Verdict
A free, self-hosted GPLv3 DAM used by French public-sector, cultural and broadcast institutions with in-house technical staff, now being sunset by its vendor in favor of a paid successor, Phrasea.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
A visually organized, board-based DAM for photo/image-heavy creative and marketing teams, with a genuinely usable free tier and a history of shifting, steep paid-tier pricing.
A team file library billed as a flat monthly fee with unlimited users, aimed at organisations where most people only need to download an approved file a few times a month.
Price published
Yes
No
No
Yes
Billed on
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
No public price list; sales quote required for both packages (Prime and Ultimate). Adobe's own on-premise product description sheet lists separate license metrics per component — AEM Assets itself is licensed 'Per Instance', 'Users' are licensed 'Per User', Brand Portal is licensed 'Per Brand Portal User', and Dynamic Media/Personalized Media are licensed by 'Page Views per month' — so billing is multi-metric and only available via custom quote, not a single flat per-user or per-GB rate.
Credits; users are not billed
Flat price per account — users are not a billing unit
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
Yes
No
Free trial
No
No
Yes
Yes
Transparency index
90%
Not checked
60%
70%
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
Not checked
The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only
Storage ceilings are modest next to enterprise platforms, so large video libraries outgrow the tiers quickly