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.
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.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
A team file library billed as a flat monthly fee with unlimited users, aimed at organisations where most people only need to download an approved file a few times a month.
Price published
No
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
Annual subscription covering all features, integrations, updates and support
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
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.
Flat price per account — users are not a billing unit
Deployment
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Free plan
No
Yes
No
No
Free trial
No
Yes
No
Yes
Transparency index
30%
100%
Not checked
70%
Most common complaint
Like the platforms it competes with, it asks for a form submission before naming a price
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
Not checked
Storage ceilings are modest next to enterprise platforms, so large video libraries outgrow the tiers quickly