A small video or design team hits the same wall eventually. The footage is on three drives, the client approved "final_v7" in an email nobody can find, and the shot everyone remembers from last spring is somewhere in a cloud folder. A media asset manager, or DAM, fixes that: one searchable library, review and approval in one place, and a clear answer to "which version is the real one?"
Our verdict: Frame.io is the best pick for most small video teams. It's $15 per member a month, predictable, and the best review and approval tool you can buy, especially if you edit in Premiere. Iconik is the best true DAM for teams that already own their storage, like a NAS, Backblaze B2 or AWS, because it puts one searchable library on top of all of it instead of making you move everything.
The Short Version
Best for most video teams: Frame.io. Review and approval first, $15 per member on Pro, free for 2 people.
Best if you already own storage: Iconik. One library across a NAS, B2, Wasabi, AWS and more, with AI search and transcription.
Best for brand and marketing libraries: Air. Unlimited seats on every plan, strong visual search, mostly images and social video.
Cheapest review add-on: Dropbox Replay at $10 per user if you already live in Dropbox. Best for one person: Eagle, $34.95 once.
Prices at a glance
Prices checked October 15, 2026, on each company's own pricing page.
| Tool | Free plan | Paid from | Storage | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frame.io | 2 members, 2 GB | $15/member/mo (Pro, up to 5 members, 2 TB + 2 TB per extra member) | Hosted by Frame.io | Review and approval |
| Iconik | Free trial, $0 collaborator seats | Per user: $9 browse, $65 standard, $120 power (plus usage) | Your own storage: NAS, B2, Wasabi, S3, Azure, R2 and more | One library over hybrid storage |
| Air | 120 credits/mo (about 20 GB) | $25/mo billed yearly (Starter, 600 credits) | Hosted, metered in credits | Brand libraries, unlimited seats |
| Dropbox Replay | 4 files on most Dropbox plans | $10/user/mo billed yearly (add-on) | Your Dropbox | Cheap video review |
| Eagle | 30-day trial | $34.95 once, 2 devices | Local library | Solo reference libraries |
Frame.io: the best review tool, and a good-enough library
Frame.io, owned by Adobe, started as a review tool and it's still the best one. A client opens a link, scrubs the cut and leaves comments pinned to the exact frame. You see them inside Premiere, Final Cut Pro, After Effects or Lightroom and work through them like a checklist.
The free plan covers 2 members, 2 projects and 2 GB, enough to try it on one real job. Pro is $15 per member a month for up to 5 members, with 2 TB of storage plus 2 TB for each extra member, branded share pages, passwords and expiring links. Team is $25 per member for up to 15 members, and adds internal comments and restricted folders.
Its search has grown up too. Every paid plan gets natural-language search, so "drone shot over the harbor" finds the clip without perfect file names. Searching what's actually inside the footage is limited to Team and Enterprise.
The catch: Frame.io stores your files. Using your own storage (Storage Connect) is only on some Enterprise packages, so a team with 40 TB on a NAS will be paying to upload and store it twice. And DaVinci Resolve editors should check support for their exact setup before committing, because Frame.io doesn't list a Resolve integration.
Iconik: the DAM for teams that already have storage
Iconik works the other way around. It doesn't want to hold your files. It connects to where they already live, like a TrueNAS or OWC Jellyfish box in the office, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, AWS S3, Azure, Cloudflare R2 or LucidLink, and builds one searchable library over all of it. Every plan allows unlimited storage connections.
That's the answer to the hybrid setup we recommend in our NAS vs cloud storage verdict: a NAS as the working archive and cloud storage as the backup. Without a DAM, that setup means two places to look. With Iconik, it's one search box.
The AI tools are strong: speech-to-text, translation, object and scene detection, and metadata enrichment, so interviews become searchable by what people said. Review and approval with time-coded comments is built in, and it connects to Adobe Creative Cloud, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve.
The catch: pricing is per user plus usage. Seats run $9 a month for browse users, $65 for standard users and $120 for power users, with $0 collaborator seats for reviewers. AI features use credits on the Starter plan. That's fair for what it does, but harder to predict than Frame.io's flat price, so run Iconik's calculator before you sign up.
