Verdict
A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
A cloud DAM billed by storage and configuration rather than seat count, aimed at agencies and distributed marketing teams with large or growing user bases where per-seat pricing would balloon.
A DAM and PIM platform for mid-sized and enterprise companies with complex product data, not built for small teams.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
Price published
Yes
No
No
No
Billed on
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
Not per user — the vendor states unlimited users and permission groups
not disclosed — vendor states pricing is individually configured based on feature scope, integrations, hosting, and services; no per-user/per-GB/flat/credit unit is published
No public price list; sales quote required for both packages (Prime and Ultimate). Adobe's own on-premise product description sheet lists separate license metrics per component — AEM Assets itself is licensed 'Per Instance', 'Users' are licensed 'Per User', Brand Portal is licensed 'Per Brand Portal User', and Dynamic Media/Personalized Media are licensed by 'Page Views per month' — so billing is multi-metric and only available via custom quote, not a single flat per-user or per-GB rate.
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise, Hybrid
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
Yes
No
No
No
Free trial
Yes
No
No
No
Transparency index
60%
20%
Not checked
Not checked
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 promise not to charge per user is prominent, but there is no figure to compare it against
Not checked
Not checked