ResourceSpace, MediaValet, Filestack, NetX

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.

ResourceSpace

Yes

MediaValet

Filestack

NetX

Yes

Everything else

ResourceSpace

MediaValet

Filestack

NetX

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 cloud DAM billed by storage and configuration rather than seat count, aimed at agencies and distributed marketing teams with large or growing user bases where per-seat pricing would balloon.

A file upload, transformation, and delivery API with a drop-in picker for 20+ sources, for developers adding file handling to web and mobile apps.

A digital asset management platform for enterprises, agencies, museums, and nonprofits, paired with in-house consulting and data-migration services.

Price published

Yes

Billed on

Self-hosted: no licence fee. Hosted: a user ceiling per tier

Not per user — the vendor states unlimited users and permission groups

Monthly subscription tiers with bundled resource allowances (bandwidth in GB, uploads counted per file, transformations per file/image operation, storage in GB, number of team members), plus per-unit overage fees once a tier's allowance is exceeded (e.g. Start plan overage is $0.2/GB bandwidth).

Not disclosed publicly. Plans are differentiated by number of admin users, storage (TB), and number of portals (e.g. Essential: 5 admin users/1TB; Signature: 20 admin users/2TB/3 portals; Premium: 50 admin users/5TB/5 portals); exact per-unit or per-tier prices are not published, visitors must request a consult.

Deployment

Cloud, On-premise

Cloud

Cloud, On-premise, Hybrid

Free plan

Yes

Free trial

Transparency index

60%

20%

Not checked

Most common complaint

The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you

The promise not to charge per user is prominent, but there is no figure to compare it against

Not checked

“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.

ResourceSpace The free route is genuinely free of licence fees but moves hosting, upgrades and support onto you — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

MediaValet The promise not to charge per user is prominent, but there is no figure to compare it against — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.