PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Piwigo, ACDSee, imgix, Air

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.

Piwigo

Yes

ACDSee

Yes

imgix

No

Air

No

Everything else

Piwigo
ACDSee
imgix
Air
Verdict
A self-hosted, permission-based photo/video catalog with album hierarchies, tagging and a large plugin ecosystem, for archives and small orgs willing to maintain their own server as the library grows.
A disk-native photo cataloguer and batch editor sold as a one-off perpetual licence, for photographers with large libraries who don't need Lightroom/Capture One-level RAW editing.
An image and video API for real-time resizing, compression, and format conversion via URL parameters, built for developers at ecommerce, media, and agency teams.
A visually organized, board-based DAM for photo/image-heavy creative and marketing teams, with a genuinely usable free tier and a history of shifting, steep paid-tier pricing.
Price published
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Billed on
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
One-off perpetual licence; a cloud subscription is sold separately
Consumption-based credits, sold in monthly tiers ($25–$500/mo self-serve, custom above that). Credits are spent on Management (2 credits/GB/month for stored assets), Delivery (1 credit/GB bandwidth), and Transformation (variable by operation). Per-credit rate drops as plan tier rises ($0.25 down to $0.12, monthly billing; slightly cheaper on annual commitment). Each plan also states an implied storage/bandwidth cap in GB.
Credits; users are not billed
Deployment
On-premise, Cloud
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Transparency index
100%
90%
Not checked
60%
Most common complaint
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double
Not checked
The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only

“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.

Piwigo A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
ACDSee The published prices are promotional and dated; list price is roughly double — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Air The free tier is described in detail while the paid tiers are named only — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.