Verdict
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.
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 open-source, community-governed digital repository platform on Drupal, for libraries, archives, and museums to manage digital collections.
An open-licence, self-hosted DAM for teams with in-house server admin capability, trading a free licence for the time to run upgrades, tune dependencies and troubleshoot it themselves.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
No
Billed on
Flat price per account — users are not a billing unit
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
No published price on islandora.ca — the core software is free open source ("free to use and always will be"). Paid options are hosting/installation/migration/support/training contracts sold by independent third-party service providers listed on islandora.ca/service-providers (e.g. Born-Digital, discoverygarden); islandora.ca itself does not publish their rates or billing units.
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
Yes
No
Yes
Free trial
Yes
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
70%
100%
Not checked
60%
Most common complaint
Storage ceilings are modest next to enterprise platforms, so large video libraries outgrow the tiers quickly
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
Not checked
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you