Air: built for brand teams, not editors
Air is the friendliest of the five. It's designed for marketing and brand teams sharing photos, social cuts and campaign assets, and it has unlimited seats on every plan, so the whole company can browse without per-seat bills.
Instead of a storage cap, Air uses monthly credits that cover storage and AI features. The free plan gives 120 credits a month, about 20 GB of enriched storage. Starter is $25 a month billed yearly with 600 credits. Its AI search reads images, video and documents, recognizes faces and colors, and reads text in images.
The catch: the next tier, Business, jumps to $900 a month billed yearly, and credits don't roll over. When you run out, uploads stop until you buy more. Video-heavy teams will burn through credits fast, and Premiere is the only editing app it connects to.
Dropbox Replay: the cheap option if you live in Dropbox
Dropbox Replay is a review tool, not a library, and it's honest about that. If your team already keeps everything in Dropbox, Replay adds frame-accurate comments, markup, version comparison, live review sessions and captions for $10 per user a month billed yearly ($12 monthly). It works with Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, After Effects and Pro Tools.
Most Dropbox plans can try it free on a handful of files. Files already in your Dropbox don't count against your storage again. What it doesn't do is organize a library: no tags, no AI search beyond transcription, no metadata. Pair it with good folder habits.
Eagle: the one-person library
Eagle is a $34.95 one-time purchase for 2 devices that organizes images, videos, fonts and design references on your own computer. It has AI search and auto-tagging, and it's the best value here for a solo designer or editor building a reference library. It has no team review, no sharing workflow and no editing-app integrations, so it's not a team DAM.
What about Bynder, Brandfolder and Canto?
They're excellent, and built for enterprises. Pricing is by quote, onboarding takes weeks, and the feature sets assume a brand team managing thousands of approved assets across regions. A team of 3 to 15 people will pay for features it never touches. Start with one of the five above and move up when you have a full-time person managing the library.
How to choose
- Your main pain is client feedback: Frame.io. Nothing makes approvals faster.
- You have terabytes on a NAS or in cloud storage already: Iconik. Don't pay to move them.
- You're a marketing team sharing images with the whole company: Air, for the unlimited seats.
- You're on Dropbox and need reviews on a budget: Dropbox Replay.
- It's just you: Eagle, plus a good cloud backup.
The verdict
Frame.io is the best media asset manager for most small video teams in 2026. Its price is simple, its review tools are the best available, and its search is now good enough to work as the team library.
Choose Iconik instead if your footage already lives on a NAS or in cloud storage you pay for. It's the only tool here that organizes files where they are, and it's the cleanest way to run a hybrid NAS-plus-cloud setup. Choose Air for image-heavy brand teams, Dropbox Replay for cheap reviews, and Eagle if you work alone.
FAQ
What is media asset management?
Media asset management (MAM), often called digital asset management (DAM), is software that keeps a team's photos, videos and design files in one searchable library, with tags, versions, sharing and review tools, so people can find and approve assets without digging through drives and email.
Is Frame.io a DAM?
Partly. Frame.io is mainly a review and approval tool, but it stores your files, organizes them into projects and offers natural-language search on paid plans, so many small teams use it as their library. It doesn't connect to your own storage unless you're on certain Enterprise packages.
What is Iconik used for?
Iconik is a cloud media asset manager that connects to storage you already have, such as a NAS, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, AWS S3 or Azure, and turns it into one searchable library with AI tagging, transcription, review and approval, and integrations with Adobe Creative Cloud, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve.
What's the cheapest DAM for a small team?
Frame.io's free plan covers 2 members and 2 GB, and Air's free plan gives about 20 GB with unlimited seats. For paid plans, Air Starter is $25 a month billed yearly and Frame.io Pro is $15 per member a month. For one person, Eagle costs $34.95 once.
Do I need a DAM if I have Dropbox or Google Drive?
Not always. Cloud folders are fine for one or two people. Once a team is searching for clips by what's in them, collecting client feedback on cuts, or tracking which version was approved, a DAM or a review tool like Dropbox Replay saves hours every week.