PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Cloudinary, Transloadit, Piwigo, Optimizely

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

Transloadit

No

Piwigo

Yes

Optimizely

No

Everything else

Cloudinary
Transloadit
Piwigo
Optimizely
Verdict
A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
Not checked
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.
A DAM module bundled inside the Optimizely CMS/Content Marketing Platform/DXP, for teams already on Optimizely who don't need best-of-breed asset management, bulk operations, or metadata governance.
Price published
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Billed on
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
GB of data processed per month (combined input + output file size); paid tiers also gate priority processing slots, collaborator seats, and max file size. Overage on the paid Startup tier billed at $1.80/GB. Enterprise tier is custom/quote-based tiered pricing with whitelabeling.
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Quoted per customer
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
Yes
No
Free trial
Yes
No
Yes
No
Transparency index
60%
Not checked
100%
0%
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
Not checked
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
Not one tier and not one figure on the pricing page

“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.
Piwigo A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Optimizely Not one tier and not one figure on the pricing page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.