PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Optimizely, Portfolio, Cloudinary, 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.

Optimizely

No

Portfolio

Yes

Cloudinary

No

Piwigo

Yes

Everything else

Optimizely
Portfolio
Cloudinary
Piwigo
Verdict
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.
An on-premise DAM known for deep metadata and search, for existing Portfolio users who size and maintain their own server, now under Axle AI ownership after a March 2026 acquisition.
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.
Price published
No
No
Yes
Yes
Billed on
Quoted per customer
Quoted per customer; the licensing model was preserved through the change of owner
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
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
No
No
Yes
Yes
Free trial
No
No
Yes
Yes
Transparency index
0%
25%
60%
100%
Most common complaint
Not one tier and not one figure on the pricing page
It changed hands in March 2026, so anything written before that date describes it as an Extensis product
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

“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.

Optimizely Not one tier and not one figure on the pricing page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Portfolio It changed hands in March 2026, so anything written before that date describes it as an Extensis product — 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.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.