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.
An enterprise brand-asset DAM built for controlled distribution to many consumers of assets, that needs a permanently staffed administrator and slows down on large files.
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 enterprise DAM module within Adobe Experience Manager, for large organizations managing thousands to millions of brand assets across marketing channels.
Price published
No
No
No
No
Billed on
Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier
Modular packages, quoted per customer
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.
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.
Deployment
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud
Cloud, On-premise
Cloud, On-premise
Free plan
Yes
No
No
No
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
60%
0%
Not checked
Not checked
Most common complaint
The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you
No figure anywhere on the pricing page, so the order of magnitude is unknowable before a call
Not checked
Not checked