Kontent.ai, Akeneo, Pics.io, ResourceSpace

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.

Kontent.ai

Akeneo

Yes

Pics.io

ResourceSpace

Yes

Everything else

Kontent.ai

Akeneo

Pics.io

ResourceSpace

Verdict

A headless CMS with a built-in asset library for images and files, not a standalone DAM — it lacks file versioning, rights/expiry management and native video transcoding.

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 digital asset management platform layered on Google Drive (or S3/Dropbox), for marketing, creative, and e-commerce teams organizing and sharing brand assets in place.

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.

Price published

Yes

Billed on

Seats, content types and volume

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.

Flat monthly/annual subscription per plan tier (tiers differ by included user count and storage cap), plus per-additional-teammate add-on fee ($15-25/mo depending on plan) and optional paid feature add-ons (custom fields, watermarking, branding, API, CSV import, Okta SSO, etc.)

Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier

Deployment

Cloud

Cloud, On-premise

Cloud

Cloud, On-premise

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Transparency index

10%

Not checked

60%

Most common complaint

The calculator shows what drives the price without showing the price

Not checked

The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you

“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.

Kontent.ai The calculator shows what drives the price without showing the price — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

ResourceSpace The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.