Verdict
An open-licence, self-hosted DAM for teams with in-house server admin capability, trading a free licence for the time to run upgrades, tune dependencies and troubleshoot it themselves.
A quote-only enterprise DAM (formerly Widen) built on configurable metadata and external sharing portals, for organisations already standardised on the Acquia stack.
An enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
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.
Price published
No
No
No
Yes
Billed on
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Organisation size, user count, storage volume and feature set
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.
Flat price per account by volume; the vendor states there are no per-user fees
Deployment
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
Yes
No
No
Yes
Free trial
No
Yes
No
Yes
Transparency index
60%
20%
Not checked
90%
Most common complaint
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you
Cost depends on four variables at once, none of them priced publicly
Not checked
On-premise is available only in the enterprise tier, whose price is not published