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.
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.
An enterprise digital asset management platform for newsrooms, publishers, museums, agencies, and manufacturers to organize and distribute digital assets.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
Price published
Yes
No
No
No
Billed on
Flat price per account — users are not a billing unit
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Not disclosed publicly. Pricing page shows three tiers (Starter, Advanced, Ultimate) all gated behind "Request a quote", billed annually; no per-user, per-GB, or credit figures are shown, so the actual billing unit cannot be confirmed from the vendor's site.
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.
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
Yes
No
No
Free trial
Yes
No
No
No
Transparency index
70%
60%
Not checked
Not checked
Most common complaint
Storage ceilings are modest next to enterprise platforms, so large video libraries outgrow the tiers quickly
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you
Not checked
Not checked