PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Contentstack, Piwigo, Lytho, ACDSee

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

Piwigo

Yes

Lytho

No

ACDSee

Yes

Everything else

Contentstack
Piwigo
Lytho
ACDSee
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 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 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.
A disk-native photo cataloguer and batch editor sold as a one-off perpetual licence, for photographers with large libraries who don't need Lightroom/Capture One-level RAW editing.
Price published
No
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
Quoted per customer
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Team size, product mix and configuration
One-off perpetual licence; a cloud subscription is sold separately
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud
On-premise
Free plan
Yes
Yes
No
No
Free trial
No
Yes
No
Yes
Transparency index
30%
100%
10%
90%
Most common complaint
A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost
The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double

“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.
Piwigo A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026 — 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.
ACDSee The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.