PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

PhotoShelter Brands, Excire, Piwigo, Uploadcare

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

Excire

Yes

Piwigo

Yes

Uploadcare

No

Everything else

PhotoShelter Brands
Excire
Piwigo
Uploadcare
Verdict
A DAM platform for brand and marketing teams, built for real-time camera-to-cloud photo and video distribution during live events.
AI-assisted photo search and culling software for photographers with large local archives, sold as a one-time purchase that runs without uploading files to the cloud.
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.
A developer-first file upload and CDN/media-processing API for apps, pitched as a lighter, faster-to-integrate alternative to Cloudinary for teams that don't need its full DAM/video/AI stack.
Price published
No
No
Yes
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.
One-off purchase, no subscription
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Operations, traffic and storage, with published overage rates
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
No
No
Yes
Yes
Free trial
No
Yes
Yes
No
Transparency index
Not checked
60%
100%
70%
Most common complaint
Not checked
The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
The free tier is stated as personal use only

“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.

Excire The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront — 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.
Uploadcare The free tier is stated as personal use only — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.