Verdict
A brand-guidelines and asset portal for mid-market marketing teams, with a genuine free tier that covers a branded guidelines page but not the full asset library or workflow tools.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
A digital asset management platform for enterprises, agencies, museums, and nonprofits, paired with in-house consulting and data-migration services.
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.
Price published
No
No
No
Yes
Billed on
Number of users and the tier selected
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.
Not disclosed publicly. Plans are differentiated by number of admin users, storage (TB), and number of portals (e.g. Essential: 5 admin users/1TB; Signature: 20 admin users/2TB/3 portals; Premium: 50 admin users/5TB/5 portals); exact per-unit or per-tier prices are not published, visitors must request a consult.
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise, Hybrid
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
40%
Not checked
Not checked
100%
Most common complaint
The free tier is named while the cost of the next step is not
Not checked
Not checked
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026