After reading a post at
Freelance Switch on collaboration sites, I decided to test them out with one of my many agreeable clients, as a guinea pig. Of the nine that were listed, I tried out
Concept Share,
Cozimo and
ProofHQ, along with a fourth called
Museworx.
Generally, I post all my proofs as PDF files to my own website and then forward the links via email. The client reviews the PDF and then either emails or calls with the changes. They also like having the PDF, in order to print out a proof on their end. It's worked pretty well, but the benefits of a collaboration app were definitely appealing...especially as I look for ways to expand my list of services.
So, on to my testing. I started with
ProofHQ's free "Personal" plan, which offered five proofs a month, one user, and 50MB of storage.
Unfortunately, when you go to upload your proof to the site, it requires that you input the client's email so that it can immediately forward a proof link to them. Having never used their site before, I didn't want to send it to my client without seeing it first and making certain it was easy to use.
Logically, I sent the proof to myself. The site choked on my file, for reasons still unknown. Instead a window came up that simply told me the system had flushed it due to it being an "invalid file type." Huh? Not to mention, it showed that I was down one of the five available monthly proofs. Grrh. I tried it a second time after converting my fonts to outline and making certain the colors were all CMYK...and it flushed it, again. Now I was down to 3 proofs for the month and nothing to show for the effort.
Next, I tried out
Cozimo's free "Personal" plan, which offered one project workgroup and 10MB of storage space...and, thankfully, no limit on proofs. The file that wouldn't work at ProofHQ, uploaded perfectly at Cozimo. I was able to make sure everything looked OK before activating the proof link for my client. I also found the site very clean, organized, and easy to use. It kept track of my client's noted revisions, allowed them to download the original PDF file for printing on their end, and emailed me when there was any revision activity.
After that, I tried posting a PDF with a complicated vector illustration in it...Cozimo's software choked, indicating there were too many paths to convert it to a proof. So, I moved on to
ConceptShare's free "30-day trial," which offered 15 projects and 1GB of storage. ConceptShare was able to convert it to a working proof. Of course, they convert the PDFs to a JPEG, so the original file is not available for a client to download. That's not so good for me.
ConceptShare is easy to use and even allows you to do a certain amount of custom branding in the free trial. But, overall, the site isn't visually what I'd prefer. And, as I'd be using this as an extension of my brand and services, I'd prefer something cleaner.
Lastly, I tried out
Museworx's free "90-day Trial," which offers 100MB of storage space and one user. Because of the one user limitation, your clients will have to sign on as guests, when reviewing a proof. So, any revision notes they create will not list their name - it simply reads "guest." That's not very useful, if you have a variety of people reviewing a proof.
Also, the proof emails that are generated out Museworx are not formatted. They get sent as one long paragraph. Any client instructions that you need to include become hard to decipher, such as telling them how they need to navigate the site. There were a few other small issues; certain items worked in Firefox that didn't work in Safari and so on.
Right now, I'm probably leaning towards Cozimo, but all in all, the "jury" is still out on the collaboration apps. I'd love to hear your experiences and if you have any recommendations on collaborations apps for graphic designers.
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