PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Canto, Filestack, Portfolio, Transloadit

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.

Canto

No

Filestack

No

Portfolio

Yes

Transloadit

No

Everything else

Canto
Filestack
Portfolio
Transloadit
Verdict
A DAM built around search and tagging for mid-market teams, with unlimited free view-only accounts but per-seat pricing for editors that only appears after a sales quote.
A file upload, transformation, and delivery API with a drop-in picker for 20+ sources, for developers adding file handling to web and mobile apps.
An on-premise DAM known for deep metadata and search, for existing Portfolio users who size and maintain their own server, now under Axle AI ownership after a March 2026 acquisition.
A file-processing API that handles uploading, transforming, and delivering video, audio, images, and documents, for developers who'd otherwise build that infrastructure in-house.
Price published
No
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
Team size and storage volume
Monthly subscription tiers with bundled resource allowances (bandwidth in GB, uploads counted per file, transformations per file/image operation, storage in GB, number of team members), plus per-unit overage fees once a tier's allowance is exceeded (e.g. Start plan overage is $0.2/GB bandwidth).
Quoted per customer; the licensing model was preserved through the change of owner
GB of data processed per month (combined input + output file size); paid tiers also gate priority processing slots, collaborator seats, and max file size. Overage on the paid Startup tier billed at $1.80/GB. Enterprise tier is custom/quote-based tiered pricing with whitelabeling.
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud
Free plan
No
No
No
No
Free trial
Yes
No
No
No
Transparency index
20%
Not checked
25%
Not checked
Most common complaint
The tiers are named and described but cannot be compared on cost
Not checked
It changed hands in March 2026, so anything written before that date describes it as an Extensis product
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.

Canto The tiers are named and described but cannot be compared on cost — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Portfolio It changed hands in March 2026, so anything written before that date describes it as an Extensis product — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.