Alternatives
Pic-Time Alternative: One Flat Plan, No Store
Pic-Time is a sales engine that meters storage. If you deliver files and run proofing rounds without a print store, here is what one flat plan changes, and when you should stay put.
Updated September 2026
Pic-Time is a sales platform that also delivers photos. Selling prints and products through the gallery is the product; the gallery is the storefront. Storage is metered by tier, so the subscription climbs as your archive grows, whether or not the store ever makes a sale.
If print revenue pays for your Pic-Time plan, this page will tell you to stay. If you deliver finished JPEGs, run proofing rounds and get paid outside the gallery, you are renting a sales engine you never start. clientgallery.io is the narrow alternative: delivery and proofing only, one flat 10 $/month or 100 $/year, unlimited galleries under fair use, no store, no commission and no platform branding.
Below: Pic-Time's current ladder next to the one flat plan with yearly totals, what you give up, and a plain account of how a move works, because there is no Pic-Time importer here.
What Pic-Time is built to do
Pic-Time's pricing page lists four plans. Free holds 10 GB. Beginner holds 20 GB at 7 $/month billed annually or 8 $/month billed monthly. Professional holds 100 GB at 21 $/month billed annually or 25 $/month billed monthly. Advanced is listed as unlimited storage, with a note that terms and conditions apply, at 42 $/month billed annually or 50 $/month billed monthly. Every Pic-Time figure on this page is in US dollars, as its pricing page shows them.
The ladder is a storage ladder. What moves you up a tier is the size of your archive, not the number of clients you serve or the revenue you make. That design makes sense for a studio that keeps every gallery online for years so the store can keep selling from it. It makes less sense for a photographer whose galleries exist to hand over files and collect picks.
The free plan carries a detail worth knowing before you park old galleries on it. The pricing page states in one tooltip that free storage is reduced to 3 GB after 3 months, and in another that it is reduced to 3 GB after 6 months. The page is inconsistent with itself. Treat the reduction as certain and the timing as unclear until Pic-Time settles it.
Pic-Time's ladder against one flat plan
Yearly totals are the monthly figure multiplied by 12. Pic-Time's numbers are the US-dollar figures on its pricing page; clientgallery.io's are the figures on its own pricing page.
| Plan | Storage | Per month, billed annually | Per month, billed monthly | Yearly total, annual billing | Yearly total, monthly billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pic-Time Free | 10 GB, reduced to 3 GB (timing stated two ways) | 0 $ | 0 $ | 0 $ | 0 $ |
| Pic-Time Beginner | 20 GB | 7 $ | 8 $ | 84 $ | 96 $ |
| Pic-Time Professional | 100 GB | 21 $ | 25 $ | 252 $ | 300 $ |
| Pic-Time Advanced | Unlimited, terms apply | 42 $ | 50 $ | 504 $ | 600 $ |
| clientgallery.io | Unlimited galleries, photos and clients under fair use: 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB of proofs per paid account, which is hundreds of thousands of photos; free accounts hold 5 GB | 8.33 $ (100 $/year) | 10 $ | 100 $ | 120 $ |
Two readings of that table. At Professional, the first Pic-Time tier past 20 GB, a year costs 252 $ to 300 $ against 100 $ to 120 $ here. At Advanced, the only Pic-Time plan without a storage ceiling, a year costs five times the flat plan on either billing cycle. The gap is the store.
Is Pic-Time too expensive, or just the wrong shape?
Searches for a cheaper Pic-Time start from the invoice, and the invoice is not the whole story. Pic-Time's top tier sits in the same band as its direct competitors. Pixieset's Ultimate plan is 40 $/month billed annually or 50 $/month billed monthly for unlimited photo storage. ShootProof's Unlimited plan is 50 $/month billed annually or 60 $/month billed monthly. All three are US-dollar figures from their own pricing pages. Pic-Time is not an outlier among sales platforms. It is priced like one because it is one. The same logic runs through our Pixieset and ShootProof pages.
So the real question is not whether 42 $/month is a lot. It is whether the store earns it back. If your clients buy prints and products through your galleries, the plan pays for itself and the comparison ends here. If your galleries close the day the download link goes out, you are paying the sales price for the delivery feature.
A flat delivery plan removes the storage variable: no tier to grow into, no archive to prune to stay under a cap, and no upgrade prompt when a wedding season lands.
What the flat plan includes
- One plan. 10 $/month or 100 $/year, which works out to 8.33 $/month. Unlimited galleries, photos and clients under fair use.
- No platform branding. Nothing of clientgallery.io appears on client-facing pages, on the only plan there is. Galleries live on your own subdomain.
- Proofing that flows back into Lightroom Classic. The two-way plugin publishes proofs from your catalog and pulls client picks back in, so you edit the frames the client chose. The proofing guide covers the round itself.
- Sub-galleries. Folders inside a gallery, for a wedding split by part of the day or a commercial job split by set.
- Face Search included. Guests at a large event find their own photos.
- Delivery that stays put. The client downloads the whole gallery in one click, or any single image, and hosted galleries never expire.
