PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Excire, Cloudinary, Frontify, Dash

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.

Excire

Yes

Cloudinary

No

Frontify

No

Dash

No

Everything else

Excire
Cloudinary
Frontify
Dash
Verdict
AI-assisted photo search and culling software for photographers with large local archives, sold as a one-time purchase that runs without uploading files to the cloud.
A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
A brand-management platform built around a single, always-current source of truth for guidelines, logos and templates, aimed at brand teams working with internal staff and external agencies.
A cloud asset library for small-to-mid ecommerce and DTC brands, priced as a flat monthly fee with unlimited users, tiered by storage and downloads.
Price published
No
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
One-off purchase, no subscription
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
Monthly active users
Flat price per account; users are unlimited, tier set by storage and downloads
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
No
Yes
No
No
Free trial
Yes
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
60%
60%
30%
60%
Most common complaint
The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront
Prices are published for the API but not for the DAM, so the product being compared with a DAM still has no price
The MAU model favours occasional users, but there is no figure to verify that with
The tier is capped by download count as well as volume, which is a less familiar unit to budget against

“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.

Excire The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront — 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.
Frontify The MAU model favours occasional users, but there is no figure to verify that with — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Dash The tier is capped by download count as well as volume, which is a less familiar unit to budget against — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.