Phraseanet is an open-source (GNU GPL v3) web DAM written in PHP by Alchemy, a small software company in Paris. It manages photo, video, audio and document libraries for companies, public bodies and photographers. In 2026 Alchemy began replacing it with Phrasea, a rewritten, API-first product built from microservices: Databox (the DAM core), Expose (publication), Uploader (ingestion) and a Dashboard, with Keycloak handling identity. Phrasea's code is MIT-licensed. Both products can run on the customer's own infrastructure (Docker Compose or Kubernetes) or as SaaS hosted by Alchemy. Phraseanet 4.1 is still maintained (release 4.1.25 on 2026-10-21), but the vendor now promotes Phrasea and offers migration. This page covers both products and labels each fact as Phrasea (current) or Phraseanet (legacy).
Key facts
| Vendor / HQ | ALCHEMY (SARL), 58 avenue de Wagram, 75017 Paris, France; RCS Paris B 404 195 299 S6 S70. The website names the company "ALCHEMY SARL" S7 |
|---|---|
| Founded | Company registered on 1996-02-28 S70. The vendor's timeline also says 1996 and adds that Alchemy then distributed Phraséa, a DAM "already on the market in 1990" S2 |
| Ownership & funding | Privately held. Manager (gérant): Guillaume Maubert S70. No outside funding found (Unknown) |
| Employees (approx.) | 6–9 employees (official staff band, 2024) S70 |
| Product line-up | Phrasea (current, MIT): Databox (DAM core), Expose (web publication, galleries), Uploader (ingestion forms), Dashboard, Report service, Keycloak-based authentication S22. Add-ons announced on the Phrasea blog in September 2026: Parade (branded media portal), Phrasea Lend (lending and tracking of physical assets) and Order (ordering renditions the user cannot download directly) S12 S14. Phraseanet 4.1 (legacy, GPL v3): one PHP application with the Production, Admin, Thesaurus, Lightbox and Report interfaces S19 |
| Deployment & hosting regions | SaaS hosted by Alchemy (since 2001 for Phraseanet) S2 S15. Self-hosted: Docker Compose; Kubernetes with Helm charts for both products S22 S24 S25 S19. Phrasea is also sold for "hybrid" set-ups S7. SaaS hosting region: Not public. The marketing website itself is hosted on AWS S6 |
| Notable customers (public references only) | The Phrasea home page shows customer logos without naming the customers in text, and no case study is published S7; customers are therefore not listed here. Alchemy's sector pages name no customers S17. Customer count: Not public |
Positioning
- Segments: businesses, the public sector and photographers S1. Alchemy has sector pages for public sector, private sector, luxury, tourism, media and entertainment, industry, culture and retail S17 S16.
- Use cases (Phrasea): communication and brand management, marketing and product images (with PIM interconnection), production and creative workflows S7 S9.
- What sets it apart: the source code is open. Phraseanet is GPL v3 S19 S20, and Phrasea's main repository is MIT S22. Alchemy pitches "sovereign, open" solutions to public bodies S15, and it can ship one source base as SaaS, on-premise or hybrid S7.
- Business model: Alchemy calls itself publisher, integrator and host S1. It earns from hosting, support, maintenance contracts, training and custom development S4 S15.
- Competitors: Alchemy names none. Other open-source DAMs covered on DAM Wiki include Hyland Nuxeo (Apache 2.0 core). Any further list would be the wiki's own inference, so none is given here.
Pricing & licensing
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Licence | Phraseanet: GNU GPL v3, free download S19 S1 S5. Phrasea: MIT for the main repository S22; the Helm charts repository is GPL-3.0 S24. Phrasea's web pages say "open source" without naming the licence S3 S7 |
| SaaS plans | Starter €169/month: 1 workspace, 100 GB storage, 5 concurrent requests, "500k PUT, 1M GET" HTTP/API requests. Business €500/month: 2 workspaces, 500 GB, 20 concurrent requests, "1M PUT, 2M GET". Enterprise: on request; 4 workspaces, 1 TB, 40 concurrent requests, "2M PUT, 4M GET". Every plan includes hosting, maintenance and updates, user support, permissions management and "APIs and connectors" S15. Unverified The page does not name the product (it presents "your new SaaS DAM tool"), nor the period of the request quotas. A second plan block on the same page still shows "€ xx" placeholders |
| Services | Easy Start (pre-configured launch), Onboarding, Consultant Pack, Technical Pack (integrations, API connectors, migration, custom development); prices not published S15. For Phraseanet: prepaid packs of 10 or 20 service hours; Corporate, Entreprise and Groupe maintenance contracts S4. Public-sector bundle with audit, installation, configuration, training and support included S1 |
| Trial / demo | Demo on request; the public interactive guide uses a demo platform that requires an account S7 S11. Self-hosting from source is free S22 |
| Historical | Before going open source, Phraseanet was licensed at €7,500 (2010 press) S71 |
Security & compliance
- Certifications: none published for the product or the SaaS (Unknown) S15 S8.
