Cloudinary, IntelligenceBank, ImageKit, Piwigo

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

IntelligenceBank

ImageKit

Piwigo

Yes

Everything else

Cloudinary

IntelligenceBank

ImageKit

Piwigo

Verdict

A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.

A compliance-focused DAM with built-in audit trails and multi-stage approval workflows, aimed at regulated industries like pharma, finance, insurance and franchise/multi-brand marketing teams.

An image and video CDN with an API-first asset library, built for fast developer integration, billed on flat monthly tiers with per-GB overage once bandwidth or storage limits are exceeded.

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

Yes

Billed on

Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth

Package, number and type of users, storage and add-ons

Bandwidth, storage and user seats, with published per-unit rates above the limits

Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited

Deployment

Cloud

On-premise, Cloud

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Yes

Transparency index

60%

30%

70%

100%

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

Only the floor of the base package is published; everything else is quoted

Several units are metered at once: bandwidth, storage, video units and seats

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

“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.

IntelligenceBank Only the floor of the base package is published; everything else is quoted — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

ImageKit Several units are metered at once: bandwidth, storage, video units and seats — 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.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.