9 Best Smartly IO Alternatives & Competitors 2024 (Free/Paid)
When you look closely, you'll find that Smartly IO comes loaded with a myriad of advanced capabilities. While this may seem attractive on paper, it has ended up diluting the tool’s role as a dedicated ad creatives generator. In this competitive business landscape, marketers are no longer looking for an all-in-one solution; they want super-specialized marketing tools that can perform a specific role with great efficiency and accuracy and help them march ahead of their competitors. In this post, we are going to look at 9 such super-specialized ad creatives generators that should be a part of your arsenal instead of Smartly IO.
1) Eacel
Eacel is presently one of the best Smartly IO alternatives in the market. There are two reasons for our claim. One, it is a pure ad creatives generator powered by some of the most advanced AI models that help in generating high-performing creatives. Two, it is the most user-friendly tool available today, thanks to a seamless signup process and an easily navigable dashboard with all the necessary functions available at a single click. To top this, the platform also generates persuasive captions for your ads. This means all that is left for you to do is download and publish the ad on your favorite platform.
Key Features: Custom aspect ratio, custom sizes, access to stock images, actionable insights, an AI caption generator, and a dedicated dashboard are some of the major features from the rich feature set of Eacel.
Pricing: The platform is currently in the beta phase, and you can enjoy all the features without any subscription fee for 2 months.
Why should you consider Eacel over Smartly IO?
While we have covered most of the reasons in the overview, there is one more reason why Eacel should be preferred by you instead of Smartly IO. The magnitude of automation available in Eacel is way greater than what is present in Smartly IO. For instance, in Eacel, you just have to enter your website URL to start generating brand-focused ad creatives. It’s as simple as that.
2) AdCreative
The next Smartly IO alternative is AdCreative, which lets you generate unlimited ad creatives regardless of which pricing plan you choose. You can use AdCreative to generate creatives for ad platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and several other Display Advertising platforms. Once you connect AdCreative to the ad accounts in one of these ad platforms, it automatically starts analyzing the performance of your creatives and generates unique insights like best-performing colors, and best-performing orientation.
Key Features: Noteworthy features of AdCreative include competitor insights, product photoshoot, ad creative score, text and headlines generator, access to unlimited photos from iStock, and ad platform integration.
Pricing: Apart from a free trial that comes with 10 credits, you have plans like Startup, which starts at $29 per month for 10 credits; Professional, which starts at $209 per month for 100 credits; and Agency, which starts at $549 per month for 500 credits. Each plan can be scaled up based on your content requirements. All plans offer similar features. The major difference lies in the number of brands you can create and the number of users who can access the platform.
Why should you consider AdCreative over Smartly IO?
One major reason to choose AdCreative over Smartly IO is the valuable insights you get from the former. Once you link AdCreative with your desired ad platform, it starts churning over 80 data points per creative. This ensures that you can make data-driven decisions and you use only those visuals that actually matter to your brand’s success. You can also generate a detailed PDF report covering all the necessary insights that can be shared with your team members.
3) Zocket
Zocket is another popular ad creatives generator with a focus on Meta advertisement. In other words, it is suitable for you only if you are running ads on Facebook or Instagram. Despite the limitation in terms of the number of platforms supported, Zocket is one of the popular Smartly IO alternatives due to its comprehensive dashboard that gives 360-degree visibility into your campaign performance. This eliminates the need to rely on other analytics platforms to track how your creatives are performing after launch.
Key Features: Zocket offers unique features like multi-location targeting, detailed reporting, competitor insights, ad copy generator, and interest targeting.
Pricing: There are two main plans in Zocket: Essentials and Enterprise. The former costs $149 per month and offers most of the basic features required to create and manage ad creatives. The Enterprise plan with customized pricing offers several advanced features that you might need only if you are a large business.
Why should you consider Zocket over Smartly IO?
Apart from the comprehensive dashboard, Zocket is also one of the few tools in the market to integrate Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp chat into a single hub. This means you need not switch between multiple platforms or tabs to handle customer inquiries once they interact with your ads. Such a feature is absent in Smartly IO.
4) Treat AI
First of all, Treat AI is not a full-fledged ad creator because it lacks most of the features offered by an ad creatives generator like Eacel. But Treat AI is adept at one thing - generating high-quality images for your ads. Businesses use Treat AI mainly to generate unique product visuals for their ads but rely on other tools like Eacel to complete the ad lifecycle. One unique capability of Treat AI is its ability to analyze your existing creatives and use the knowledge to generate high-performing design elements for your ad campaigns.
Key Features: Treat AI is known for its integration with 3rd party tools like Google Analytics and Shopify and features like AI-powered creative insights and product photography.
Pricing: Currently, all new users are put on a waiting list. No pricing information is available to users.
Why should you consider Treat AI over Smartly IO?
While Treat AI is not really known for its ad creatives generation capability, it can be picked over Smartly IO if you want to generate high-quality product photographs for your brand. The quality of the generated visuals stands out and is comparable to the best in the industry.
5) Celtra
Celtra is a creative automation platform that lets you generate both visual (images and videos) and textual content for your ad campaigns. It maintains brand consistency across all the generated creatives thank to features like template locking and brand-approved toolkit. The platform also gives you unlimited insights about the performance of your creatives with the help of 100+ industry standard metrics that are presented in a fully customizable dashboard. Celtra also offers various collaboration features that streamlines the review and approval process of your creatives.
Key Features: Celtra provides advanced features like self-serve tag generator, experience library, DPA templates, campaign dashboard, and custom reports.
Pricing: The pricing details are not available to the public. You need to book a demo to get a tailored quote for your brand.
Why should you consider Celtra over Smartly IO?
