PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Contentstack, Cloudinary, Air, Phraseanet

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.

Contentstack

No

Cloudinary

No

Air

No

Phraseanet

Yes

Everything else

Contentstack
Cloudinary
Air
Phraseanet
Verdict
An enterprise headless CMS and composable DXP for developer-led teams needing multi-channel content delivery, with a native asset-management module that's newer and thinly reviewed.
A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
A visually organized, board-based DAM for photo/image-heavy creative and marketing teams, with a genuinely usable free tier and a history of shifting, steep paid-tier pricing.
A free, self-hosted GPLv3 DAM used by French public-sector, cultural and broadcast institutions with in-house technical staff, now being sunset by its vendor in favor of a paid successor, Phrasea.
Price published
No
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
Quoted per customer
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
Credits; users are not billed
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud
On-premise
Free plan
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free trial
No
Yes
Yes
No
Transparency index
30%
60%
60%
90%
Most common complaint
A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page
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 tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 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.

Contentstack A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
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.
Air The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Phraseanet The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.