The cost question is rarely one-dimensional
When deciding for or against a digital asset management system, license cost is usually the first thing people look at and a one-time on-premise license often looks cheaper at first glance than an ongoing cloud subscription. But that single comparison point isn't enough for a sound decision. A DAM system stays with a company for years, and costs build up in several places over that time: not just at purchase, but throughout ongoing operations.
Six cost blocks to consider
Anyone seriously comparing on-premise and cloud operation should weigh at least these line items against each other: license costs, implementation, hardware, IT staff, ongoing maintenance, and training effort.
On the license line alone, an ongoing cloud subscription, looked at over the contract term, is often higher than what a one-time on-premise license costs. On the other five line items, the picture usually swings in favor of the cloud in practice: hardware doesn't need to be purchased, replaced, or built with redundancy. Implementation is shorter or drops away entirely, because the infrastructure and operating environment are already in place. Internal IT resources aren't tied up running servers, managing patches, and planning capacity. Ongoing maintenance: updates, security patches, monitoring: is typically included in the subscription for cloud operation instead of being a separate line in your internal IT budget. And the training effort for operations itself (not for day-to-day use) goes down, because the company doesn't need to build up its own server expertise.
Why cloud-native makes a difference
The difference between cloud and on-premise is further shaped by architecture. Agravity GlobalDAM is built as a cloud-native, API-first platform on Microsoft Azure: updates and new features roll out automatically with no separate rollout project, resources scale automatically as usage grows, and operations itself: monitoring, availability, technical support: sit with Agravity instead of your own IT department. Topics like GDPR-compliant data storage within the EU are therefore part of the operating model, not an extra task for your company.
That doesn't mean on-premise is fundamentally the worse choice for individual companies with existing infrastructure, specific regulatory requirements, or an established IT team, an on-premise or dedicated single-tenant solution can still make sense. That's exactly why Agravity offers a dedicated, isolated instance through the single-tenant and Enterprise models as an alternative to the shared multi-tenant cloud.
What to calculate for your own company
How much the difference between cloud and on-premise actually shows up in euros depends on the size of your media library, the number of users, and your existing internal processes: generic figures aren't much help here. On our pricing page you'll find an ROI calculator that lets you build a first estimate for your own company based on your own assumptions (number of assets, internal staff costs, search times).
If you'd like a concrete assessment for your situation, we're happy to talk through, without obligation, how license, operating, and staff costs stack up in your specific case.