7 best annotation tools for creative and marketing teams

Looking for the best annotation software tool to improve your team's collaboration and feedback processes?

You're not alone. Annotation tools are invaluable for modern creative teams, as they streamline the feedback process and make collaboration effortless. They also promote quick project execution by giving teams seamless access to creative assets.

But there are a lot of options out there — knowing where to start can seem a bit daunting. Fortunately, we've got you covered.

In this post, we’ll explore the value of annotation tools and some of the key features to look for when choosing one. But that's not all — we've also compiled a list of some of the best tools for creative teams that should definitely make your shortlist.

What we'll cover

What are annotation tools?

Annotation tools are applications that simplify document reviews, collaborative editing, and other annotation processes. They allow team members and stakeholders to easily share, comment on, and edit text, images, videos, PDFs, and other types of content files.

These commenting and markup tools help content reviewers provide detailed and actionable feedback, shortening revision and approval timelines.

The types of annotation tools

There are a few different types of annotation tools, including:

• Web page annotation tools: Add notes, highlights, and other kinds of comments to web pages.
• Data annotation tools: Primarily used to label raw datasets for machine learning models and AI models.
• PDF annotation tools: Provide feedback on documents via elements like sticky notes and highlights.
• Design annotation tools: Mainly used to mark up or comment on specific elements of visual designs, such as blueprints and prototypes.
• Video and image annotation tools: Tag, mark up, or comment on objects in images and videos.

In this article, we'll explore the solutions that matter most to creatives, primarily design, image, and video annotation tools.

Benefits of annotation tools for creative and marketing teams

Annotation tools are not just "nice-to-have" — they've become must-haves for modern creative and marketing teams. They enhance feedback, streamline collaboration, and promote audit readiness, which are crucial for creative operations. Let's take a deeper look at these benefits.

Clearer feedback

Annotations provide clear, specific feedback, which reduces misunderstandings and the need for multiple revisions. Users can leave feedback on a particular text, part of an image or design, and even a precise portion of a video, ensuring every team member knows exactly what to work on. 

Eliminating the guesswork from creative asset creation enables quicker and more efficient changes, resulting in faster campaign launches.

Real-time collaboration

Imagine working hard on an asset to make sure you meet the deadline, only for stakeholders to cause delays because they didn't offer relevant feedback on time. Frustrating and inconvenient, right?

With annotation tools, you can minimize this risk. Whether you're working remotely or in the office, annotation tools allow team members and stakeholders to collaborate in real time. You can review and annotate content, leave a comment for your colleague, and get an instant reply.

Audit readiness

Another benefit of collaborative annotation software is that you can see a detailed history of the edits and changes, including who requested them, who actioned them, and who marked discussions "resolved." This level of tracking ensures your content assets are audit-ready for internal or external compliance reviews.

Centralized feedback

Roughly 47% of employees fail to meet deadlines, not because they don't work hard enough, but because of poor communication. Unfortunately, relying on scattered forms of communication, like a patchwork system of email, texts, and Teams chats, only adds to this challenge.

So it’s important for creative teams to find viable, centralized communication solutions, which is where annotation tools come in. These tools centralize all feedback in one place, reducing the need for email threads or scattered comments across different platforms.

Team members gain complete project visibility, so they can see and act on all feedback in real time, and internal and external stakeholders can easily track progress. 

Key features creatives should look for in annotation tools

The truth is, not just any annotation tool will do. In fact, some may make collaboration even harder for your team. To prevent this, look out for the following features and functionalities before you settle on any software.

Multi-format support

Creative teams work with diverse media assets, from PDFs and images to audio and videos. So it’s essential to find a tool that supports numerous file types and annotation workflows. 

A platform that offers multi-format support allows creatives to work on all their assets in a centralized location, eliminating the need to juggle different tools for different file types. This can reduce workflow disruptions and keep teams on the same page. It's also more convenient and can result in faster revisions. 

