DivvyHQ vs. Skyword: Comparing Content Marketing Platforms

Happy New Year! We’re back in the saddle with our final competitive analysis article (at least until we add more to our analysis). This one compares two, long-standing heavyweights in the content marketing platform space, DivvyHQ vs. Skyword.

To kick things off, I thought I’d start with a general statement about the difference in philosophies and approaches among many of the key players in this category. And that difference really revolves around the services that you, as a representative of your organization’s content operation, really need.

Considering that your company is going to have a unique makeup (objectives, strategy, staff, resources, culture, etc.), your unique needs will dictate whether you just need a software tool to manage some or all aspects of your content operation, or you need the tech AND additional services, like outsourcing the development and execution of your content strategy, including services like: copywriting help, creative services, etc.

At DivvyHQ, we are 100% focused on building the best content marketing platform to serve content teams who already have a handle on their strategy and the resources needed for execution (internal staff, agencies, existing freelancer relationships, etc.).

Skyword, on the other hand, has always focused on creative services and their writer network, and built those use cases directly into their technical offering (ex: sourcing and paying writers through the platform).

So again, your consideration of the available solutions might begin with an immediate fork in the road. What do you need? Just a solid platform? Or a platform with various attached service offerings (that you’ll also have to pay for).

All that said, content practitioners in the market for good tools will still have their hands full sifting through the wide variety of tech options. To speed up this process and help content marketers understand which platform might be the best fit, we’ve done a big competitive analysis of the most popular platforms used to tame the content beast. Today, we’re focusing in on the comparison between DivvyHQ vs. Skyword.

We’ll define how each solution stacks up in several categories, including:

• Pricing
• Content ideation features
• Content and editorial planning capabilities
• Workflow and collaboration offerings
• Content production and asset storage features
• Publishing functions and integrations
• Content and team performance analytics
• Service and support
• Setup and implementation requirements
• Security
• Other factors

Comparison Methodology

How did we complete the comparison of DivvyHQ vs. Skyword? Our staff dug into various resources, including company websites, free trials, knowledge bases, review sites, and additional sources. The full report and methodology is available here: Content Marketing Platforms: DivvyHQ vs. the Alternatives.

In deciding what features to spotlight, we included the tools and features that content, marketing and communications teams need to do their job. Consider the criteria to be similar to those used by analyst firms Gartner and Forrester for the annual reports they publish on content marketing platforms (CMPs).

While we did our best to gather all available information, but we certainly may have missed something. Not all platforms provide all details to the public.

If you’re a staff member for Skyword, and you see something we got wrong, leave us a comment. We’ll fix it.

Now that we’ve defined the how, let’s get started.

Enterprise Pricing

Every organization must consider costs when purchasing software. As we’ve mentioned in previous articles, the platforms serving this category have a wide range of pricing levels and packaging. Most platforms offer per-user subscriptions, which can cause even inexpensive platforms to get pricey for large organizations.

Only a few platforms, DivvyHQ included, offer both per-user and unlimited-user plans to meet the needs of any size team. Divvy also offers free, read-only access for users who may just need some visibility into the content operation.

Unfortunately, Skyword does not publish its pricing, so we can’t provide much insight here. This is not surprising, though, considering their heavy focus on services, which are probably custom estimates per client engagement.

Content Ideation

Every piece of content starts as an idea. Thus having software that facilitates the conception, nurturing, and triaging of those ideas is critical. Both platforms offer a suite of tools in this area, so here’s a quick rundown.

DivvyHQ’s ideation features include:

• Central repository for ideas (a.k.a. The Parking Lot)
• A robust Content Requests Tool to build Intake forms and easy moderation of incoming request submissions
• Analytics capabilities to deliver content recommendations

Skyword also has an ideas repository and a robust recommendations engine, but it does not appear that they offer content request intake forms that allow third-parties/non-users to submit content requests.

Content and Editorial Planning Capabilities

Content marketing requires ongoing planning. The more you can centralize and streamline this, the better. The key to doing that is having a robust content calendar that houses your never-ending schedule of campaigns and content projects.

DivvyHQ and Skyword both have dynamic content calendars that can be organized in any number of ways (ex: by channel, department, business unit, region, etc.). In this area of the comparison, both platforms have similar features:

• Drag and drop to schedule and reschedule entries (i.e., projects, tasks, etc.)
• Robust filtering
• Flexible architecture for different calendar views for different users
• Content metadata management (allows for filtering and reporting of data)
• Project and task prioritization
• Duplication of projects
• Multiple views (list, calendar, etc.)
• Color-coding
• Campaign planning and management

The differences in this area are pretty minimal. DivvyHQ gives users the ability to create and share content calendar views with non-users.

Skyword doesn’t appear to have that feature, but they do provide more in the way of resource management, especially when it comes to managing freelancers that you’ve hired through their platform.

