PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

Plytix, digiKam, Akeneo, Pixelboxx

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.

Plytix

No

digiKam

Yes

Akeneo

Yes

Pixelboxx

Yes

Everything else

Plytix
digiKam
Akeneo
Pixelboxx
Verdict
A combined PIM and DAM platform for managing product data and media, built for SMB and mid-market ecommerce brands, manufacturers, and agencies.
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.
A PIM platform with a built-in DAM module, used by manufacturing and ecommerce companies to manage product data and assets; also available as a free open-source Community Edition.
An on-prem, cloud or hybrid DAM aimed at likely DACH-region enterprise manufacturers who need to keep data in-house, with a public review record too thin to lean on without running your own trial.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
No
Billed on
Tiered plans priced by SKU (product) count, not by user seat — all plans include unlimited user seats. Each tier also caps monthly AI credits, API calls/hour, and DAM file storage + CDN traffic (GB/month). Standard is free (500 SKUs, 50GB storage); Pro is $499/mo (50,000 SKUs, 750GB storage); Enterprise is custom/quote-only (unlimited SKUs, custom storage). Optional flat-fee add-ons (Product Feeds $300/mo, Brand Portals $300/mo, Product Data Sheets $200/mo) and one-time onboarding fees ($0 / $3,000 / custom).
Free software, no licence fee
No genuine dollar pricing is published. The vendor's package-comparison page lists four tiers: Community Edition (free, open-source, self-hosted), Growth (SaaS, shown only as "Starting at $0 Annually" with a free-trial CTA — no real recurring price disclosed), Advanced and Premium (both "Call for a quote"). No billing unit (per user, per SKU, per asset, per GB) is stated anywhere on the site for the paid tiers.
Quoted per customer
Deployment
Cloud
On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise, Cloud, Hybrid
Free plan
No
Yes
No
No
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
Not checked
100%
Not checked
20%
Most common complaint
Not checked
It has no collaboration, permissions or approvals by design
Not checked
No prices, though it does name three deployment models including fully managed on-premise

“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.

digiKam It has no collaboration, permissions or approvals by design — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Pixelboxx No prices, though it does name three deployment models including fully managed on-premise — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.