PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Phraseanet, Razuna, HyperCMS, FotoWare

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

Razuna

Yes

HyperCMS

Yes

FotoWare

No

Everything else

Phraseanet
Razuna
HyperCMS
FotoWare
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 open-source DAM, CMS, and PIM platform combining asset, content, and product management for mid-to-large enterprises in banking, insurance, and retail.
A modular, metadata-heavy DAM aimed at large organisations with IT capacity to manage taxonomy, sold through quote-based pricing with on-prem and private-cloud options.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
No
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
Cloud service: billed by storage capacity (GB) plus which optional modules you select; user accounts are unlimited/uncapped. No public price list — pricing is obtained via a configurator/calculator or by requesting a quote. On-premise/hosted deployments use Free, Standard, and Enterprise license editions (feature-gated), also quote-only. A non-commercial Free Edition exists with no disclosed price.
A modular model — you pay for the modules you take
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
Yes
No
No
Free trial
No
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
90%
90%
Not checked
10%
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
The pricing page works as a lead form rather than a price list

“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.
Razuna On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
FotoWare The pricing page works as a lead form rather than a price list — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.