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Uploadcare, Brandfolder, Islandora, Bunny.net

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.

Uploadcare

No

Brandfolder

No

Islandora

Yes

Bunny.net

No

Everything else

Uploadcare
Brandfolder
Islandora
Bunny.net
Verdict
A developer-first file upload and CDN/media-processing API for apps, pitched as a lighter, faster-to-integrate alternative to Cloudinary for teams that don't need its full DAM/video/AI stack.
A polished, search-first brand asset DAM sold standalone under Smartsheet ownership, priced for mid-market and enterprise budgets around a $24,700/year median contract.
An open-source, community-governed digital repository platform on Drupal, for libraries, archives, and museums to manage digital collections.
A CDN and edge-computing platform bundling storage, video streaming, DNS and image optimization, aimed at developers and cost-conscious teams as an alternative to larger CDN providers.
Price published
Yes
No
No
Yes
Billed on
Operations, traffic and storage, with published overage rates
Quoted per customer
No published price on islandora.ca — the core software is free open source ("free to use and always will be"). Paid options are hosting/installation/migration/support/training contracts sold by independent third-party service providers listed on islandora.ca/service-providers (e.g. Born-Digital, discoverygarden); islandora.ca itself does not publish their rates or billing units.
Primarily pay-as-you-go per GB of bandwidth/storage (CDN from $0.01/GB standard, volume network from $0.005/GB down to $0.002/GB; Storage from $0.01/GB standard tier, $0.02/GB edge SSD tier; Stream storage from $0.01/GB and CDN from $0.005/GB), with a $1/month account minimum. Bunny Optimizer is a flat $9.50/month per website (unlimited optimizations). No per-request fees. Enterprise-scale volume (above 2PB) requires contacting sales.
Deployment
Cloud
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Cloud
Free plan
Yes
No
No
No
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
70%
0%
Not checked
Not checked
Most common complaint
The free tier is stated as personal use only
Two tiers with no figure and no trial offered on the page
Not checked
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.

Uploadcare The free tier is stated as personal use only — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Brandfolder Two tiers with no figure and no trial offered on the page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.