Alternatives
Pixieset Alternative: One Flat Plan Instead of Storage Tiers
What Pixieset does well, where its meters are, who should stay on it, and what changes when every gallery lives under your own name for a flat 10 $/month.
Updated 23 September 2026
Pixieset is the platform many photographers start on, and for good reason: clean galleries, a free plan, and a print store and client mobile apps that are real products rather than checkboxes. If you are reading this page, something has started to pinch. For most people it is the storage meter.
This is the honest version of the comparison. It lists what Pixieset does well, names the three meters that decide what you actually pay (storage tiers, the free-plan commission and the fair usage clause in its Terms), and explains where clientgallery.io fits: one flat 10 $/month or 110 $/year, unlimited galleries and clients, up to 500,000 photos under fair use, no platform branding, your own subdomain, and a one-click import of your whole Pixieset account. It also says who should stay on Pixieset.
Every Pixieset figure below comes from Pixieset's own pricing page, help centre or Terms, read again on 23 September 2026, and is listed under Sources at the end. Help articles carry their own update date, so both dates are given for those: what Pixieset states, and when Pixieset last stated it.
What Pixieset does well
A fair comparison starts with what you would give up.
- A print store that takes no commission once you pay. Clients order from the gallery, and Pixieset's help centre states that the commission is 0% on every paid Client Gallery plan (Basic, Plus, Pro, Ultimate), every Suite plan (Starter, Pro, Ultimate) and Studio 60, 80 and 120. If print revenue is a real line in your business, this feature alone can pay for the subscription.
- Mobile Gallery Apps. Pixieset states that these are custom photo apps your clients add to their phones and tablets, holding a curated selection of up to 200 images, and that you can create an unlimited number on a paid Client Gallery or Suite plan and up to 3 on the free plan. An app on a client's phone is not something a web gallery replaces.
- RAW upload on the top two plans. The pricing page lists "Upload RAW photos" on Pro and "Upload up to 1,000 GB of RAW photos" on Ultimate. The file-size rules allow RAW files up to 100 MB each on select Client Gallery and Suite plans, and JPEG and PNG files up to 100 MB.
- No cap on photos per collection. The help center is explicit: there is no limit to the number of photos in a collection. Uploads count against the account's storage, nothing else.
- Expiry that hides rather than deletes. A collection can carry an optional auto expiry date, and an expired collection is set to Hidden, not deleted.
- A wider suite. The help centre names Client Gallery plans, Suite plans and Studio plans, so a studio that wants one login for its whole toolset has that option.
Where the meters are
The usual complaint about Pixieset, branding, is mostly out of date. On the pricing page, "Remove Pixieset branding" is listed on Basic, the first paid plan, at 8 $/month billed yearly or 10 $/month billed monthly. The branding help article confirms that when the Pixieset Branding setting is turned off, the "Powered by Pixieset" message at the footer of your Client Gallery homepage and at the bottom of your collections is removed, on upgraded Client Gallery and Suite plans. Branding is a small meter. The real ones are below.
Storage is the ladder. Free 3 GB, Basic 10 GB, Plus 100 GB, Pro 1 TB, and unlimited photo storage only on Ultimate, at 40 $/month billed yearly or 50 $/month billed monthly. There is no cap on the number of photos in a collection; what an upload consumes is "your remaining storage space and your subscription plan". The help centre also says what happens when the allowance runs out: "You can always delete collections/photos/videos to free up space or upgrade to unlock more storage." That is the whole shape of the product, and it is the question worth asking before you renew: which rung are you paying for, and what happens the year your archive outgrows it.
The free plan takes a commission. Orders received on the Client Gallery Free plan carry a 15% commission fee, and Pixieset states it is "calculated based on the order subtotal, before any discounts, coupon codes, taxes, or shipping fees are applied". A coupon you give a client lowers what you receive, not what Pixieset takes. That fee is separate from the payment processor's cut and from printing and shipping costs.
The fair usage clause has numbers in it. Section 6 of Pixieset's Terms, last updated March 20, 2026, reserves the right to charge additional fees to users who go above 20 GB per collection and 100 GB of bandwidth per month. "Unlimited" on Ultimate describes storage; bandwidth still has a figure in the contract.
Billing has one catch. Yearly plans renew once per year on their original purchase date and offer up to a 20% discount compared to the monthly rate. You can cancel at any time, cancelling fully ends the subscription and removes access to that product, and refunds are not issued for account cancellations.
