Using Sites without DAM in AEM

Yes that is possible you can take the license only for the sites and manage the content such as pages.

Below is the link that talks about the features ans addons that can be given to sites.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/legal/product-descriptions/adobe-experience-manager-on-premise.html

Hi @pixeldvx

in my opinion, it's possible to fulfill the given requirement of managing assets outside of AEM DAM, but before doing so, it's important to carefully evaluate the pros and cons of not using AEM DAM. If you only have a small number of assets to manage, it may be fine to manage them outside of AEM DAM. However, if you have a large set of assets, you should seriously consider using AEM DAM.

The reason for this is that AEM DAM provides several advanced asset management features that are not available if you store assets outside of DAM.

Managing assets in AEM Sites is like running a pizza place. If you have a lot of different pizza toppings and customers, it's best to use a high-tech pizza oven with advanced features like automatic timers and temperature control to manage them all effectively. Similarly, if you have a large number of assets to manage, it's recommended to use AEM DAM, which provides advanced asset management capabilities like metadata management, Asset reference management, Tagging, and workflows, making it easier to find and use assets across your organization.

However, if you only have a few toppings and customers, or you have a pre-existing pizza oven that you want to use, it may be okay to manage your assets outside of AEM DAM. But before making a decision, it's important to weigh the pros and cons of managing your assets this way, just like you'd consider the pros and cons of using a wood-fired pizza oven versus a more modern one.

As already mentioned, it is probably possible to do. But you need to spend a lot of work to integrate your assets into Sites, as all AEM features expect the assets to reside also in the repository. Starting with the page editor to features and ending with core components. Not using the DAM requires you to build many of these features yourself.

I would evaluate if keeping your assets out of AEM is really this additional effort.