PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Cloudinary, Frontify, Pimcore, Excire

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.

Cloudinary

No

Frontify

No

Pimcore

Yes

Excire

Yes

Everything else

Cloudinary
Frontify
Pimcore
Excire
Verdict
A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
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.
An open-source PHP/Symfony platform unifying PIM, DAM, CMS and MDM on one codebase, for teams with in-house developers or an integrator partner rather than a marketing team wanting to self-serve.
AI-assisted photo search and culling software for photographers with large local archives, sold as a one-time purchase that runs without uploading files to the cloud.
Price published
Yes
No
Yes
No
Billed on
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
Monthly active users
Annual licence per edition, not per user
One-off purchase, no subscription
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
On-premise
Free plan
Yes
No
Yes
No
Free trial
Yes
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
60%
30%
100%
60%
Most common complaint
Prices are published for the API but not for the DAM, so the product being compared with a DAM still has no price
The MAU model favours occasional users, but there is no figure to verify that with
It is a broader platform than a DAM — some capability has to be built rather than switched on
The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront

“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.

Cloudinary Prices are published for the API but not for the DAM, so the product being compared with a DAM still has no price — 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.
Pimcore It is a broader platform than a DAM — some capability has to be built rather than switched on — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Excire The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.