- Full-resolution delivery, per gallery. Uploaded photos are browser-compressed proof JPEGs, hosted for as long as the account exists. Full-resolution delivery is a paid feature: you upload a full-resolution ZIP per gallery, it stays live for 3 days per handoff and can be re-uploaded any time, with 100 GB of standing ZIPs per account.
- No store, no commission, no per-gallery fee, no storage tiers.
What keeps the price flat is a deliberate limit: clientgallery.io hosts JPEGs. It does not warehouse RAW files or master video. Finished work goes in; the originals stay on your own drives. If you were using Pic-Time's storage as a backup of everything, that is the one habit the move will change.
What you give up
Be clear-eyed about the trade. There is no store here, so there are no print or product sales through the gallery and no lab behind it. If you sell prints, you sell them outside the gallery, on your own quote and through your own lab.
If any of that is a revenue line rather than a feature you clicked past, stop reading and stay on Pic-Time. A studio whose print income covers the Advanced plan is not overpaying. It is running a store, and Pic-Time is a good store.
Moving from Pic-Time: there is no importer
This is the part that decides the timeline, so it is said plainly. clientgallery.io has a one-click, whole-account importer for Pixieset. It has nothing equivalent for Pic-Time. A move from Pic-Time is a re-upload of your finished JPEGs, or a re-publish from Lightroom Classic through the plugin.
In practice that leaves two workable paths.
- Your finished work lives in Lightroom Classic. Install the plugin and publish the collections you want to serve here straight from the catalog. The Lightroom workflow guide walks through it.
- Your finished work lives as exported JPEGs. Create the gallery, upload the JPEGs, and set up sub-galleries to mirror the sets you had. Do the galleries that still matter and let the rest stay in your archive.
A staged move is the sane one. Start new jobs here, leave active Pic-Time galleries open until their clients have downloaded, then bring over only the galleries you still need to serve. If you plan to keep the rest on Pic-Time's free plan rather than cancelling, remember the storage reduction above, and that its timing is stated two ways on the pricing page.
Who should stay with Pic-Time
- You sell albums, prints or wall art through your galleries, and the revenue is real.
- You want one vendor to take and fulfill lab orders for you.
- You need the gallery to be the storefront, not the hand-off.
Everyone else is paying a sales price for delivery. That is the gap the flat plan is built for, and the full platform comparison puts it next to the rest of the field.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of the pages below. Yearly totals in the table are those monthly figures multiplied by 12.
- Pic-Time pricing, fetched 2 September 2026, https://www.pic-time.com/pricing
- Pixieset pricing (US-dollar figures; the page shows local currency to Canadian visitors), fetched 2 September 2026, https://pixieset.com/pricing/
- ShootProof pricing, fetched 2 September 2026, https://www.shootproof.com/pricing/
- clientgallery.io pricing, verified 2 September 2026, https://clientgallery.io/
Frequently asked
Is clientgallery.io a Pic-Time alternative if I sell prints?
No. There is no print store and no lab behind the gallery here. If print revenue pays for your Pic-Time plan, stay on Pic-Time. clientgallery.io is for photographers who deliver files, run proofing rounds and get paid outside the gallery.
How much does Pic-Time cost per year?
On its pricing page, fetched 2 September 2026: Beginner is 7 $/month billed annually (84 $ a year) or 8 $/month billed monthly (96 $ a year); Professional is 21 $ or 25 $ (252 $ or 300 $ a year); Advanced is 42 $ or 50 $ (504 $ or 600 $ a year). All in US dollars. clientgallery.io is 100 $/year or 10 $/month.
Can I import my Pic-Time galleries into clientgallery.io?
No. There is no Pic-Time importer. The one-click whole-account import exists for Pixieset only. A move from Pic-Time is a re-upload of your finished JPEGs or a re-publish from Lightroom Classic through the two-way plugin. Most photographers start new jobs here and bring old galleries over in stages.
Does clientgallery.io meter storage like Pic-Time?
No. There is one plan with unlimited galleries, photos and clients under fair use, and no storage tiers. The limit is the kind of file: it hosts JPEGs and does not warehouse RAW files or master video, which is what keeps the price flat.
Will my clients see any platform branding?
No. Galleries live on your own subdomain and carry your name and your logo, with no clientgallery.io branding on client-facing pages. That is the case on the only plan there is, not a paid unlock.
What happens to Pic-Time's free storage if I downgrade instead of cancelling?
Pic-Time's pricing page says the free plan's 10 GB is reduced to 3 GB, but it states the timing two ways: after 3 months in one tooltip and after 6 months in another. Confirm the current rule with Pic-Time before relying on the free plan to hold old galleries.
How does the Lightroom Classic plugin help with proofing?
It is two-way. You publish proofs from your catalog, the client marks picks in the gallery, and the plugin pulls those picks back into Lightroom Classic so you edit exactly the frames they chose.
Your client galleries, under your name
Unlimited galleries, your branding, one-click Pixieset import, and a Lightroom plugin — a flat 10 $/month, everything included. Your first gallery is free.
See the one flat plan