Verdict
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.
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.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
An image and video CDN with an API-first asset library, built for fast developer integration, billed on flat monthly tiers with per-GB overage once bandwidth or storage limits are exceeded.
Price published
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Billed on
Flat price per account by volume; the vendor states there are no per-user fees
Annual licence per edition, not per user
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.
Bandwidth, storage and user seats, with published per-unit rates above the limits
Deployment
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Free trial
Yes
No
No
Yes
Transparency index
90%
100%
Not checked
70%
Most common complaint
On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published
It is a broader platform than a DAM — some capability has to be built rather than switched on
Not checked
Several units are metered at once: bandwidth, storage, video units and seats