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Carousel
What Is Carousel?
Carousel is digital signage software for screens of all sizes. It helps keep everyone from your corporate office to your school districts, storefronts & everywhere in-between safe & connected. Going beyond your typical wall mounted displays, it sends tailored messages to your audiences through tablets, mobile devices and desktop computers, allowing you to reach your audience at the right place and time.
Supercharge your communications and effectively communicate to your audiences using the tools you know and love. Drive revenue, productivity and safety with PowerBI and GeckoBoard. Integrate your chosen calendar feed, YouTube videos or choose templates from Canvas and Google Slides to create content and seamlessly incorporate into Carousel. Be ready in an emergency by allowing important messages to be simultaneously delivered to variety of alerting systems within your facilities by integrating with The Common Alerting Protocol. All this and more, with Carousel.
Who Uses Carousel?
Carousel specializes in digital signage for k12 education, higher education, government (City Hall, library, police, fire, parks and rec. ...) corporate communications, healthcare, retail and more.
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Reviews of Carousel
Great tool for managing digital media displays
Pros:
I feel like we barely scratch the surface of what Carousel can do, but we get some big benefits--we are able to stream live video from our auditorium to viewers in other areas, we have easily adaptable lunch menu options and daily announcements, and we display a variety of content for special occasions. All of our players have highly customized content for the areas where they are used.
Cons:
The UI is a bit clunky at first. If I use the product regularly, I am able to become more efficient with it.
Tightrope Media Systems Response
3 years ago
As part of the Customer Success team, I would like to thank you for taking the time to review Carousel. If you would like to schedule a meeting to discuss your school's digital signage strategy, please email [email protected]. Once our team has an understanding of your strategy, we could provide some helpful tips and/or recommendations that could help you utilize the built-in features. Please reference this review when you reach out to us. Thanks again!
Super Easy cloud based signage for multiple buildings and lots of players
Comments: We have over 40 signes spread over 8 buildings and we love it. We've been using versions of Carousel for 10 years and couldn't be happier.
Pros:
Carousel is cloud based, making it easy to manage from anywhere and any device. Content is cashed on the displays, so they work when the internet is down and the sign design editor is very easy to use. The newest version even works with ChromeBox, so we can install the free Chrome OS Flex on any device and it is immediately a sign. Lots of media types and external sources can be added. We've been using Carousel for nearly 10 years and we have more than 40 signs over 8 schools and we love it.
Cons:
Functionally, we couldn't really ask for more. Maybe a way to play Google Slides directly. The only negative I can see, just like most products today, the price is getting higher and schools are struggling with budgets, but the value is there.
Tightrope Media Systems Response
4 months ago
Hello Jerry! Thank you for your review. We're happy that you are happy :) In regards to Google Slides ... you're in luck. We just released a new feature that allows you to easily bring your Google Slide content into Carousel. If you'd like to learn more about how this feature works you can click here: https://support.carouselsignage.com/hc/en-us/articles/26482041981076-Carousel-Cloud-and-Google-Slides
Alternatives Considered:
Great signage that doesn't require a ton of time
Comments: I have been a Carousel (Tightrope) Customer through 3 different shops, over the span of almost 15 years. Thier products have always done what I need them to-do, have been easy to understand and implement, and I have had to spend very little time on Maintenace and upkeep. I wish all of my systems were as worry free as Carousel has been.
Pros:
Its simple to implement and to use, but also has the options for a more robust system should you need more custom configurations. It's very to learn.
Cons:
There is not much not to like. It's simple, has a bunch of integrations, and is easy to use.
Carousel is Perfect for Managing Large Organizations
Comments: Overall good, Implementaion went well, training was easy. Some of the staff were a little too pushy and ungenuine and the critical feature upgrades did not come until 3 + years later ... but I would not say that had hindered the quality of product but rather reflects the organization.
Pros:
It made it easy to produce, distribute, and manage content to 25 different buildings and give them a similar and easy experience
Cons:
The rigidness of their templates are and how unfriendly it is to be creative with the stock they give you.
Tightrope Media Systems Response
4 months ago
Thank you very much for your feedback, we're happy to hear that onboarding and training went well and that you are able to service you campus. We understand there are always ways we can improve the product user experience and we are working on new ways to make things easier there as well. Please don't hesitate to reach out and let us know more about what you'd like to see!
Alternatives Considered:
Carousel High School Implementation
Comments: We are generally pleased with our Carousel experience to this point. If there is one complaint, it would be that our initial support in on-boarding has been disappointing. I have no idea why there is a 60-day cap on access to learning academy resources. It seems like you would want customers to get the most possible out of the system to increase their ROI. Having the 60-days begin right as you enter your contract means a good number of those day are likely wasted anyway. We didn't even get the custom channel released to us until about day 15 of that period. Also, it has been almost impossible to talk with someone in person when we have requested it. In one instance, I exchanged a dozen emails with someone after initially and repeatedly asking early if we could talk to someone in person. It took far more time to email communications to try and resolve the issue than it would have to just talk with someone briefly. I have plenty of experience in this area to know that some companies simply cannot provide phone support as a practice, but for the annual cost of the system this should be a support service.
Pros:
The software is easy to deploy and generally easy to administrate for someone who is familiar with other similar school technology system. I was also easy to additional content contributors and the training for them can be made quite minimal. I think the Carousel is priced about right for the features and capabilities it offers.
Cons:
Use of AppleTV creates some frustrating limitation, which are mostly in part to the limitations or restrictions of the AppleTV (e.g. not including a web browser, YouTube videos don't work). The diversity or general lacking when it comes to dynamic content choices is disappointing. It would be nice if there were more widgets/apps that you could utilize and configure (e.g. a single weather display option).