PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Lytho, Excire, Cloudflare Images, Piwigo

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.

Lytho

No

Excire

Yes

Cloudflare Images

No

Piwigo

Yes

Everything else

Lytho
Excire
Cloudflare Images
Piwigo
Verdict
A combined creative-operations platform pairing brand-portal DAM with proofing and approval workflows, for in-house teams that want both under one roof rather than a DAM-only search specialist.
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 cloud service for storing, resizing, optimizing and delivering images via API and CDN, aimed at developers building web and mobile apps that handle images at scale.
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.
Price published
No
No
Yes
Yes
Billed on
Team size, product mix and configuration
One-off purchase, no subscription
Storage ($5 / 100,000 images stored / month), delivery ($1 / 100,000 images delivered / month), and transformations (first 5,000 unique transformations/month free, then $0.50 / 1,000 unique transformations/month). A unique transformation is billed per distinct parameter combination (e.g. same image at 100x100 and 200x200 counts as two). Storage/delivery charges apply only to images hosted in Cloudflare Images; transforming externally-hosted images is billed only under transformations.
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
No
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
Yes
No
Yes
Transparency index
10%
60%
Not checked
100%
Most common complaint
The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost
The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront
Not checked
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026

“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.

Lytho The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost — 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.
Piwigo A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.