PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Cloudinary, ResourceSpace, Brandfolder, Lytho

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

ResourceSpace

Yes

Brandfolder

No

Lytho

No

Everything else

Cloudinary
ResourceSpace
Brandfolder
Lytho
Verdict
A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
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.
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.
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.
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
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Quoted per customer
Team size, product mix and configuration
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
Yes
No
No
Free trial
Yes
No
No
No
Transparency index
60%
60%
0%
10%
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 free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you
Two tiers with no figure and no trial offered on the page
The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost

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

No email required — the page prints as it stands.