PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Contentstack, Phraseanet, Cloudinary, Portfolio

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

Phraseanet

Yes

Cloudinary

No

Portfolio

Yes

Everything else

Contentstack
Phraseanet
Cloudinary
Portfolio
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 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.
A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
An on-premise DAM known for deep metadata and search, for existing Portfolio users who size and maintain their own server, now under Axle AI ownership after a March 2026 acquisition.
Price published
No
Yes
Yes
No
Billed on
Quoted per customer
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
Quoted per customer; the licensing model was preserved through the change of owner
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud
On-premise
Free plan
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Free trial
No
No
Yes
No
Transparency index
30%
90%
60%
25%
Most common complaint
A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
Prices are published for the API but not for the DAM, so the product being compared with a DAM still has no price
It changed hands in March 2026, so anything written before that date describes it as an Extensis product

“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.
Phraseanet The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026 — 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.
Portfolio It changed hands in March 2026, so anything written before that date describes it as an Extensis product — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.