PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Canto, Frontify, Piwigo, ResourceSpace

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

Frontify

No

Piwigo

Yes

ResourceSpace

Yes

Everything else

Canto
Frontify
Piwigo
ResourceSpace
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 brand-management platform built around a single, always-current source of truth for guidelines, logos and templates, aimed at brand teams working with internal staff and external 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.
An open-licence, self-hosted DAM for teams with in-house server admin capability, trading a free licence for the time to run upgrades, tune dependencies and troubleshoot it themselves.
Price published
No
No
Yes
No
Billed on
Team size and storage volume
Monthly active users
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
No
Yes
Yes
Free trial
Yes
No
Yes
No
Transparency index
20%
30%
100%
60%
Most common complaint
The tiers are named and described but cannot be compared on cost
The MAU model favours occasional users, but there is no figure to verify that with
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you

“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.
Frontify The MAU model favours occasional users, but there is no figure to verify that with — 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.
ResourceSpace The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.