PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Phraseanet, Aprimo, HyperCMS, ACDSee

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

Aprimo

No

HyperCMS

Yes

ACDSee

Yes

Everything else

Phraseanet
Aprimo
HyperCMS
ACDSee
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 marketing-work-management platform with a bundled, AI-tagged DAM, for large brand organisations able to staff a multi-month rollout and a budget well past the list price.
An open-source DAM, CMS, and PIM platform combining asset, content, and product management for mid-to-large enterprises in banking, insurance, and retail.
A disk-native photo cataloguer and batch editor sold as a one-off perpetual licence, for photographers with large libraries who don't need Lightroom/Capture One-level RAW editing.
Price published
Yes
No
No
Yes
Billed on
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Chosen products and number of users
Cloud service: billed by storage capacity (GB) plus which optional modules you select; user accounts are unlimited/uncapped. No public price list — pricing is obtained via a configurator/calculator or by requesting a quote. On-premise/hosted deployments use Free, Standard, and Enterprise license editions (feature-gated), also quote-only. A non-commercial Free Edition exists with no disclosed price.
One-off perpetual licence; a cloud subscription is sold separately
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise
Free plan
Yes
No
No
No
Free trial
No
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
90%
10%
Not checked
90%
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
A modular line-up means the total is assembled from several unknowns
Not checked
The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double

“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.
Aprimo A modular line-up means the total is assembled from several unknowns — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
ACDSee The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.