Commenting and tagging

Collaboration is the lifeblood of efficient creative operations, and commenting and tagging features are crucial for collaborative creative work. They allow team members to leave comments, highlight sections, and tag specific areas in designs or documents for focused discussions and clarification.

Rather than emailing individual team members with feedback, you can comment directly on creative assets and tag relevant parties to alert them to pending actions and annotation tasks. This can speed up the revision process and streamline discussions. 

Version control and history tracking

Feedback and iterations are key parts of the creative process, so don’t overlook version control and history tracking. These features allow creative teams to track changes and revisions over time, ensuring that feedback is applied accurately and that team members can reference previous versions when needed.

This promotes accountability and conflict resolution, as it's clear who made what changes and when. It can also help ensure that every team member and stakeholder is working from the latest file version.

Integrations with creative tools

The more seamlessly your annotation tool integrates with your larger creative ecosystem, the more value you’ll get out of it. So choose a tool that offers built-in integrations and APIs for popular creative software like Adobe Creative Cloud and Figma, as well as your project management tools.

Integration capabilities streamline annotation workflows by allowing creatives to work within their chosen tools while still receiving feedback. They also eliminate the risks of errors that could occur when exporting and importing files to different platforms.

7 best annotation tools for creative and marketing teams

Now that you know the benefits of annotation tools and key features to look for, let's look at seven of the best solutions.

We've included a selection of high-quality free and premium annotation tools for designers and creative agencies — many of which can scale all the way to the enterprise level — so you don’t have to worry about outgrowing your chosen solution!

1. Ziflow

Best for: Creative content collaboration, review, and approval.

Ziflow is a comprehensive proofing platform designed to streamline creative asset collaboration, review, and approval. Its annotation, markup, and commenting tools allow teams to collect and share actionable feedback, keeping creative projects on track and brand-compliant.

It is the ideal annotation tool for creative teams and designers because it provides everything they need to promote a seamless feedback process under one roof. The platform offers a variety of advanced features and supports numerous creative assets — you can annotate PDF docs, text, images, and even videos.

Annotation features:

• Provide detailed and actionable feedback with various color-coded markup tools (lines, arrows, squares, and ovals).
• Combine markup tools to give granular direction.
• Validate sizes and spacings via the integrated measurement tool.
• Accelerate decision-making with threaded comments, annotations, and markups that everyone can see in real time.
• Preserve all annotations, comments, replies, attachments, and even thumbs-up notations for historical, compliance, or auditing purposes.
• View all comments and annotations within the proof instead of wading through email chains.
• Instantly compare different creative asset versions and ensure everyone is working from the latest one.
• Access and export creative asset feedback with a single click for simple compliance auditing.

Pricing

Ziflow has a range of subscription plans for different-sized businesses:

• Free: $0 for life 
• Standard: $199/month
• Pro: $329/month
• Enterprise: Quotes available on request for organizations that need enterprise-grade security and workflow automation.

Ziflow also offers a 14-day free trial period to test out the platform before committing.

2. PDF Annotator

Best for: Any individual, organization, or university that wants to annotate PDFs.

PDF Annotator is primarily a text annotation tool that lets you add notes, comments, corrections, signatures, and highlighting to your documents. It’s a suitable option for individuals, organizations, or universities, as its features make it easy to collaborate on document changes. 

Annotation features

• Add notes and annotations to any PDF document, including handwritten notes on tablets.
• Save annotations in the original file and share them with coworkers, clients, partners, and creators.
• Revert to the original document at any time by removing or hiding all markup with a single click.
• Combine documents and copy, re-order, remove, or insert pages.
• Deliver interactive presentations in meetings or lectures via presentation mode.

Pricing

PDF Annotator offers two pricing options: 

• Standard License: $79.95/user
• Student License: $44.95/user

3. ProofHub

Best for: Any team that needs a full creative project management solution.

ProofHub is actually project management software that caters to the collaboration needs of both small and large teams. But it also serves as an online proofing tool for teams that want to review, proof, collaborate, and approve files more easily, faster, and smarter. 

