PicaJet
Search Build shortlist

WoodWing Assets, Phraseanet, Contentstack, Islandora

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.

WoodWing Assets

Yes

Phraseanet

Yes

Contentstack

No

Islandora

Yes

Everything else

WoodWing Assets
Phraseanet
Contentstack
Islandora
Verdict
An enterprise digital asset management platform for newsrooms, publishers, museums, agencies, and manufacturers to organize and distribute digital assets.
A free, self-hosted GPLv3 DAM used by French public-sector, cultural and broadcast institutions with in-house technical staff, now being sunset by its vendor in favor of a paid successor, Phrasea.
An enterprise headless CMS and composable DXP for developer-led teams needing multi-channel content delivery, with a native asset-management module that's newer and thinly reviewed.
An open-source, community-governed digital repository platform on Drupal, for libraries, archives, and museums to manage digital collections.
Price published
No
Yes
No
No
Billed on
Not disclosed publicly. Pricing page shows three tiers (Starter, Advanced, Ultimate) all gated behind "Request a quote", billed annually; no per-user, per-GB, or credit figures are shown, so the actual billing unit cannot be confirmed from the vendor's site.
No licence fee; implementation and support services may be paid
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.
Deployment
Cloud, On-premise
On-premise
Cloud
On-premise, Cloud
Free plan
No
Yes
Yes
No
Free trial
No
No
No
No
Transparency index
Not checked
90%
30%
Not checked
Most common complaint
Not checked
The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026
A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page
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.

Phraseanet The product is mid-generation: Phrasea is announced to replace Phraseanet in 2026 — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.
Contentstack A free start exists, but the terms for moving to a paid tier are not on the page — ask them to answer this in writing before the trial.

No email required — the page prints as it stands.