PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

ACDSee, Akeneo, Acquia DAM, Piwigo

Side by side on what we have verified on each vendor’s own pages. Where a fact was not checked, the table says so rather than leaving a blank that reads as “no”.

What decides it · Runs on your own servers

If the files genuinely cannot leave your infrastructure, this is not a close race — the platforms marked No below should not be on the call at all.

ACDSee

Yes

Akeneo

Yes

Acquia DAM

No

Piwigo

Yes

Everything else

ACDSee
Akeneo
Acquia DAM
Piwigo
Verdict
A disk-native photo cataloguer and batch editor sold as a one-off perpetual licence, for photographers with large libraries who don't need Lightroom/Capture One-level RAW editing.
A PIM platform with a built-in DAM module, used by manufacturing and ecommerce companies to manage product data and assets; also available as a free open-source Community Edition.
A quote-only enterprise DAM (formerly Widen) built on configurable metadata and external sharing portals, for organisations already standardised on the Acquia stack.
A self-hosted, permission-based photo/video catalog with album hierarchies, tagging and a large plugin ecosystem, for archives and small orgs willing to maintain their own server as the library grows.
Price published
Yes
No
No
Yes
Billed on
One-off perpetual licence; a cloud subscription is sold separately
No genuine dollar pricing is published. The vendor's package-comparison page lists four tiers: Community Edition (free, open-source, self-hosted), Growth (SaaS, shown only as "Starting at $0 Annually" with a free-trial CTA — no real recurring price disclosed), Advanced and Premium (both "Call for a quote"). No billing unit (per user, per SKU, per asset, per GB) is stated anywhere on the site for the paid tiers.
Organisation size, user count, storage volume and feature set
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
No
No
No
Yes
Free trial
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Transparency index
90%
Not checked
20%
100%
Most common complaint
The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double
Not checked
Cost depends on four variables at once, none of them priced publicly
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026

“Not checked” means exactly that: we have not verified it, not that the platform lacks it. Every other value was read off the vendor’s own pages on the date shown on each platform page.

What to ask on the demo

One question per platform, drawn from what actually goes wrong with it — not a generic checklist. Vendors run the demo; this hands the agenda back to you.

ACDSee The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Acquia DAM Cost depends on four variables at once, none of them priced publicly — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Piwigo A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.