PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Islandora, Bunny.net, Piwigo, Optimizely

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.

Islandora

Yes

Bunny.net

No

Piwigo

Yes

Optimizely

No

Everything else

Islandora
Bunny.net
Piwigo
Optimizely
Verdict
An open-source, community-governed digital repository platform on Drupal, for libraries, archives, and museums to manage digital collections.
A CDN and edge-computing platform bundling storage, video streaming, DNS and image optimization, aimed at developers and cost-conscious teams as an alternative to larger CDN providers.
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.
A DAM module bundled inside the Optimizely CMS/Content Marketing Platform/DXP, for teams already on Optimizely who don't need best-of-breed asset management, bulk operations, or metadata governance.
Price published
No
Yes
Yes
No
Billed on
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.
Primarily pay-as-you-go per GB of bandwidth/storage (CDN from $0.01/GB standard, volume network from $0.005/GB down to $0.002/GB; Storage from $0.01/GB standard tier, $0.02/GB edge SSD tier; Stream storage from $0.01/GB and CDN from $0.005/GB), with a $1/month account minimum. Bunny Optimizer is a flat $9.50/month per website (unlimited optimizations). No per-request fees. Enterprise-scale volume (above 2PB) requires contacting sales.
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Quoted per customer
Deployment
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
No
No
Yes
No
Free trial
No
No
Yes
No
Transparency index
Not checked
Not checked
100%
0%
Most common complaint
Not checked
Not checked
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
Not one tier and not one figure on the pricing page

“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.

Piwigo A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Optimizely Not one tier and not one figure on the pricing page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.