Verdict
A quote-only enterprise DAM (formerly Widen) built on configurable metadata and external sharing portals, for organisations already standardised on the Acquia stack.
An open-licence, self-hosted DAM for teams with in-house server admin capability, trading a free licence for the time to run upgrades, tune dependencies and troubleshoot it themselves.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
A self-hosted file-sync and collaboration platform some organisations stretch into asset-library duty; tagging, batch metadata editing and dynamic tag-based collections are still limited or missing.
Price published
No
No
No
Yes
Billed on
Organisation size, user count, storage volume and feature set
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
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.
Subscription per user per year, cheaper at volume
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
No
Yes
No
Yes
Free trial
Yes
No
No
No
Transparency index
20%
60%
Not checked
80%
Most common complaint
Cost depends on four variables at once, none of them priced publicly
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you
Not checked
It is a file platform with DAM features rather than a DAM: asset-level metadata and rights are thinner