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 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.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
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.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
Operations, traffic and storage, with published overage rates
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.
Flat price per account by volume; the vendor states there are no per-user fees
Deployment
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
90%
70%
Not checked
90%
Most common complaint
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
The free tier is stated as personal use only
Not checked
On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published