Cloudinary, Lytho, Brandfolder, ImageKit

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 · Publishes a price

One of these tells you the order of magnitude before you speak to anyone, and the others do not. That difference sets how long your evaluation takes, whatever the software does.

Cloudinary

Yes

Lytho

Brandfolder

ImageKit

Yes

Everything else

Cloudinary

Lytho

Brandfolder

ImageKit

Verdict

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

A combined creative-operations platform pairing brand-portal DAM with proofing and approval workflows, for in-house teams that want both under one roof rather than a DAM-only search specialist.

A polished, search-first brand asset DAM sold standalone under Smartsheet ownership, priced for mid-market and enterprise budgets around a $24,700/year median contract.

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.

Price published

Yes

Billed on

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

Team size, product mix and configuration

Quoted per customer

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

Deployment

Cloud

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Yes

Transparency index

60%

10%

70%

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 tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost

Two tiers with no figure and no trial offered on the page

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

“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.

Lytho The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

Brandfolder Two tiers with no figure and no trial offered on the page — 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.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.