PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Air, Excire, imgix, PhotoShelter

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

Excire

Yes

imgix

No

PhotoShelter

No

Everything else

Air
Excire
imgix
PhotoShelter
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.
AI-assisted photo search and culling software for photographers with large local archives, sold as a one-time purchase that runs without uploading files to the cloud.
An image and video API for real-time resizing, compression, and format conversion via URL parameters, built for developers at ecommerce, media, and agency teams.
A cloud portfolio and image-storage platform for individual photographers, with client galleries and built-in print/licensing sales.
Price published
No
No
Yes
No
Billed on
Credits; users are not billed
One-off purchase, no subscription
Consumption-based credits, sold in monthly tiers ($25–$500/mo self-serve, custom above that). Credits are spent on Management (2 credits/GB/month for stored assets), Delivery (1 credit/GB bandwidth), and Transformation (variable by operation). Per-credit rate drops as plan tier rises ($0.25 down to $0.12, monthly billing; slightly cheaper on annual commitment). Each plan also states an implied storage/bandwidth cap in GB.
Quote-only. Priced per named "Library Seat" (2-5 seats depending on tier, custom for Enterprise) plus a storage allotment per tier (1TB-5TB, custom for Enterprise) and a cap on "Advanced Integrations" (0 to unlimited). Unlimited invited/contributor users and unlimited Social Content Publisher seats included on all/most tiers. Annual or monthly billing toggle shown on the pricing page, but no dollar amounts are published — all tiers show a "Get Pricing" CTA to a demo/sales call.
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
No
No
Free trial
Yes
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
60%
60%
Not checked
Not checked
Most common complaint
The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only
The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront
Not checked
Not checked

“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.
Excire The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.