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 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.
An open-source, community-governed digital repository platform on Drupal, for libraries, archives, and museums to manage digital collections.
A digital asset management platform layered on Google Drive (or S3/Dropbox), for marketing, creative, and e-commerce teams organizing and sharing brand assets in place.
Price published
No
No
No
Yes
Billed on
Credits; users are not billed
Perpetual licence, no subscription
No published price on islandora.ca — the core software is free open source ("free to use and always will be"). Paid options are hosting/installation/migration/support/training contracts sold by independent third-party service providers listed on islandora.ca/service-providers (e.g. Born-Digital, discoverygarden); islandora.ca itself does not publish their rates or billing units.
Flat monthly/annual subscription per plan tier (tiers differ by included user count and storage cap), plus per-additional-teammate add-on fee ($15-25/mo depending on plan) and optional paid feature add-ons (custom fields, watermarking, branding, API, CSV import, Okta SSO, etc.)
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
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
Windows only, so it is out of the question for a team on Macs
Not checked
Not checked