Piwigo, Pimcore, Nextcloud
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”.
Everything else
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.
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.
A self-hosted file-sync and collaboration platform some organisations stretch into asset-library duty; tagging, batch metadata editing and dynamic tag-based collections are still limited or missing.
Price published
Yes
Yes
Yes
Billed on
Flat price per account by storage; users are unlimited
Annual licence per edition, not per user
Subscription per user per year, cheaper at volume
Deployment
On-premise, Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free trial
Yes
No
No
Transparency index
100%
100%
80%
Most common complaint
A ten per cent price rise is announced for 1 September 2026
It is a broader platform than a DAM — some capability has to be built rather than switched on
It is a file platform with DAM features rather than a DAM: asset-level metadata and rights are thinner
“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.
Pimcore
It is a broader platform than a DAM — some capability has to be built rather than switched on — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Nextcloud
It is a file platform with DAM features rather than a DAM: asset-level metadata and rights are thinner — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
No email required — the page prints as it stands.