Verdict
A DAM offered as both cloud and on-premise, aimed at small-to-mid teams that want fast metadata-driven search over large asset libraries and want files to stay on their own infrastructure.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
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 flat-fee-per-account DAM and MAM with a free 500GB/5-user tier and unlimited paid users, for teams willing to pilot without much recent independent review evidence.
Price published
No
No
Yes
Yes
Billed on
Annual subscription covering all features, integrations, updates and support
No public price list; sales quote required for both packages (Prime and Ultimate). Adobe's own on-premise product description sheet lists separate license metrics per component — AEM Assets itself is licensed 'Per Instance', 'Users' are licensed 'Per User', Brand Portal is licensed 'Per Brand Portal User', and Dynamic Media/Personalized Media are licensed by 'Page Views per month' — so billing is multi-metric and only available via custom quote, not a single flat per-user or per-GB rate.
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Flat price per account by volume; the vendor states there are no per-user fees
Deployment
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
No
Yes
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
30%
Not checked
90%
90%
Most common complaint
Like the platforms it competes with, it asks for a form submission before naming a price
Not checked
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published