PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Excire, Lytho, Akeneo, Cloudinary

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

Lytho

No

Akeneo

Yes

Cloudinary

No

Everything else

Excire
Lytho
Akeneo
Cloudinary
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 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 PIM platform with a built-in DAM module, used by manufacturing and ecommerce companies to manage product data and assets; also available as a free open-source Community Edition.
A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
Price published
No
No
No
Yes
Billed on
One-off purchase, no subscription
Team size, product mix and configuration
No genuine dollar pricing is published. The vendor's package-comparison page lists four tiers: Community Edition (free, open-source, self-hosted), Growth (SaaS, shown only as "Starting at $0 Annually" with a free-trial CTA — no real recurring price disclosed), Advanced and Premium (both "Call for a quote"). No billing unit (per user, per SKU, per asset, per GB) is stated anywhere on the site for the paid tiers.
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Free plan
No
No
No
Yes
Free trial
Yes
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
60%
10%
Not checked
60%
Most common complaint
The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront
The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost
Not checked
Prices are published for the API but not for the DAM, so the product being compared with a DAM still has no price

“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.
Lytho The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost — 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.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.