One reason to consider Celtra over Smartly IO is its ability to create and handle Dynamic Product Ads. With the help of a smart template design interface, you can bring in brand elements through customizable layers into your ads. You can auto-apply designs, fonts, and logos to your product images so that the ads are always personalized. You can even add product variables like description and price to further tailor the content.
6) Rocketium
Rocketium can handle all three stages of ad creatives management, including production, operations, and analytics. In the production process, Rocketium is mainly known for its ability to personalize ads at scale. For instance, you can easily edit variables like prices and offers within the ad to ensure that the content is always relevant and attracts clicks. Similarly, you can use their smart links function to make your in-app product ads dynamic. Also, thanks to integrations with Google Display Network and Facebook, you can directly publish the ad from Rocketium.
Key Features: Rocketium comes loaded with a variety of features like bulk edit, AI copywriter, bulk background removal, custom templates, content feed, and auto adapts, to name a few.
Pricing: You’ll need contact the sales team of Rocketium for customized pricing plans as they haven’t made it public.
Why should you consider Rocketium over Smartly IO?
Rocketium’s superior collaboration capability is the main reason why you should pick it over Smartly IO. For instance, unlike Smartly IO, you can share comments right on the ad creative to ensure that the feedback is not lost. You and your team members will also get instant notifications regarding any activity on the creatives thanks to integration with Slack & Microsoft Teams.
7) Quickads
Quickads is an AI ad generator that is well-suited for startups and small businesses looking to bolster their creative generation process. The platform can be used for generating both image and video-based ads for a variety of platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. The platform supports both prompt and template-based ad creation. Apart from this, Quickads also simplifies campaign management by handling different aspects like campaign structure, audience building, and A/B testing.
Key Features: AI ad copywriter, white labeling of platform, video generation with voiceover, AI product photography, and unlimited design templates are some of the core features of Quickads.
Pricing: There are three major plans offered by Quickads: Startups costing $19 per month, Small Business costing $39 per month, and Pro Agency costing $99 per month. All three plans offer most of the core features except white labeling, which is available only in Pro Agency plan.
Why should you consider Quickads over Smartly IO?
The main reason why you must consider Quickads is due to its white labeling capabilities. If you want to tailor the entire platform to suit your brand guidelines, it is ideal to switch over from Smartly IO to Quickads.
8) Adsmurai
Adsmurai is a marketing platform that lets you plan, design, manage, and track ad campaigns using a single dashboard. It is the official partner of advertising platforms like Google, Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest. The platform uses Google Vertex AI to create custom images for your ads. It interprets your prompts and uses its semantic understanding to generate relevant images. Adsmurai also uses AI to detect objects clearly from your images, remove the background, and make them ready for use in your dynamic ads.
Key Features: Some of the standout features of Adsmurai include reporting, integration with Google Analytics, customizable templates, bulk personalization, and dynamic fields.
Pricing: You need to contact the Adsmurai team for pricing details. However, there is a 30-day free trial in case you wish to explore the platform without making a financial commitment.
Why should you consider Adsmurai over Smartly IO?
One main reason to choose Adsmurai over Smartly IO is its rich feature set tailored to the eCommerce industry. Adsmurai can create high-performing product ads straight from your product catalog, eliminating manual product uploads. It can even intelligently categorize your products, so that you product data is always organized and optimized for creatives generation.
9) Appypie
We have kept this tool at the end because Appypie is more of a design tool rather than a dedicated ad creatives generator. Apart from display ads, you can use Appypie to create logos, posters, resumes, invoices, and a lot more. It is a prompt-based platform, just like ChatGPT. You describe your ad creative requirements in less than 1000 characters, and Appypie comes back with a maximum of 4 ad creatives. You can also use the built-in templates for creating your own ad variants if you do not want to use prompts.
Key Features: Some of the unique features of Appypie include photo editing, multi-format support, background remover, and negative prompts.
Pricing: Appypie has a very simple pricing structure. You pay $8 per month to access most of the design features. However, there are a handful of add-ons for which you have to pay a nominal fee per month.
Why should you consider Appypie over Smartly IO?
While Appypie and Smartly IO are similar when it comes to the vast number of use cases they are used for, one area where Appypie scores is the pricing. Appypie is not only affordable, but the pricing is transparent and uncomplicated, unlike Smartly IO.
Wrap Up
And that is our pick of the top 9 Smartly IO alternatives you can consider today. Now, what’s important is selecting the platform that aligns with your needs and budget. Whether you're looking for a cost-effective solution or a platform with advanced features, there's a tool on this list to suit every marketer's requirements.
But if you are looking for a cost-effective and versatile solution to automate your creatives generation process, your search might just end with Eacel. It is the perfect match to drive your campaigns and achieve your marketing goals. Sign up for an unrestricted 2-month free trial now.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the key features to look for in a Smartly.io alternative?
When looking for a Smartly.io alternative, consider features like multi-ad platform support, detailed analytics, A/B testing capabilities, and ease of use. It's also important to evaluate the level of customer support and integration with other marketing tools.
2. Are there any free Smartly.io alternatives?
Yes, even some of the best Smartly.io competitors offer free plans or free trials. For instance, Eacel provides a limited free plan with unrestricted access to all the key features. This can be a good starting point for small businesses or those on a tight budget.
3. How do I choose between a paid and a free alternative?
Choosing between a paid and a free alternative depends on your budget and the scale of your advertising needs. Free platforms are suitable for small campaigns or businesses just starting out, while paid versions offer better scalability for larger, more complex advertising efforts.
4. How important is customer support when choosing an advertising platform?
Customer support is crucial, especially if you encounter technical issues or need guidance on optimizing your campaigns. Look for platforms that offer robust customer support, including live chat, phone support, and comprehensive online resources.
