PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Air, Akeneo, Phraseanet, Pimcore

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

Phraseanet

Yes

Pimcore

Yes

Everything else

Air
Akeneo
Phraseanet
Pimcore
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 free, self-hosted GPLv3 DAM used by French public-sector, cultural and broadcast institutions with in-house technical staff, now being sunset by its vendor in favor of a paid successor, Phrasea.
An open-source PHP/Symfony platform unifying PIM, DAM, CMS and MDM on one codebase, for teams with in-house developers or an integrator partner rather than a marketing team wanting to self-serve.
Price published
No
No
Yes
Yes
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.
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Annual licence per edition, not per user
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Free trial
Yes
No
No
No
Transparency index
60%
Not checked
90%
100%
Most common complaint
The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only
Not checked
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
It is a broader platform than a DAM — some capability has to be built rather than switched on

“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.
Phraseanet The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Pimcore It is a broader platform than a DAM — some capability has to be built rather than switched on — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.