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.
An on-premise DAM known for deep metadata and search, for existing Portfolio users who size and maintain their own server, now under Axle AI ownership after a March 2026 acquisition.
An open-licence, self-hosted DAM for teams with in-house server admin capability, trading a free licence for the time to run upgrades, tune dependencies and troubleshoot it themselves.
Price published
Yes
No
No
No
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.
Quoted per customer; the licensing model was preserved through the change of owner
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
90%
Not checked
25%
60%
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
Not checked
It changed hands in March 2026, so anything written before that date describes it as an Extensis product
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you