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WoodWing

WoodWing Studio, Assets, Connect

Long-time InDesign tool maker and publishing platform has transitioned to digital but recent corporate sale and realignment may bode changes ahead

  • For digital, the firm licenses a 'headless' content management system (CMS) and separate digital asset management (DAM) module
  • WoodWing is best suited to digital-first publishers that still maintain a vested interest in multiple print publications and need to rationalise the cost of print
  • Customers include Der Spiegel (Germany), DPG (Belgium/The Netherlands), Hearst Magazines (US) and BuzzFeed (for asset management)

Likely fit

WoodWing is most suitable for large publishers with revenue streams from a large number of print publications and can help reduce costs and optimise digital-to-print workflows. Woodwing is less suited to small- and medium-sized publishers when there are no adequate integrator or in-house resources to create and maintain a digital front end.

At a glance

Primary customer fit

Mid-sized chain of news organisations

Secondary fit

Large news organisation

Most active geographies

EMEA, North America

Official support hours

24h

Officially supported languages for user interface

CZ, DE, EN, ES, FR, IT, JP, KO, NL, PL, PT, RU, CN, TW, FI

Third-party language support available?

No

Licence model

Subscription based on number of monthly active users (SaaS)

Scope summary

Emphasis on digital-first content production with print integration; offers no front-end experience or revenue generation functionality

Tech base

PHP, SOLR

Cloud model

SaaS or self-hosted

Headquarters

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Head count

200

What customers report

  • Modern editorial interface optimised for news production
  • Good functionality to share and repurpose content across multiple publications
  • Capable DAM with good rights management
  • Well suited to rationalising workflows to print in multiple publications
  • Large media licensees have experienced performance issues in various parts of the platform and it is presently difficult to resolve these via cloud deployments
  • The vendor seems slow to take on board customer feedback — 'it sometimes feels they're not really listening to us' — and then act upon it
  • Automation of print workflows works well for simpler designs (such as local newspapers) but less suited to complicated publications like magazines

Background

WoodWing was founded in 2000 in Zaandam, The Netherlands, with offices in the US and Malaysia, and claims customers (with support by local partners) in more than 60 countries. The company originally focused on plug-ins and tools around Adobe InDesign. This evolved over the years into a complete digital publishing system, including helping media companies publish to the iPad (later to Apple News); the company still offers outsourced publishing services in Malaysia.

The key products are:

  • WoodWing Studio (the editorial environment)
  • WoodWing Assets (a DAM)

WoodWing Studio can organise content in 'Dossiers', which can include articles and images but also background documents like Word files. WoodWing Studio offers a componentised editorial interface, where articles are constructed of blocks of text, images and other content (e.g. quotes).

Note that WoodWing doesn't offer a digital front end. So customers typically employ another CMS (such as WordPress or Drupal, both reviewed elsewhere in this report) or build their own to feed websites. Print is supported through integration with InDesign. However, WoodWing now focuses on a digital-first workflow, where print is secondary and optimised for cost and efficiency.

Existing customers tend to mostly run the software on-premise, though WoodWing has been making efforts to shift to cloud and a SaaS model. WoodWing offers perpetual licences based on the number of concurrent users and subscriptions based on concurrent or monthly active users but does not divulge cost indications.

Taken together, this platform best supports mid-sized (or larger) chains that remain heavily print-centric and are willing to invest in a more custom web-publishing operation.

Note that WoodWing's founders sold the company in 2020 to Main Capital Partners, a 'private equity firm focused on building healthy software groups'. While it's too early to tell what influence this will have on the direction of WoodWing, the firm has since then acquired a document management company and a knowledge management company (Xtendis and Scienta), which may indicate a shift in the company's focus.

Package scope (as reported by vendor)

Core platform - i.e., bundled in product (yes/no/beta) Add-On (yes/custom/3rd party)
Content lifecycle: author / classify / edit / approve / publish / re-purpose / archive / dispose
Yes
Basic digital / voice / media asset management
Yes
Support print publishing
Yes
Simple social media re-publishing
No
3rd Party
Optional modules: forms / polls / social widgets / etc
Custom
Connector library (OOTB connectors, APIs, etc.)
Yes
Bundled CDN (with DDOS protection)
No
3rd Party
User registration
No
3rd Party
Subscription management and fulfillment - digital
No
3rd Party
Subscription or membership
No
3rd Party
Personalisation
No
3rd Party
Ad management - digital
No
3rd Party
Ad management - print
No
3rd Party
Content management
Yes
Research
No
3rd Party
Content management
No
3rd Party
Video management / OVP
No
3rd Party
Audio management / podcasting
No
3rd Party
Data journalism and visualisation
No
3rd Party
Classifieds
No
3rd Party
Commenting / community features/
No
3rd Party
Newsletter production and management
No
3rd Party
Notifications and alerts
No
3rd Party
A/B testing
No
3rd Party
SEO
No
3rd Party
Multi-title management with variable inheritance
No
Yes
Complex layout and subsite / subsection cloning
No
Yes
AR- / VR- enhanced services
No
3rd Party
Audience segmentation
Yes
Online user / partner forums
Yes
Regular user group meetings
Yes
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