PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Phraseanet, Filestack, Contentstack, Adobe Experience Manager Assets

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

Filestack

No

Contentstack

No

Adobe Experience Manager Assets

Yes

Everything else

Phraseanet
Filestack
Contentstack
Adobe Experience Manager Assets
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 file upload, transformation, and delivery API with a drop-in picker for 20+ sources, for developers adding file handling to web and mobile apps.
An enterprise headless CMS and composable DXP for developer-led teams needing multi-channel content delivery, with a native asset-management module that's newer and thinly reviewed.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
No
Billed on
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Monthly subscription tiers with bundled resource allowances (bandwidth in GB, uploads counted per file, transformations per file/image operation, storage in GB, number of team members), plus per-unit overage fees once a tier's allowance is exceeded (e.g. Start plan overage is $0.2/GB bandwidth).
Quoted per customer
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.
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
Yes
No
Yes
No
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
90%
Not checked
30%
Not checked
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
Not checked
A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page
Not checked

“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.
Contentstack A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.