PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Phraseanet, Cloudinary, Lytho, Optimizely

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

Cloudinary

No

Lytho

No

Optimizely

No

Everything else

Phraseanet
Cloudinary
Lytho
Optimizely
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 developer-facing image and video transformation API and CDN, billed from one pooled credit balance covering storage, transformations and bandwidth together.
A combined creative-operations platform pairing brand-portal DAM with proofing and approval workflows, for in-house teams that want both under one roof rather than a DAM-only search specialist.
A DAM module bundled inside the Optimizely CMS/Content Marketing Platform/DXP, for teams already on Optimizely who don't need best-of-breed asset management, bulk operations, or metadata governance.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
No
Billed on
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Credits: one credit is 1,000 transformations, or 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of video bandwidth
Team size, product mix and configuration
Quoted per customer
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
Yes
No
No
Free trial
No
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
90%
60%
10%
0%
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
Prices are published for the API but not for the DAM, so the product being compared with a DAM still has no price
The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost
Not one tier and not one figure on the pricing page

“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.
Cloudinary Prices are published for the API but not for the DAM, so the product being compared with a DAM still has no price — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Lytho The tiers are named but cannot be compared on cost — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Optimizely Not one tier and not one figure on the pricing page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.