PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Air, Adobe Experience Manager Assets, MediaValet, ImageKit

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.

Air

No

Adobe Experience Manager Assets

Yes

MediaValet

No

ImageKit

No

Everything else

Air
Adobe Experience Manager Assets
MediaValet
ImageKit
Verdict
A visually organized, board-based DAM for photo/image-heavy creative and marketing teams, with a genuinely usable free tier and a history of shifting, steep paid-tier pricing.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
A cloud DAM billed by storage and configuration rather than seat count, aimed at agencies and distributed marketing teams with large or growing user bases where per-seat pricing would balloon.
An image and video CDN with an API-first asset library, built for fast developer integration, billed on flat monthly tiers with per-GB overage once bandwidth or storage limits are exceeded.
Price published
No
No
No
Yes
Billed on
Credits; users are not billed
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.
Not per user — the vendor states unlimited users and permission groups
Bandwidth, storage and user seats, with published per-unit rates above the limits
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
Yes
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
60%
Not checked
20%
70%
Most common complaint
The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only
Not checked
The promise not to charge per user is prominent, but there is no figure to compare it against
Several units are metered at once: bandwidth, storage, video units and seats

“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.

Air The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
MediaValet The promise not to charge per user is prominent, but there is no figure to compare it against — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
ImageKit Several units are metered at once: bandwidth, storage, video units and seats — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.