PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Phraseanet, Kontainer, Islandora, Piwigo

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

Kontainer

No

Islandora

Yes

Piwigo

Yes

Everything else

Phraseanet
Kontainer
Islandora
Piwigo
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 Nordic/European DAM, with optional PIM, aimed at mid-market brand, retail and ecommerce teams wanting fast onboarding without heavy IT involvement, backed by a 30-day no-commitment trial.
An open-source, community-governed digital repository platform on Drupal, for libraries, archives, and museums to manage digital collections.
A self-hosted, permission-based photo/video catalog with album hierarchies, tagging and a large plugin ecosystem, for archives and small orgs willing to maintain their own server as the library grows.
Price published
Yes
No
No
Yes
Billed on
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Depends on configuration; several features are priced separately
No published price on islandora.ca — the core software is free open source ("free to use and always will be"). Paid options are hosting/installation/migration/support/training contracts sold by independent third-party service providers listed on islandora.ca/service-providers (e.g. Born-Digital, discoverygarden); islandora.ca itself does not publish their rates or billing units.
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
Yes
No
Yes
Transparency index
90%
20%
Not checked
100%
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
Feature-level add-on pricing makes the final figure hard to anticipate before a quote
Not checked
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026

“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.
Kontainer Feature-level add-on pricing makes the final figure hard to anticipate before a quote — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Piwigo A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.