PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Air, Akeneo, MediaValet, IMatch

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

Akeneo

Yes

MediaValet

No

IMatch

Yes

Everything else

Air
Akeneo
MediaValet
IMatch
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.
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 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.
A Windows-only photo cataloging tool for large image libraries (50,000+ files), built by a single developer, sold as a one-time perpetual licence instead of a subscription.
Price published
No
No
No
No
Billed on
Credits; users are not billed
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.
Not per user — the vendor states unlimited users and permission groups
Perpetual licence, no subscription
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
On-premise
Free plan
Yes
No
No
No
Free trial
Yes
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
60%
Not checked
20%
60%
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
Windows only, so it is out of the question for a team on Macs

“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.
IMatch Windows only, so it is out of the question for a team on Macs — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.