Phraseanet, Pics.io, Uploadcare, NetX

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

Pics.io

Uploadcare

NetX

Yes

Everything else

Phraseanet

Pics.io

Uploadcare

NetX

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 digital asset management platform layered on Google Drive (or S3/Dropbox), for marketing, creative, and e-commerce teams organizing and sharing brand assets in place.

A developer-first file upload and CDN/media-processing API for apps, pitched as a lighter, faster-to-integrate alternative to Cloudinary for teams that don't need its full DAM/video/AI stack.

A digital asset management platform for enterprises, agencies, museums, and nonprofits, paired with in-house consulting and data-migration services.

Price published

Yes

Billed on

No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid

Flat monthly/annual subscription per plan tier (tiers differ by included user count and storage cap), plus per-additional-teammate add-on fee ($15-25/mo depending on plan) and optional paid feature add-ons (custom fields, watermarking, branding, API, CSV import, Okta SSO, etc.)

Operations, traffic and storage, with published overage rates

Not disclosed publicly. Plans are differentiated by number of admin users, storage (TB), and number of portals (e.g. Essential: 5 admin users/1TB; Signature: 20 admin users/2TB/3 portals; Premium: 50 admin users/5TB/5 portals); exact per-unit or per-tier prices are not published, visitors must request a consult.

Deployment

On-premise

Cloud

Cloud, On-premise, Hybrid

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Transparency index

90%

Not checked

70%

Not checked

Most common complaint

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

Not checked

The free tier is stated as personal use only

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.

Uploadcare The free tier is stated as personal use only — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.