Client Gallery Alternatives: Every Platform Compared

Before comparing features, answer these. They eliminate most of the field for you.

• Do you sell prints and products through the gallery, or just deliver files? If print sales are a real revenue line, you want a platform with a mature print lab integration and a storefront — Pic-Time, ShootProof, Pixieset, Zenfolio. If you deliver digital files and get paid separately, a print store is dead weight you're paying for.
• Whose brand does the client see? Most platforms put their name in the URL, the footer, the download screen, or the client-facing emails unless you pay for a higher tier. If "the gallery is part of my product" matters to you, unbranded-by-default is worth more than any single feature.

Pixieset is the category default for good reason: clean galleries, a solid mobile experience, a print store, and a free tier that gets people started. It's the platform most photographers try first, and for a lot of them it's fine for years.

The frustrations show up as you scale. Storage tiers force upgrades well before your library is unusually large, and the jump between plans is real money. The print-store commission takes a cut of sales on lower tiers. Platform branding stays on client-facing surfaces until you pay up. And because so many photographers use it, "a Pixieset gallery" has started to read as a generic look rather than your studio.

If Pixieset is where you are now, moving off it is the one migration that's genuinely painless here: clientgallery.io reads your entire Pixieset account through its API — galleries, sets, titles, and order — and reproduces it in one click. Re-running the import skips anything already brought over, so you can move in stages without duplicates.

Pic-Time is the strongest platform if selling prints, albums, and wall art is central to your business. The storefronts are beautiful, the automated sales campaigns and reminder emails actually move product, and the lab fulfillment is polished. Photographers who make meaningful print revenue often earn back the subscription many times over.

The trade-offs are the mirror image. Pricing tiers and the sales commission are built around the assumption that you're selling, so if you deliver digital files and don't run a store, you're paying for an engine you never start. It's a sales platform first and a delivery tool second — excellent at the former, over-built for the latter.

ShootProof is the veteran flexible option: galleries, proofing, contracts and invoicing, print sales with no commission on paid plans, and pricing that can be based on photo count rather than storage. That flexibility is its strength and its friction — there are a lot of knobs, and the photo-count tiers can pinch high-volume shooters.

CloudSpot leans into delivery and the client experience: fast galleries, generous download handling, a focus on brand presentation, and lead-capture tools aimed at turning galleries into referrals. It's a strong pick if your priority is a smooth, on-brand delivery experience rather than a full print storefront. Both sit in the sensible middle — more configurable than Pixieset, less sales-obsessed than Pic-Time.

picdrop is built for the review-and-approve loop, popular with commercial, editorial, and agency work. Clients rate and comment, you collect selects fast, and the free and entry tiers are generous. It's a proofing tool at heart — no print store, and not trying to be a consumer sales platform, which is exactly why the workflow crowd likes it.

PASS centers on a client-friendly delivery app with tiered subscriptions and AI-assisted features. It's delivery-forward and easy for clients, with less emphasis on a traditional print storefront. Both are good answers if your bottleneck is "get selects and deliver cleanly," not "sell wall art."

Zenfolio bundles a portfolio website, client galleries, booking, and print sales into one subscription — attractive if you want your public site and your client delivery under a single roof and login. The breadth means more setup, and it's a heavier tool than a photographer who only needs delivery will want.

SmugMug is the long-standing choice for deep, durable photo hosting and portfolio sites, with strong archival storage and customization. Client-proofing exists but isn't the center of gravity; it shines as a place to keep and show a large body of work more than as a fast per-shoot delivery-and-proofing loop. If you want a permanent home for everything you've ever shot plus a website, it's a serious option.

clientgallery.io is deliberately narrow. It's for photographers who want a fast, fully on-brand gallery-and-proofing tool without a print store, without per-gallery pricing, and without giving up a cut of anything. One price does everything:

• Flat 10 $/month, or 100 $/year — first gallery free. Unlimited galleries. No storage-tier upsell dance until you hit the fair-use ceiling, no commission, no per-client add-ons.
• Your branding, zero platform branding. Clients see your studio, not ours — by default, not as a paid unlock.
• One-click whole-account Pixieset import. The entire account comes across via the API, structure intact; re-runs skip what's already imported.
• A two-way Lightroom plugin. Publish 2048px proofs straight from the catalog, and pull client picks back into Lightroom as they choose — no re-matching filenames by hand.
• Real proofing. Picks and favorites, comments, and colored labels, plus in-browser Face Search — a guest's selfie is matched to their photos entirely in their browser and never uploaded.
• Full-resolution delivery. Temporary ZIPs with 3-day auto-expiry, up to 100 GB live, and an optional archive tier that parks masters on Backblaze B2.

The honest fair-use limits: JPEG photos only — no video, no RAW warehousing — 1,000 photos per gallery, a 250 GB account cap, and a 5 GB cap on the free tier. If you need a consumer print storefront, sales automations, or a public portfolio website, one of the platforms above is a better buy, and this guide says so plainly. If you want unlimited, unbranded, Lightroom-native delivery at a flat price, that's the gap we're built for. Operated from Québec, Canada.