PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

PhotoShelter Brands, PhotoShelter, Lytho, Akeneo

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

PhotoShelter

No

Lytho

No

Akeneo

Yes

Everything else

PhotoShelter Brands
PhotoShelter
Lytho
Akeneo
Verdict
A DAM platform for brand and marketing teams, built for real-time camera-to-cloud photo and video distribution during live events.
A cloud portfolio and image-storage platform for individual photographers, with client galleries and built-in print/licensing sales.
A combined creative-operations platform pairing brand-portal DAM with proofing and approval workflows, for in-house teams that want both under one roof rather than a DAM-only search specialist.
A PIM platform with a built-in DAM module, used by manufacturing and ecommerce companies to manage product data and assets; also available as a free open-source Community Edition.
Price published
No
No
No
No
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.
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.
Team size, product mix and configuration
No genuine dollar pricing is published. The vendor's package-comparison page lists four tiers: Community Edition (free, open-source, self-hosted), Growth (SaaS, shown only as "Starting at $0 Annually" with a free-trial CTA — no real recurring price disclosed), Advanced and Premium (both "Call for a quote"). No billing unit (per user, per SKU, per asset, per GB) is stated anywhere on the site for the paid tiers.
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
No
No
No
No
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
Not checked
Not checked
10%
Not checked
Most common complaint
Not checked
Not checked
The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost
Not checked

“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.

Lytho The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.