Workflow and Collaboration Offerings

Content marketing platforms should make it easy for producers, editors and other stakeholders to understand their assigned tasks and collaborate to hit deadlines. Much of this process revolves and the creation of efficient content workflows and automation that keeps all stakeholders notified of project status.

Both platforms have similar features in this area, including:

• Task management
• Custom workflow builders
• Automated workflow scheduling, notifications, and reminders
• Commenting with @mentions to notify specific users

DivvyHQ does have one extra whistle in the form real-time browser notifications, so you can be notified of new comments even when you’re multi-tasking in other applications.

Content Production and Asset Storage Features

When it comes time to put pen to paper (er…fingers to keyboard), it’s really helpful when your production and asset storage can be centralized within a single content hub. This enables improved efficiency, consistency, and governance. Within this area, DivvyHQ and Skyword again both offer similar features, including:

• Content archive and auditing
• Unlimited storage for content and assets
• Asset library
• HTML content editor
• Change tracking and version history
• Social post editor

I do need to give Skyword a nod here as they currently have more customization options with regard to setting up custom fields and templates for different content types. I say “currently” because this same functionality is on our product roadmap for later this year.

Publishing Functions and Integrations

Integrations can make a big impact in automating manual processes and eliminating the need to platform hop constantly. They allow platforms to communicate and share information.

Below, you can see the available integrations for both software products.

DivvyHQ Integrations

• WordPress
• Zapier
• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• Microsoft OneDrive
• SharePoint
• Box
• Optimizely (formerly Episerver)
• Kentico
• Microsoft Outlook calendar
• Google calendar
• iCal

Skyword Integrations

• WordPress
• Drupal
• Optimizely (formerly Episerver)
• Adobe Experience Manager
• Other integrations

Both have open APIs, which makes custom and future integrations much easier.

Content and Team Performance Analytics

Content analytics are a critical component of content marketing platform technology in that they help communicate how individual content assets are performing out in the wild. They can also measure the output and effectiveness of your content team. Both DivvyHQ and Skyword allow for connections to popular web analytics and social media platforms to aggregate and visualize performance data.

We should mention here that Skyword acquired a social media intelligence platform called TrackMaven back in 2018 to bolster their analytics offering. So Skyword’s offering in this area is likely strong for B2C content and social teams who have a heavy focus on the social channel.

Outside of that, both solutions also offer:

• Time tracking reporting
• Internal content production analytics
• Content performance analytics

Service and Support

The level of service and support from a software provider is another area to consider when comparing options. The last thing you want is for something to break and you have no way to access your content plan and assets.

On this front, both Skyword and DivvyHQ offer:

• Live onboarding teams
• Content strategy review and recommendations
• Dedicated support teams
• Analytics analysis and recommendations

In addition to these, DivvyHQ also offers online support chat, but we could not determine if Skyword also offers this communication channel.

Setup and Implementation Ease

We’ve been talking a lot about all the bells and whistles that content teams can leverage with these platforms, but a word of caution here. In many cases, the more features and configuration options a platform offers, the larger the task of implementation.

It’s smart to find out how long it typically takes to deploy a given platform. DivvyHQ is configurable in less than four hours and doesn’t need any custom coding. Likewise, Skyword won’t involve extra coding, but when you factor in their customization options for things like content type templates, you’re likely looking at additional weeks (if not months) of implementation time.

Security

Regardless of how much you may have fallen in love with a particular platform, your company isn’t going to approve of its use if it doesn’t pass industry-standard security requirements. Today’s cloud-based platforms need to adhere to these standards, as well as extend their capabilities to include things like:

• Robust user permissions and rules
• SSO (single sign-on)
• Two-factor authentication

Luckily, both DivvyHQ and Skyword are secure platforms with all these capabilities.

Everything Else

This last category of our competitive analysis is a bit of a catch all for a few noteworthy considerations that may or may not be important to your team. The first is mobile usability. DivvyHQ has placed a large emphasis on offering a robust, mobile-friendly version of the application for content pros on the move. Skyword has not.

Lastly, it’s not uncommon that the implementation and ongoing usage of large software suites require the employment of dedicated system administrators whose sole job is to maintain that specific platform. Luckily, neither DivvyHQ nor Skyword require that a dedicated administrator be employed. Both platforms can be administered by existing staff, often the very teams that use it every day.

DivvyHQ vs. Skyword: What’s Right for You?

To wrap up, Skyword is certainly a solid platform that will serve many teams well, especially those who need a host of copywriting and creative services alongside the tech. However, it does have some shortcoming in areas like integrations and mobile usability. And of course, It’s hard to comment on cost since they don’t publish pricing.

What’s certain is that DivvyHQ is a feature-rich solution that is built for content marketing teams and easy to implement. It’s also affordable, secure, and you’re going to love being supported by our knowledgeable support team. You can experience it by starting a free trial today.