PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Kontainer, Phraseanet, Akeneo, Canto

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.

Kontainer

No

Phraseanet

Yes

Akeneo

Yes

Canto

No

Everything else

Kontainer
Phraseanet
Akeneo
Canto
Verdict
A Nordic/European DAM, with optional PIM, aimed at mid-market brand, retail and ecommerce teams wanting fast onboarding without heavy IT involvement, backed by a 30-day no-commitment trial.
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 PIM platform with a built-in DAM module, used by manufacturing and ecommerce companies to manage product data and assets; also available as a free open-source Community Edition.
A DAM built around search and tagging for mid-market teams, with unlimited free view-only accounts but per-seat pricing for editors that only appears after a sales quote.
Price published
No
Yes
No
No
Billed on
Depends on configuration; several features are priced separately
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
No genuine dollar pricing is published. The vendor's package-comparison page lists four tiers: Community Edition (free, open-source, self-hosted), Growth (SaaS, shown only as "Starting at $0 Annually" with a free-trial CTA — no real recurring price disclosed), Advanced and Premium (both "Call for a quote"). No billing unit (per user, per SKU, per asset, per GB) is stated anywhere on the site for the paid tiers.
Team size and storage volume
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Free plan
No
Yes
No
No
Free trial
Yes
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
20%
90%
Not checked
20%
Most common complaint
Feature-level add-on pricing makes the final figure hard to anticipate before a quote
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
Not checked
The tiers are named and described but cannot be compared on cost

“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.

Kontainer Feature-level add-on pricing makes the final figure hard to anticipate before a quote — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Phraseanet The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Canto The tiers are named and described but cannot be compared on cost — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.