PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

PhotoPrism, HyperCMS, Dash, 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.

PhotoPrism

Yes

HyperCMS

Yes

Dash

No

Piwigo

Yes

Everything else

PhotoPrism
HyperCMS
Dash
Piwigo
Verdict
A self-hosted, single-container photo indexer under AGPL/commercial licensing, for people who want a private on-hardware archive without Google-Photos-level AI tagging or mobile app polish.
An open-source DAM, CMS, and PIM platform combining asset, content, and product management for mid-to-large enterprises in banking, insurance, and retail.
A cloud asset library for small-to-mid ecommerce and DTC brands, priced as a flat monthly fee with unlimited users, tiered by storage and downloads.
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
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Billed on
Subscription per edition, billed annually
Cloud service: billed by storage capacity (GB) plus which optional modules you select; user accounts are unlimited/uncapped. No public price list — pricing is obtained via a configurator/calculator or by requesting a quote. On-premise/hosted deployments use Free, Standard, and Enterprise license editions (feature-gated), also quote-only. A non-commercial Free Edition exists with no disclosed price.
Flat price per account; users are unlimited, tier set by storage and downloads
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Deployment
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
100%
Not checked
60%
100%
Most common complaint
The gap between the free edition and the first paid one is wide: €200 a month
Not checked
The tier is capped by download count as well as volume, which is a less familiar unit to budget against
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.

PhotoPrism The gap between the free edition and the first paid one is wide: €200 a month — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Dash The tier is capped by download count as well as volume, which is a less familiar unit to budget against — 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.