PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

PhotoShelter Brands, Plytix, Excire, PhotoPrism

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

Plytix

No

Excire

Yes

PhotoPrism

Yes

Everything else

PhotoShelter Brands
Plytix
Excire
PhotoPrism
Verdict
A DAM platform for brand and marketing teams, built for real-time camera-to-cloud photo and video distribution during live events.
A combined PIM and DAM platform for managing product data and media, built for SMB and mid-market ecommerce brands, manufacturers, and agencies.
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, single-container photo indexer under AGPL/commercial licensing, for people who want a private on-hardware archive without Google-Photos-level AI tagging or mobile app polish.
Price published
No
Yes
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.
Tiered plans priced by SKU (product) count, not by user seat — all plans include unlimited user seats. Each tier also caps monthly AI credits, API calls/hour, and DAM file storage + CDN traffic (GB/month). Standard is free (500 SKUs, 50GB storage); Pro is $499/mo (50,000 SKUs, 750GB storage); Enterprise is custom/quote-only (unlimited SKUs, custom storage). Optional flat-fee add-ons (Product Feeds $300/mo, Brand Portals $300/mo, Product Data Sheets $200/mo) and one-time onboarding fees ($0 / $3,000 / custom).
One-off purchase, no subscription
Subscription per edition, billed annually
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
On-premise
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
No
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
Yes
No
Transparency index
Not checked
Not checked
60%
100%
Most common complaint
Not checked
Not checked
The amount is not on the product page — it lives on the reseller’s storefront
The gap between the free edition and the first paid one is wide: €200 a month

“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.
PhotoPrism The gap between the free edition and the first paid one is wide: €200 a month — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.