Phraseanet, Adobe Experience Manager Assets, Uploadcare, Dash

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.

Phraseanet

Yes

Adobe Experience Manager Assets

Yes

Uploadcare

Dash

Everything else

Phraseanet

Adobe Experience Manager Assets

Uploadcare

Dash

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 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.

A cloud asset library for small-to-mid ecommerce and DTC brands, priced as a flat monthly fee with unlimited users, tiered by storage and downloads.

Price published

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.

Operations, traffic and storage, with published overage rates

Flat price per account; users are unlimited, tier set by storage and downloads

Deployment

On-premise

Cloud, On-premise

Cloud

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Transparency index

90%

Not checked

70%

60%

Most common complaint

The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026

Not checked

The free tier is stated as personal use only

The tier is capped by download count as well as volume, which is a less familiar unit to budget against

“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.

Phraseanet The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 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.

Dash The tier is capped by download count as well as volume, which is a less familiar unit to budget against — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.