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 flat-fee-per-account DAM and MAM with a free 500GB/5-user tier and unlimited paid users, for teams willing to pilot without much recent independent review evidence.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
An open-source PHP/Symfony platform unifying PIM, DAM, CMS and MDM on one codebase, for teams with in-house developers or an integrator partner rather than a marketing team wanting to self-serve.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Flat price per account by volume; the vendor states there are no per-user fees
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.
Annual licence per edition, not per user
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Free trial
No
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
90%
90%
Not checked
100%
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published
Not checked
It is a broader platform than a DAM — some capability has to be built rather than switched on