Verdict
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
A file upload, transformation, and delivery API with a drop-in picker for 20+ sources, for developers adding file handling to web and mobile apps.
An enterprise DAM bundled with workflow and creative-review tools, aimed at mid-to-large manufacturing and consumer brands needing deep Adobe/PIM/CMS/e-shop integration and partner-led setup.
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.
Price published
No
Yes
No
No
Billed on
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.
Monthly subscription tiers with bundled resource allowances (bandwidth in GB, uploads counted per file, transformations per file/image operation, storage in GB, number of team members), plus per-unit overage fees once a tier's allowance is exceeded (e.g. Start plan overage is $0.2/GB bandwidth).
Quoted per customer
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Deployment
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
Not checked
Not checked
0%
60%
Most common complaint
Not checked
Not checked
The pricing page contains neither tiers nor figures
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you