Ceros Reviews

Pros

Many of my interactive designs have complicated carousels, click-to-reveals, navigation, menus, etc. Some of these things can really give you grey hairs at a young age, but Ceros makes detailed interactions easy to build out. The tools are laid out easily so that you know what each button is going to do and how it's going to interact with other objects on your canvas. It can be tedious, but it beats having to learn coding and deal with the HTML myself. A few other honorable mentions: Ceros has an excellent array of templates that users can take and build onto; Ceros also is very receptive to feedback from users, and I've found in my 3+ years using the platform that a lot of idea I've added to the suggestion box have been implemented.

Cons

The lack of functionality for quizzes and assessments is a bummer. To define what I mean by quizzes, I'm strictly talking about assets where you're posed with a question, you select an answer (possibly multiple choice) and the end result after a handful of questions is to be dumped into a specific bucket category. I've talked to many Ceros reps about making quizzes, and while it's doable, it's extremely convoluted and the output of metrics is unorganized. With that said, the analytics you receive from any experience isn't really all that much to brag about. The Ceros platform has a really nice display of visuals for users to see, but once it's time to pass the data onto a client or anyone outside of the Ceros platform, you get this extremely messy and hard-to-read CSV file. I don't love that. It would be better if you could export the graphs and data visuals straight from the backend of Ceros.

Pros

Ceros gives me the ability to create beautiful things for the web without having to know code! It works well with Adobe products, and they continue to upgrade and improve the product.

Cons

Any features that I wish Ceros had are given to our account rep, who gives them to their development team as a wish-list of sorts. They have acted on many things, and continue to improve and add features.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Ceros

Pros

The web pages I can design through Ceros are beautiful, interactive, and almost entirely customizable. I love the flexibility of the platform and that you do not need any coding experience to dive in. We made a beautiful digital annual report for our organization, and for the first time, it generated online donations.

Cons

Ceros can be a little glitchy and particular. It is harder for servers to load, making our load time much slower for the end user and risking drop off.

I'm a designer so it wasn't hard for me to learn the platform, but for those with no design experience I think it would be challenging to really use the platform for all it is worth.

Pros

Software is hard to use and complex, but does the job well. Team is consistent in improving with the constant releases.

Cons

Product is complex and requires heavy training or professional services to deliver upon the promise. The business model is optimized for software licensing and services are expensive.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Ceros

Pros

Ease of used and ability to make it what you want it to be.

Cons

Some features could be easier to use. I wish there was a direct mailing feature integrated into the software.

Pros

As an Adobe based designer, the Ceros platform is easy to create a layout with previous Adobe InDesign experience. Ceros Inspire is an amazing tool for quick layout templates to get your ideas following and also features some custom created sites for inspiration. The animation is easy to add and elevate any layout as someone who hasn't worked much with After Effects or other timeline animation tools.

Cons

The functionality could use some work. Features like paragraph and character styles are missing in the capabilities. The latest major update added some capabilities like "adaptive" layouts, meaning not quite responsive, but better than nothing mobile layout conversion from desktop designs. The platform isn't great for customizing SEO or social sharing.

Pros

Ceros has been a fantastic option to enhance a lot of our content management that existed as an ebook, technical document or report. It gives us another way to communicate key assets in a unique and smart way. There are endless options and it can be a blank canvas or template, depending on our needs.

If you know Adobe, it can be a seamless transition on the design side and then some learning on animations and different web options to optimize the experience for visitors. They have a good analytics section as well that we are still learning but it's great to have that available.

The customer service thus far has been excellent. There are regular check-ins, tutorials and you have access to their team to help you walk through some of the more complicated aspects of the tool.

The Pro features have access to white labeling and dedicated URL handling which is a good feature as well.

Cons

If you are a beginner to Adobe, it can be difficult to learn and there is an investment. However, for organizations that are content marketing-focused, it's a fantastic tool to have at your disposal.

Pros

From a user standpoint, the software is simple to use for the kind of complex animations it offers. It's also fairly easy to integrate into the web platform we use it on. The templates and inspiration examples offer a great deal of options to include into your designs.

Cons

One of the things that could use improving is the organizational structure of the experiences themselves. When creating many various projects with several experiences it would be nice to organize them into folder and subfolders for better organization.

Pros

If you're any good at creating PowerPoint animations, Ceros is a really cool tool that can help take your infographics to the next level. It uses a similar approach to animations as PowerPoint (fly in, fly out, fade in/out, etc) with an interface that is similar to Adobe Illustrator.

Cons

Ceros is very expensive for what it can do. The short trial costs too much, and you don't get to keep the assets you create. Animation options are also somewhat limiting. You can't really combine multiple animations on the same object simultaneously. It's also very time consuming to create assets that are worthwhile.

Pros

Like the fact that you don't need to use any coding to create great designs

Cons

Layering can be a little confusing and frustrating sometimes

Pros

Overall I'm very happy working with this software - once you get to know it and have a better understanding of the tools and how they can help you, it's pretty simple to create great animated content whether it's a landing page, quiz or a article embedded graph. You can make it as simple or complex as you want and additionally you can embed other code (like JS or forms) to add features that might not exist within Ceros. Ceros has a lot of various standard JS type animations which can transform a page into something that is fun or exciting to scroll through. I'm very impressed with the Inspire gallery showing so many different applications and fun projects using the software and it gives us ideas to use in next project.

Cons

While there are not a lot of things I am not happy with, I do wish there were more shape features and line options ( octagon, maybe a free form shape, dotted or double line - sort of like Photoshop ). I also would like to see a masking tool. There are occasional bugs.

