PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Piwigo, digiKam, Contentstack, Canto

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

digiKam

Yes

Contentstack

No

Canto

No

Everything else

Piwigo
digiKam
Contentstack
Canto
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.
Free, open-source, cross-platform photo cataloging software for large RAW libraries, with tagging, geotagging and duplicate detection, meant to pair with a separate RAW editor.
An enterprise headless CMS and composable DXP for developer-led teams needing multi-channel content delivery, with a native asset-management module that's newer and thinly reviewed.
A DAM built around search and tagging for mid-market teams, with unlimited free view-only accounts but per-seat pricing for editors that only appears after a sales quote.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
No
Billed on
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Free software, no licence fee
Quoted per customer
Team size and storage volume
Deployment
On-premise, Cloud
On-premise
Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Free trial
Yes
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
100%
100%
30%
20%
Most common complaint
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
It has no collaboration, permissions or approvals by design
A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page
The tiers are named and described but cannot be compared on cost

“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.
digiKam It has no collaboration, permissions or approvals by design — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Contentstack A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Canto The tiers are named and described but cannot be compared on cost — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.