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 self-hosted, permission-based photo/video catalog with album hierarchies, tagging and a large plugin ecosystem, for archives and small orgs willing to maintain their own server as the library grows.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
A flat-fee-per-account DAM and MAM with a free 500GB/5-user tier and unlimited paid users, for teams willing to pilot without much recent independent review evidence.
Price published
No
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
Credits; users are not billed
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
No public price list; sales quote required for both packages (Prime and Ultimate). Adobe's own on-premise product description sheet lists separate license metrics per component — AEM Assets itself is licensed 'Per Instance', 'Users' are licensed 'Per User', Brand Portal is licensed 'Per Brand Portal User', and Dynamic Media/Personalized Media are licensed by 'Page Views per month' — so billing is multi-metric and only available via custom quote, not a single flat per-user or per-GB rate.
Flat price per account by volume; the vendor states there are no per-user fees
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Free trial
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Transparency index
60%
100%
Not checked
90%
Most common complaint
The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
Not checked
On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published