Annotation features

• Collaborate on designs and documents in real time.
• Review, add comments, and share feedback in one place.
• Mark suggestions or feedback as resolved once you've made the changes.
• Reply with threaded comments on a particular suggestion or feedback.
• Compare file versions to review changes.

Pricing

Proofhub has two flat subscription plans, plus a 14-day free trial:

• Essential: $45/month (billed annually)
• Ultimate: $89/month (billed annually)

4. MarkUp

Best for: Individuals and teams who want real-time, collaborative feedback on live websites and digital content.

MarkUp is an affordable visual commenting platform that lets you collect feedback directly on your website, PDFs, and images. It's the perfect tool for simplifying the creative process and making your team members’ lives easier, as it's quite straightforward and user-friendly.

Annotation features

• Provide immediate, contextual, and visual feedback in real time.
• Manage and organize all web, PDF, and image projects in one location.
• Invite collaborators to view, create, and resolve comments.
• Use the Chrome extension to include screenshots with all your comments. 
• Test your website design on any device type to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Pricing

MarkUp is free for users looking for basic features, but if you need more advanced tools, you can choose from two paid plans:

Pro plan: $25/month

Enterprise plan: Custom pricing

5. GoProof

Best for: Enterprise teams.

GoProof offers a diverse range of online proofing and markup tools to help creative brands and agencies annotate, share, and collaborate on designs. But the platform’s big selling point is the vast number of integrations with popular project management, creative, and business tools.

Annotation features 

• Add freehand scribbles and annotations to proofs to naturally express ideas, movement, and visuals.
• Mark a precise spot on the document for comments.
• Measure a straight-line distance across the proof with the ruler.
• Tag and notify other collaborators to engage or respond to comments.
• Set a start and endpoint on a video timeline to identify review sections.

Pricing

GoProof offers three pricing plans, plus a free 14-day trial:

• Connect: $129/month paid yearly
• Pro: $259/month paid yearly
• Enterprise: Custom pricing 

6. Drawboard Projects

Best for: Architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) teams

Drawboard Projects is a collaboration tool specifically designed for architecture, engineering, and construction teams. It enables real-time collaboration and seamless markups for drawings, blueprints, and other construction documents.

Annotation features

• Manage all project markups in one central workspace. 
• Sync all markups and communication on every revision.
• Assign responsibility and due dates to issues by pinning them to a drawing. 
• Discuss changes right on the drawing for full context.
• Display two revisions over each other to compare the annotations and see what's changed and what's outstanding.

Pricing

Drawboard Projects has three subscription plans, along with a 30-day free trial:

• Team: $22.50/user/month
• Growth: $30.83/user/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

7. Annotate

Best for: Media, marketing, and entertainment teams

Annotate is a single, secure platform that provides smart document collaboration to get everyone working together seamlessly, from the first draft to final approval. With Annotate, you can share documents securely and assign permissions to different team members and stakeholders to protect sensitive information and avoid editing mishaps.

Annotation features

• Add document annotations to text, images, or designs with arrows, text boxes, or freehand notes.
• Make suggestions by highlighting, underlining, or adding strikethroughs to documents.
• Create color-coded tags to group notes by topic, filter them, and assign them to specific team members.
• Assign specific sections of a document to reviewers and verify who was involved at every stage in the collaboration process.
• Check whether facts, actions, and tasks have been accepted, resolved, or rejected.

Pricing

Annotate only offers an Enterprise plan with customizable features and pricing. 

Easily annotate your creative assets with Ziflow

Annotation tools can take your collaboration process from disjointed and tedious to streamlined and efficient. With the right tool, team members and stakeholders can offer and receive real-time feedback, enabling quicker revisions and campaign execution.

Ziflow has all the commenting, discussion, and annotation features you need to collect and share actionable feedback and keep your project timelines on track. With Ziflow, you can annotate text, video, designs, and images to reduce errors and rework, accelerate decision-making, and banish email threads forever.