quick and easy access to brand content for all employees in an organization.

Target group: Companies
Focus: Central management of brand guidelines

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Papirfly

Papirfly is a cloud-based platform for brand activation management. Papirfly's core modules are a central brand hub, digital asset management, a template studio and a planner for coordinating marketing campaigns.

Making Papirfly a convincing choice: : Papirfly's modular structure allows companies to adapt this platform to the individual needs of their brand and thus receive a tailor-made all-in-one solution.

Target group: Companies
Focus: Modular brand management

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‍Mate

Mate is the content creation software developed specifically for brand communication. Mate enables all employees to create individual graphics, animations or videos without having to pay attention to the corporate design.

Making Mate a convincing choice: The intelligent and responsive design system is indestructible and uses artificial intelligence to ensure that all content is brand-compliant and professionally designed at all times.

Target group: Companies
Focus: Brand-compliant content creation within the entire organization

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2. Content Creation

Canva

In the Canva editor, there seem to be no limits. Users have an extensive selection of templates to choose from or alternatively the option to start on a blank canvas to create fully customized designs.Customization of designs is made possible through an intuitive drag-and-drop system. In addition to the creation of graphics, Canva also includes an integrated photo and video editor, which makes the editing of photos and videos very easy thanks to artificial intelligence. Particularly noteworthy is the ability to print products directly via Canva.

Frontify

Unlike the other software, Frontify's editor is not intended to enable all employees to produce graphics, but rather to facilitate seamless collaboration between the various teams. Frontify gives designers the opportunity to create professional templates by integrating their preferred design software and entering them into Frontify. Non-designers from the organization can then access these templates and fill them with content. However, this means that the templates are mostly fixed in their structure and primarily allow text and image adjustments to be made by clicking on the desired element.

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Papirfly

Papirfly's editor provides employees from all departments and locations of an organization with user-defined design templates for image and video material. In addition to digital assets, print materials can also be created in Papirfly. These can be customized using simple drop-down menus and selection options.The editor ensures strict adherence to the specified brand guidelines, which deliberately restricts creative freedom in order to guarantee brand consistency throughout.

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Mate

The Mate Editor stands out due to its dedicated focus on digital brand communication and enables employees of an entire organization to create professional graphics, animations and videos that are guaranteed to match the corporate identity. Mate is positioned between the creative freedom of a design platform such as Canva and the restrictive content creation of standard brand management tools. Mate offers exclusive templates based on the corporate design that give users extensive creative freedom through adapted input variables. In addition, Mate has an integrated photo and video editor for ideal adaptation of the image material to the content created.A special feature of Mate is the ability to animate created visuals with just one click. In addition to the creation of visuals, Mate also enables the automatic generation of caption texts in the desired tonality.

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3. The Brand Management 

Canva

Although Canva is primarily known as a design tool, the platform offers the so-called Canva Brand Hub to simplify brand management for companies. Users will find two central functions in the Canva Brand Hub. Basic brand guidelines can be defined in the brand documents, which are used for all creations within the team. This applies to company logos, color schemes and fonts. In addition, the brand templates make it possible to provide the entire team with design templates.These can then be edited individually or with restrictions in the choice of colors and fonts. However, Canva cannot guarantee basic brand security, as employees can still freely move and scale elements and add new content. The brand templates can therefore only be seen as a guide.

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Frontify und Papirfly

When it comes to brand management, Frontify and Papirfly are in no way inferior. Both are regarded as leading brand management platforms. Their wide range of features, especially centralized brand guidelines and efficient asset management, make it easy for employees throughout the organization to access all relevant brand guidelines at any time. This accessibility ensures constant brand consistency, allowing both providers to guarantee seamless adherence to brand identity.

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Mate

Mate also ensures consistent brand communication in line with the corporate design without exception. The brand guidelines are implemented by experienced designers in Mate's smart template technology, making the templates indestructible for users. Mate's central asset library and the integration of common DAM systems ensure access to an organization-wide, uniform image database. The only thing Mate does not have is a collective consolidation of brand guidelines.

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4. The Cooperation within the team

Canva

Canva promotes team collaboration through numerous functions that refine cooperation and increase efficiency. The basis for using these functions is the assignment of specific roles (administrator, member or brand designer) to the various users. Content management is made much easier through the use of folders, while the internal approval process for designs shortens the often tedious coordination procedure. A key element for collaboration at Canva is the ability to collaborate on projects in real time, which sets the platform apart from others in terms of collaboration on assets. The downside of Canva is that content creation is designed for individual teams rather than empowering all employees. Canva is aimed at marketing teams that already have expertise in content creation and are familiar with their brand guidelines.

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Frontify

Frontify enables both systematic and creative collaboration that goes beyond collaboration in content creation. Using Kanban boards, tasks can be managed in Frontify and project progress can be tracked in order to provide teams with targeted support in project organization. Creative collaboration is supported in Frontify via the comment function and clearly structured approval processes. Here too, these functions are controlled by assigning roles and rights in advance.

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Papirfly

Papirfly's collaboration is aimed specifically at branding teams who pull the strings "behind" the brand portal. These marketing or employer branding teams have the flexibility to modify the brand guidelines stored on the platform at any time. Unlike Canva, where predefined roles and access rights are set by default, Papirfly offers the freedom to decide individually how access rights and user roles are distributed within a project. Papirfly does not provide for direct collaboration on templates.

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Mate

Mate is ideally designed for the joint content creation of decentralized teams. The organization through main and sub-workspaces enables a clear structure for different brandings or multiple locations. All workspaces have access to the same template library and can adapt it individually for themselves. Content can be shared as required within the workspaces. Sophisticated rights and role management ensures that each team member receives exactly the access rights required for their tasks. Asset management benefits from a clear folder structure for clear organization and the tagging system also ensures additional order. Tags can be created individually and then used to mark individual posts. Mate also integrates a role-based approval process that ensures efficient coordination. Direct collaboration on templates is also possible in Mate - however, the software does not have a comment function here.

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Conclusion

After this comparison, it quickly becomes clear that the four pieces of software are not as similar as they appear at first glance. Each software is characterized by individual focal points that are supported by specifically developed functions. With this in mind, it can be confidently stated that Mate offers a genuine and convincing addition. Which software is the right choice for you is ultimately a question of your specific needs. In any case, we hope that our software comparison has helped you to identify your personal requirements and make it easier for you to choose the right software.