PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

PhotoShelter Brands, Brandfolder, Photo Mechanic, 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 Brands

No

Brandfolder

No

Photo Mechanic

Yes

Razuna

Yes

Everything else

PhotoShelter Brands
Brandfolder
Photo Mechanic
Razuna
Verdict
A DAM platform for brand and marketing teams, built for real-time camera-to-cloud photo and video distribution during live events.
A polished, search-first brand asset DAM sold standalone under Smartsheet ownership, priced for mid-market and enterprise budgets around a $24,700/year median contract.
A RAW/JPEG ingest and culling tool for photojournalists, sports and wedding shooters processing large batches fast, before handing files to Lightroom, Capture One or a DAM.
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
No
No
No
Yes
Billed on
Plan tiers differ by number of Library (admin) seats and storage (TB); unlimited invited/contributor users on every tier. No dollar figures published — all tiers show a "Get Pricing" CTA leading to a sales/demo form.
Quoted per customer
Not verified: the product page carries no price and the store pages checked returned 404
Flat price per account by volume; the vendor states there are no per-user fees
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
Not checked
0%
100%
90%
Most common complaint
Not checked
Two tiers with no figure and no trial offered on the page
Cataloguing is secondary here — it is a fast browser for shoots
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.

Brandfolder Two tiers with no figure and no trial offered on the page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Photo Mechanic Cataloguing is secondary here — it is a fast browser for shoots — 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.