Stop renting your
brand library.

The Problem

What "per feature" really means.

Brandfolder was acquired by Smartsheet, and product direction now serves Smartsheet's roadmap, not yours. That's the reality of using a product that exists to drive adoption of a larger platform.

Pricing starts at $1,600 and scales up "per feature." Every time you need something new, you pay more. And you won't know how much until you talk to sales, because there's no published pricing. That's not transparency. That's leverage.

It's cloud only. No self-hosted option. Your assets live on their servers, under their terms. Their AI features are vendor-controlled: you get what they ship, with no choice of model or provider. And when you decide to leave? There's no clean export path. Your brand library is their retention strategy.

The Answer

Own everything.

• Own your assets, own your infrastructure, own your data. Self-hosted or managed, your choice, and you can switch at any time.
• Transparent pricing. No "per feature" surprises, no sales calls to learn what it costs. One flat license.
• Asset intelligence with any AI provider. Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama for fully local operation, or 300+ models via OpenRouter. You pick what works for your content and your budget.
• Full data portability. Export everything at any time. Your data is yours, not a retention mechanism.
• Open Next.js frontend you can customize. Not a locked-down SaaS interface you have to live with as-is.

Feature Comparison

Side by side

Green = shipped today. Yellow = planned. Red = missing or weak. Gray = legacy or partial.

Honest Take

When Brandfolder makes sense

• Your organization already pays for Smartsheet and needs tight integration between project management and brand assets
• You want zero infrastructure management and are comfortable with cloud-only
• You have the budget for premium SaaS and want polished brand portal features out of the box

Not every team needs to own their infrastructure. If "someone else handles it" is genuinely the right trade-off for your organization, that's a valid choice. If you are paying for features you don't use and data you can't export, there is a BETTER! option.

Is It Time?

Who should switch

• Teams tired of "per feature" pricing escalation. You shouldn't have to negotiate a new contract every time you need a capability that should have been included.
• Organizations that need data sovereignty or self-hosting. Regulated industries, government contracts, or internal policy that requires assets to stay on your infrastructure.
• Anyone who's been told "that feature is in the next tier." If the answer to every request is "upgrade your plan," the product is optimized for revenue extraction, not your workflow.