PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

OpenAsset, Cloudinary, Piwigo, Contentstack

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.

OpenAsset

No

Cloudinary

No

Piwigo

Yes

Contentstack

No

Everything else

OpenAsset
Cloudinary
Piwigo
Contentstack
Verdict
A project-based DAM for AEC design and architecture firms that syncs with Deltek Vision/Vantagepoint and places tagged project photos directly into InDesign proposals and RFPs.
A developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
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.
An enterprise headless CMS and composable DXP for developer-led teams needing multi-channel content delivery, with a native asset-management module that's newer and thinly reviewed.
Price published
No
Yes
Yes
No
Billed on
Quoted per customer
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Quoted per customer
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free trial
No
Yes
Yes
No
Transparency index
0%
60%
100%
30%
Most common complaint
A page titled pricing that contains a benefit calculator instead of prices
Prices are published for the API but not for the DAM, so the product being compared with a DAM still has no price
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the 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.

OpenAsset A page titled pricing that contains a benefit calculator instead of prices — 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.
Piwigo A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Contentstack A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.