Brandfolder, Scaleflex, Pics.io, Akeneo

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.

Brandfolder

Scaleflex

Pics.io

Akeneo

Yes

Everything else

Brandfolder

Scaleflex

Pics.io

Akeneo

Verdict

A polished, search-first brand asset DAM sold standalone under Smartsheet ownership, priced for mid-market and enterprise budgets around a $24,700/year median contract.

An image/video optimization and delivery API with a lightweight DAM layered on top, aimed at EU-based teams that want GDPR/France-hosted processing and hands-on vendor support.

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.

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.

Price published

Yes

Billed on

Quoted per customer

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.)

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.

Deployment

Cloud

Cloud, On-premise

Free plan

Free trial

Transparency index

10%

Not checked

Most common complaint

Two tiers with no figure and no trial offered on the page

Three tiers described by features, none of them priced

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.

Brandfolder Two tiers with no figure and no trial offered on the page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

Scaleflex Three tiers described by features, none of them priced — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.