PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

PhotoShelter, digiKam, Daminion, Phraseanet

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.

PhotoShelter

No

digiKam

Yes

Daminion

Yes

Phraseanet

Yes

Everything else

PhotoShelter
digiKam
Daminion
Phraseanet
Verdict
A cloud portfolio and image-storage platform for individual photographers, with client galleries and built-in print/licensing sales.
Free, open-source, cross-platform photo cataloging software for large RAW libraries, with tagging, geotagging and duplicate detection, meant to pair with a separate RAW editor.
A DAM offered as both cloud and on-premise, aimed at small-to-mid teams that want fast metadata-driven search over large asset libraries and want files to stay on their own infrastructure.
A free, self-hosted GPLv3 DAM used by French public-sector, cultural and broadcast institutions with in-house technical staff, now being sunset by its vendor in favor of a paid successor, Phrasea.
Price published
No
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
Quote-only. Priced per named "Library Seat" (2-5 seats depending on tier, custom for Enterprise) plus a storage allotment per tier (1TB-5TB, custom for Enterprise) and a cap on "Advanced Integrations" (0 to unlimited). Unlimited invited/contributor users and unlimited Social Content Publisher seats included on all/most tiers. Annual or monthly billing toggle shown on the pricing page, but no dollar amounts are published — all tiers show a "Get Pricing" CTA to a demo/sales call.
Free software, no licence fee
Annual subscription covering all features, integrations, updates and support
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise
Free plan
No
Yes
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
Not checked
100%
30%
90%
Most common complaint
Not checked
It has no collaboration, permissions or approvals by design
Like the platforms it competes with, it asks for a form submission before naming a price
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 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.

digiKam It has no collaboration, permissions or approvals by design — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Daminion Like the platforms it competes with, it asks for a form submission before naming a price — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Phraseanet The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.