Pixieset plans against one flat plan
Prices and storage as printed on Pixieset's pricing page on 23 September 2026. "Yearly" is the per-month figure when billed for a year. "Not listed" means the pricing page does not list the feature on that plan.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Yearly billing | Photo storage | Platform branding | Store commission | RAW upload |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pixieset Free | 0 $ | 0 $ | 3 GB | Shown | 15% of the subtotal | Not listed |
| Pixieset Basic | 10 $/month | 8 $/month | 10 GB | Can be turned off | None | Not listed |
| Pixieset Plus | 20 $/month | 16 $/month | 100 GB | Can be turned off | None | Not listed |
| Pixieset Pro | 30 $/month | 24 $/month | 1 TB | Can be turned off | None | Yes |
| Pixieset Ultimate | 50 $/month | 40 $/month | Unlimited | Can be turned off | None | Yes, up to 1,000 GB |
| clientgallery.io | 10 $/month | 110 $/year (9.17 $/month) | Unlimited galleries: 1,000 photos per gallery, 500,000 photos per paid account, one free gallery of up to 1,000 photos. JPEG only | None, on any plan | No store, no commission | No, JPEG only |
Basic already removes branding and already sells commission-free, so the only reason to climb past it is storage. The last row has no row above it: no tier to upgrade to, and the fair-use figures are printed in the row rather than sold as an upgrade. Two things the table does not show, because they sit underneath every row of it: Pixieset's Terms reserve the right to charge above 20 GB per collection and 100 GB of bandwidth a month, and Pixieset accepts RAW files at up to 100 MB each on the plans that take them at all.
What the flat plan includes
clientgallery.io is one plan: 10 $/month, or 110 $/year, which works out to 9.17 $/month. Everything below is included.
- Unlimited galleries and clients, up to 500,000 photos. No storage tiers, no per-gallery fees, no commissions. The limits are 1,000 photos per gallery and 500,000 photos per paid account; free accounts hold one gallery of up to 1,000 photos.
- No platform branding on client-facing pages, at any price. Galleries live on your studio's own subdomain.
- Face Search included, so guests at a wedding or an event can find their own photos in a large gallery.
- A two-way Lightroom Classic plugin. Publish proofs from the catalog, then pull the client's picks back in. The steps are on the Lightroom page.
- Sub-galleries, for organising a long gallery. They are a studio-side tool, not a filing cabinet your client has to navigate. The client opens one link and gets one scrolling page, with a jump-to bar at the top that moves them between sections. Nobody clicks into anything and nobody has to find their way back up. A single section can also be shared on its own link, and that page is view-only: no ZIP, no picks, no full-resolution download, no Face Search and no link back to the parent gallery.
- Clients download the whole gallery in one click, or any single image. 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 on every plan, free included: 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 ZIP uploads a month per account.
- The whole-account Pixieset import described below, plus a single-gallery bookmark.
The trade that keeps the price flat: clientgallery.io hosts JPEGs. It does not warehouse RAW files or master video. If you need RAW storage, read the next section first.
Who should stay on Pixieset
A flat plan is not the right answer for everyone. Stay on Pixieset if any of these describe you.
- You sell prints through the store. clientgallery.io has no store and no commissions. If clients buy prints from your galleries, Pixieset's 0% commission on paid plans is worth the subscription. Pic-Time and ShootProof are the other store-first platforms; there is a separate page on Pic-Time and on ShootProof.
- You need RAW uploads. Pixieset accepts RAW files up to 100 MB each on select Client Gallery and Suite plans. clientgallery.io hosts JPEGs only.
- Your clients live in the Mobile Gallery Apps. A web gallery under your own subdomain is a different product, not a replacement for an app on a phone.
- You want one vendor for the whole studio. Pixieset's Suite plans exist for that reason.
If none of those describe you, and what you do is deliver finished JPEG galleries under your own name, the storage ladder is the only thing you are paying for. A flat plan replaces it.
How the move works
Pixieset does not offer a photo export. Its folder export lists collection information such as passwords, download PINs, client details and links, and in Pixieset's own words it does not contain any photos or videos. The per-gallery route in the help center is to download photos from a collection the same way your clients would, one collection at a time. The export guide walks through both.
clientgallery.io reads the account instead. On the Pixieset dashboard (galleries.pixieset.com) you click one bookmark. It reads your account through Pixieset's own dashboard API, the endpoints its web app already uses, and rebuilds each collection under your brand: the title, the password, the photo order, and the sets as sections of the gallery where a collection had more than one. The event date and any set descriptions are written into the gallery's welcome note as paragraphs rather than kept as separate fields; there is no cover photo field and no collection description field. Pixieset is only read, never changed, and no password reaches clientgallery.io. Re-running the import skips what is already imported, so a migration can run in stages without duplicates. A single-gallery bookmark exists as well. Details are on the import page; the switching guide covers what to tell clients.
