PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Phraseanet, Akeneo, Kontent.ai, Nextcloud

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

Akeneo

Yes

Kontent.ai

No

Nextcloud

Yes

Everything else

Phraseanet
Akeneo
Kontent.ai
Nextcloud
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.
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.
A headless CMS with a built-in asset library for images and files, not a standalone DAM — it lacks file versioning, rights/expiry management and native video transcoding.
A self-hosted file-sync and collaboration platform some organisations stretch into asset-library duty; tagging, batch metadata editing and dynamic tag-based collections are still limited or missing.
Price published
Yes
No
No
Yes
Billed on
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
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.
Seats, content types and volume
Subscription per user per year, cheaper at volume
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
90%
Not checked
10%
80%
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
Not checked
The calculator shows what drives the price without showing the price
It is a file platform with DAM features rather than a DAM: asset-level metadata and rights are thinner

“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.
Kontent.ai The calculator shows what drives the price without showing the price — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Nextcloud It is a file platform with DAM features rather than a DAM: asset-level metadata and rights are thinner — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.