PhotoShelter, Pics.io, Contentstack, Razuna

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

Pics.io

Contentstack

Razuna

Yes

Everything else

PhotoShelter

Pics.io

Contentstack

Razuna

Verdict

A cloud portfolio and image-storage platform for individual photographers, with client galleries and built-in print/licensing sales.

A digital asset management platform layered on Google Drive (or S3/Dropbox), for marketing, creative, and e-commerce teams organizing and sharing brand assets in place.

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.

A flat-fee-per-account DAM and MAM with a free 500GB/5-user tier and unlimited paid users, for teams willing to pilot without much recent independent review evidence.

Price published

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.

Flat monthly/annual subscription per plan tier (tiers differ by included user count and storage cap), plus per-additional-teammate add-on fee ($15-25/mo depending on plan) and optional paid feature add-ons (custom fields, watermarking, branding, API, CSV import, Okta SSO, etc.)

Quoted per customer

Flat price per account by volume; the vendor states there are no per-user fees

Deployment

Cloud

Cloud, On-premise

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Yes

Transparency index

Not checked

30%

90%

Most common complaint

Not checked

A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page

On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published

“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.

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.

Razuna On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.