Phraseanet, imgix, Acquia DAM, 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

imgix

Acquia DAM

Dash

Everything else

Phraseanet

imgix

Acquia DAM

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 image and video API for real-time resizing, compression, and format conversion via URL parameters, built for developers at ecommerce, media, and agency teams.

A quote-only enterprise DAM (formerly Widen) built on configurable metadata and external sharing portals, for organisations already standardised on the Acquia 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

Consumption-based credits, sold in monthly tiers ($25–$500/mo self-serve, custom above that). Credits are spent on Management (2 credits/GB/month for stored assets), Delivery (1 credit/GB bandwidth), and Transformation (variable by operation). Per-credit rate drops as plan tier rises ($0.25 down to $0.12, monthly billing; slightly cheaper on annual commitment). Each plan also states an implied storage/bandwidth cap in GB.

Organisation size, user count, storage volume and feature set

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

Deployment

On-premise

Cloud

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Yes

Transparency index

90%

Not checked

20%

60%

Most common complaint

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

Not checked

Cost depends on four variables at once, none of them priced publicly

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.

Acquia DAM Cost depends on four variables at once, none of them priced publicly — 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.