Brandworkz, Plytix, Piwigo, Nextcloud

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.

Brandworkz

Plytix

Piwigo

Yes

Nextcloud

Yes

Everything else

Brandworkz

Plytix

Piwigo

Nextcloud

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.

A combined PIM and DAM platform for managing product data and media, built for SMB and mid-market ecommerce brands, manufacturers, and agencies.

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.

A self-hosted file-sync and collaboration platform some organisations stretch into asset-library duty; tagging, batch metadata editing and dynamic tag-based collections are still limited or missing.

Price published

Yes

Billed on

Number of users and the tier selected

Tiered plans priced by SKU (product) count, not by user seat — all plans include unlimited user seats. Each tier also caps monthly AI credits, API calls/hour, and DAM file storage + CDN traffic (GB/month). Standard is free (500 SKUs, 50GB storage); Pro is $499/mo (50,000 SKUs, 750GB storage); Enterprise is custom/quote-only (unlimited SKUs, custom storage). Optional flat-fee add-ons (Product Feeds $300/mo, Brand Portals $300/mo, Product Data Sheets $200/mo) and one-time onboarding fees ($0 / $3,000 / custom).

Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited

Subscription per user per year, cheaper at volume

Deployment

Cloud

On-premise, Cloud

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Yes

Transparency index

40%

Not checked

100%

80%

Most common complaint

The free tier is named while the cost of the next step is not

Not checked

A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026

It is a file platform with DAM features rather than a DAM: asset-level metadata and rights are thinner

“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.

Brandworkz The free tier is named while the cost of the next step is not — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

Piwigo A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

Nextcloud It is a file platform with DAM features rather than a DAM: asset-level metadata and rights are thinner — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.