PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

imgix, Phraseanet, Excire, 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.

imgix

No

Phraseanet

Yes

Excire

Yes

Cloudinary

No

Everything else

imgix
Phraseanet
Excire
Cloudinary
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.
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.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
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 purchase, no subscription
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
On-premise
Cloud
Free plan
No
Yes
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
Yes
Yes
Transparency index
Not checked
90%
60%
60%
Most common complaint
Not checked
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
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

“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.
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.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.