Phraseanet, Nextcloud, Plytix, Acquia DAM

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

Nextcloud

Yes

Plytix

Acquia DAM

Everything else

Phraseanet

Nextcloud

Plytix

Acquia DAM

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 self-hosted file-sync and collaboration platform some organisations stretch into asset-library duty; tagging, batch metadata editing and dynamic tag-based collections are still limited or missing.

A combined PIM and DAM platform for managing product data and media, built for SMB and mid-market ecommerce brands, manufacturers, and agencies.

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

Price published

Yes

Billed on

No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid

Subscription per user per year, cheaper at volume

Tiered plans priced by SKU (product) count, not by user seat — all plans include unlimited user seats. Each tier also caps monthly AI credits, API calls/hour, and DAM file storage + CDN traffic (GB/month). Standard is free (500 SKUs, 50GB storage); Pro is $499/mo (50,000 SKUs, 750GB storage); Enterprise is custom/quote-only (unlimited SKUs, custom storage). Optional flat-fee add-ons (Product Feeds $300/mo, Brand Portals $300/mo, Product Data Sheets $200/mo) and one-time onboarding fees ($0 / $3,000 / custom).

Organisation size, user count, storage volume and feature set

Deployment

On-premise

On-premise, Cloud

Cloud

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Yes

Transparency index

90%

80%

Not checked

20%

Most common complaint

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

It is a file platform with DAM features rather than a DAM: asset-level metadata and rights are thinner

Not checked

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

“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.

Nextcloud It is a file platform with DAM features rather than a DAM: asset-level metadata and rights are thinner — 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.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.