Pros

The software feels familiar, which made onboarding and training quick. The Ceros team provides so many training resources, both on their site and via regular webinars, which helps to train my team and keep us up to date on new features. The IT support team is incredibly responsive - some of the best I’ve experienced!

Cons

I think there are a lot of opportunities for the software to expand its functionality around paragraph and character styles that would make layout and styling faster and more streamlined. The animations are good but I would like to see them be more customizable, and the interactions more dynamic, in the future.

Alternatives Considered

Pros

The ceros platform is super easy to learn how to use, and it allows me to make extremely high quality content in a quick time frame. I love the flexibility it provides to bring creative visions and ideas to life, without having to know anything about code at all. I'm able to create impressive, engaging and unique content that makes both internal teams and external prospects and customers really excited about what we're doing, and it brings a new level of creativity to the way we think about producing marketing collateral and assets.

Cons

The only negative thing I've noticed about this software is that there can sometimes be bugs or the studio can sometimes freeze when creating really complex content with lots of layers or interactions. However, the support chat in the studio is always available and I've found them super helpful and responsive when trying to solve these issues.

Pros

Ceros is easy to use if the user is familiar with adobe programs. After about one week of daily use, it becomes super easy to navigate and start creating!

Cons

Ceros is marketed as a way to create entire websites but it's just not quite there. The animation and design options are extensive but the inability to directly view and edit the code of your experience is such a detriment that it makes it hard to justify using Ceros over hiring a web developer.

Pros

Create animated projects for clients and not have to worry about elaborate coding begin the scenes. Some of the 'hacks' i had as shortcuts several year ago have become standard tools (color palettes, layers) to make initial project setup much easier.

Cons

Been waiting 4+ years for some fine details, specifically rotating items at a percentage...for example, a 1/4 (90˚) turn, or 10% rotation. Found some workarounds, but there have been numerous instances when a client wants a clock-type motion and have been unable to produce exactly what they have in mind.

Pros

As a service provider our industry is based on relationships, so finding new and interactive ways to reach our clients and influencer base is so important. Now we create content through the lens of user interaction and functionality instead of static web and white pages – we're seeing a dramatic increase in our engagements rates across the board, not only in click rates but time spent on the pages themselves.

Cons

The learning curve from static to interactive content can be steep, especially for teams that don't have designers available to work solely on this software. Even with Ceros' ability to simplify the process, it can still feel like a heavy lift for teams with high pressure deadlines that already run lean.

Pros

We use Ceros for quickly building marketing landing pages. These are used both on the website and for our email campaigns.

Cons

There's been a few issues with integrating Ceros pages with other analytics tools. Ceros does not allow for whitelisting, so we've had a few pages blocked when trying to integrate into other applications.

Pros

I love how dynamic the platform and design interface is , truly graphic designer friendly, doesn't take a lot of code or web design knowledge.

Cons

Not the most SEO friendly platform I've worked with, there aren't drag and drop pre-designed design blocks, and although features do continue to be rolled out and product updates, there are some formatting and functionality features missing.

Pros

I love that we can build immersive content experiences for all our clients, with tools that help us accomplish just about anything we think of when it comes to cool callouts, animations, layouts. And of course, it's great that we can then dig into the data to see what the users are actually responding to.

Cons

I wish metrics were available in a more customizable dashboard, and easier to download or share a custom report with a client... although I suspect Ceros is focusing more on one-on-one client relationships vs. agencies, so I won't hold my breath for that. Still cool that we can learn so much about what users are looking at.

Pros

Ceros allows us to create custom, unique, interactive experiences for our clients. We can create both proactive and reactive experiences to help us showcase our offerings and executions in the most compelling way. Building detailed and creative micro-sites enables us to show our clients how much we care and value their business.

Cons

I honestly don't have any complaints about the software. The Ceros team is very open to change and listening to feedback. They adapt the product constantly, upgrading it to meet the ever-evolving needs of the users.

Pros

We've only just started using this service, but it is so easy to pick up and start creating content. The navigation and tools feel like most other design tools out there. Plus, there are easy to use controls for content animation and interactions.

Cons

Not gonna lie, it feels awfully expensive, but when we started comparing what we'd spend elsewhere to get similar content created, it starts to make a lot of sense. They make a lot of examples available, but not all are available to copy the source files (which would be really nice). They are just visual inspiration.

Pros

WYSIWYG interface with lots of animations and tools to create content. The support for embedding other code and objects (and even embedding ceros experiences inside other ones) has been great. Makes it quick and fairly easy to create simple interactive pieces of microcontent as well as has the depth to create really in-depth, interactive experiences with minimal coding involved.

Cons

A few bugs here and there, and is a little on the pricier side.

Pros

As a whole, the things that Ceros is capable of is pretty bad ass. The examples they show you are super cool and get you super psyched to get started and buy the product right away. They have a ton of premade templates that you can use to jump off with if you are not quite ready to build a template from scratch.

Cons

The complexity. I mean, they are really targetting graphic designers, which I am not, so I can't be mad, but it is insane. I loved the demo and was super jazzed to get started with the software, but once I started I realized I was not going to be able to make anything worthwhile. The time needed to really delve into the software and learn everything that it can do totally turned me off. The price seemed great for everything it could create, but if you are not an expert in photoshop it is a waste of money. You might as well just stick with Canva because you are going to get frustrated and hate everything you create.

Pros

The simplicity, it's very intuitive if you are used to design tools.

Cons

The text functionality, it has to be improved, there is no way to give different formats in the same text box.

Pros

The overall concept of building interactive experiences with a WYSIWYG interface! We can create so much more content at a higher frequency with the same or less amount of work.

Cons

Sometimes a very random issue can only be resolved with a couple quit and restarts, but that is very rare. It's a solid platform.