Air, Kontainer, PhotoShelter, Contentstack
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”.
Everything else
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 Nordic/European DAM, with optional PIM, aimed at mid-market brand, retail and ecommerce teams wanting fast onboarding without heavy IT involvement, backed by a 30-day no-commitment trial.
A cloud portfolio and image-storage platform for individual photographers, with client galleries and built-in print/licensing sales.
An enterprise headless CMS and composable DXP for developer-led teams needing multi-channel content delivery, with a native asset-management module that's newer and thinly reviewed.
Price published
No
No
No
No
Billed on
Credits; users are not billed
Depends on configuration; several features are priced separately
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.
Quoted per customer
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
Yes
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
60%
20%
Not checked
30%
Most common complaint
The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only
Feature-level add-on pricing makes the final figure hard to anticipate before a quote
Not checked
A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page
“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.
Kontainer
Feature-level add-on pricing makes the final figure hard to anticipate before a quote — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Contentstack
A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
No email required — the page prints as it stands.