- SSO and identity (Phrasea): Keycloak supports OAuth2, OpenID Connect and SAML, external identity providers such as Active Directory, MFA, and configurable session and token lifetimes S28 S8.
- SSO (Phraseanet): login through external providers configured in the application: an OpenID Connect provider (the default config's example points at a Keycloak) and legacy social logins (Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Viadeo) S56 S57. Native SAML in Phraseanet: Unknown.
- Permissions (Phrasea): access control on workspaces, collections and assets, with Admin and Super Admin roles S22 S29.
- Availability: Alchemy claims "99,99%" availability for its hosting platforms S4. No SLA document is public.
- Data residency: Not public. Alchemy markets its SaaS as "sovereign" without naming the hosting location S15.
- Audit: Phrasea's Databox code includes an action-log entity S78 and optional Matomo usage analytics S33. A user-facing audit-trail screen was not documented publicly (Unknown). Phraseanet has the Report module for statistics S19.
- Legacy stack (Phraseanet): Phraseanet 4.1 declares PHP
>=7.0 <7.1and the Silex 1.3 framework S59. PHP 7.0 reached end of life on 2019-01-10 S69. Unverified This is a security point for self-hosters; whether Alchemy's own images backport fixes was not verified (its Phrasea 1.0.13 release mentions a CVE backport to PHP 7.4 S23).
Analyst & market recognition
None found. No Gartner, Forrester or IDC coverage of Phraseanet or Phrasea turned up in public sources (Unknown). Trade press: DAM News covered the move to open source in 2010 S71, and LinuxFr covered versions 3.0 and 3.1 S72 S73.
History
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1990 | Phraséa, an early DAM product, is on the market (vendor timeline) S2 |
| 1996-02-28 | ALCHEMY registered in Paris S70. It distributes Phraséa S2 |
| 2001 | First SaaS DAM platform, Phraseanet.com S2 |
| 2005 | Phraseanet IV, described by the vendor as a full-web, open-source DAM S2. Unverified Press from 2010–2011 says Phraseanet stayed proprietary until March 2010 S73 S71 |
| 2010-03 | Phraseanet 3.0 released under GPL v3 (Solutions Linux show) S72 S73 |
| 2011-02 | Phraseanet 3.1: Lightbox comments, orders, quarantine S73. GitHub repository created 2011-02-16 S19 |
| 2017-10-20 | Phraseanet 4.0.0 S21 |
| 2019-04-12 | "phraseanet-services" repository created; it later becomes Phrasea S65 S22 |
| 2019-11-15 | Phraseanet 4.1.0 S21 |
| 2021-08-05 | Phrasea (then Phraseanet services) 1.0.0 S23 |
| 2023-12-06 | Phrasea 3.0.0: authentication moves to Keycloak; Symfony 6 and API Platform 3 S23 |
| 2026 | "In 2026, Phrasea replaces Phraseanet": Alchemy brings back the Phrasea name for the rewritten product S1 S2 |
| 2026-06-30 | Phrasea 4.0.0 (extended permissions, pending entities, display profiles) S23 |
| 2026-09 | Parade, Phrasea Lend and Order announced on the Phrasea blog S12 |
| 2026-10-21 | Phrasea 4.5.2 and Phraseanet 4.1.25 released S23 S21 |
Hosting regions—Not public · SaaS, On-premise
PricingPublicfree open-source licence; SaaS plans by workspaces, storage and request quotas (from €169/month); services packs
ComplianceNone publishedSAML · OIDC SSO