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 flat-fee-per-account DAM and MAM with a free 500GB/5-user tier and unlimited paid users, for teams willing to pilot without much recent independent review evidence.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
A combined creative-operations platform pairing brand-portal DAM with proofing and approval workflows, for in-house teams that want both under one roof rather than a DAM-only search specialist.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
No
Billed on
One-off perpetual licence; a cloud subscription is sold separately
Flat price per account by volume; the vendor states there are no per-user fees
No public price list; sales quote required for both packages (Prime and Ultimate). Adobe's own on-premise product description sheet lists separate license metrics per component — AEM Assets itself is licensed 'Per Instance', 'Users' are licensed 'Per User', Brand Portal is licensed 'Per Brand Portal User', and Dynamic Media/Personalized Media are licensed by 'Page Views per month' — so billing is multi-metric and only available via custom quote, not a single flat per-user or per-GB rate.
Team size, product mix and configuration
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Free plan
No
Yes
No
No
Free trial
Yes
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
90%
90%
Not checked
10%
Most common complaint
The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double
On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published
Not checked
The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost