PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

imgix, Phraseanet, ACDSee, Censhare

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.

imgix

No

Phraseanet

Yes

ACDSee

Yes

Censhare

Yes

Everything else

imgix
Phraseanet
ACDSee
Censhare
Verdict
An image and video API for real-time resizing, compression, and format conversion via URL parameters, built for developers at ecommerce, media, and agency teams.
A free, self-hosted GPLv3 DAM used by French public-sector, cultural and broadcast institutions with in-house technical staff, now being sunset by its vendor in favor of a paid successor, Phrasea.
A disk-native photo cataloguer and batch editor sold as a one-off perpetual licence, for photographers with large libraries who don't need Lightroom/Capture One-level RAW editing.
An enterprise PIM, DAM and content management platform, for multi-brand retailers, manufacturers and publishers with multilingual product content.
Price published
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Billed on
Consumption-based credits, sold in monthly tiers ($25–$500/mo self-serve, custom above that). Credits are spent on Management (2 credits/GB/month for stored assets), Delivery (1 credit/GB bandwidth), and Transformation (variable by operation). Per-credit rate drops as plan tier rises ($0.25 down to $0.12, monthly billing; slightly cheaper on annual commitment). Each plan also states an implied storage/bandwidth cap in GB.
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
One-off perpetual licence; a cloud subscription is sold separately
Not published — quote-only (custom enterprise pricing via demo request; no plans, per-user, or per-GB figures disclosed on site)
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
Yes
No
No
Free trial
No
No
Yes
No
Transparency index
Not checked
90%
90%
Not checked
Most common complaint
Not checked
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double
Not checked

“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.

Phraseanet The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
ACDSee The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.