Be clear about what the import moves, because the wrong assumption here is expensive. It takes Pixieset's largest web size, the biggest copy the Pixieset dashboard serves, never the original file you uploaded. It moves your delivery, not your archive. It is not a backup, and it is not a reason to clear anything off your own drives. Your masters stay with you. If you want your originals off Pixieset as well, download each collection at Original resolution the way a client would, which Pixieset states is available on upgraded Client Gallery or Suite plans, and keep them where you keep your other masters.
Sequence it: import, check the galleries, send clients the new links, then cancel. Pixieset keeps collections for a period of time after a cancellation before deleting them, without saying how long, and it does not refund a cancelled subscription. Cancel at the end of the period you have already paid for, not the day the import finishes.
Sources
All Pixieset figures on this page were read again from the pages below on 23 September 2026. Pixieset help articles carry their own update date, so both are given: what Pixieset states, and when Pixieset last stated it. Pixieset's pricing page shows local currency to visitors from Canada; the prices printed here are the USD figures.
- Pixieset pricing page (per-plan prices, storage, branding, commission, RAW), read as published on 23 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://pixieset.com/pricing/
- Pixieset help: Managing your Pixieset subscription, Pixieset updated it 23 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003816812-Managing-your-Pixieset-subscription
- Pixieset help: Logos and Branding, Pixieset updated it 17 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002970812-Logos-Branding
- Pixieset help: Uploading to Client Gallery, Pixieset updated it 20 August 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003740132-Uploading-to-Client-Gallery
- Pixieset help: File size and format requirements for Pixieset, Pixieset updated it 13 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002900632-File-size-and-format-requirements-for-Pixieset
- Pixieset Terms of Service, section 6 Fair Usage Policy, Pixieset last updated it 20 March 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://pixieset.com/terms/
- Pixieset help: How does the 0% commission fee work, Pixieset updated it 8 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002975072-How-does-the-0-commission-fee-work
- Pixieset help: What is a Mobile Gallery App?, Pixieset updated it 19 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003065892-What-is-a-Mobile-Gallery-App
- Pixieset help: Using folders to share and organize galleries (the export), Pixieset updated it 18 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/31178129650957-Using-folders-to-share-and-organize-galleries
- Pixieset help: Your client's download experience, Pixieset updated it 21 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003594212-Your-client-s-download-experience
- Pixieset help: How do I set an Expiry Date to the Gallery, Pixieset updated it 10 August 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003479211-How-do-I-set-an-Expiry-Date-to-the-Gallery
- Pixieset help: Do my Collections expire, Pixieset updated it 16 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002975012-Do-my-Collections-expire
- Pixieset help: Checking your Client Gallery Storage, Pixieset updated it 24 May 2023, fetched 23 September 2026, https://website-help.pixieset.com/en/articles/7944254-checking-your-client-gallery-storage
- clientgallery.io pricing and fair-use figures, verified in the product code the same day, checked 23 September 2026, fetched 23 September 2026, https://clientgallery.io/
Frequently asked
Is clientgallery.io a good Pixieset alternative?
Yes, if you deliver finished JPEG galleries and do not depend on Pixieset's print store, RAW uploads or mobile apps. It is one flat 10 $/month or 110 $/year: unlimited galleries and clients, up to 500,000 photos, no platform branding, your own subdomain, and a one-click import of your whole Pixieset account.
Does Pixieset only remove its branding on expensive plans?
No. 'Remove Pixieset branding' is listed on Basic, the first paid plan, at 8 $/month billed yearly or 10 $/month billed monthly, and the help centre confirms the 'Powered by Pixieset' footer can be turned off on an upgraded Client Gallery or Suite plan. Pixieset's real ceiling is storage.
How much storage does each Pixieset plan include?
Free 3 GB, Basic 10 GB, Plus 100 GB, Pro 1 TB, and unlimited photo storage on Ultimate only, at 40 $/month billed yearly or 50 $/month billed monthly, as printed on Pixieset's pricing page on 23 September 2026. There is no cap on the number of photos in a collection; every upload counts against the plan's allowance, and when it fills the help centre says to delete collections, photos or videos to free up space or upgrade.
What is Pixieset's fair usage limit?
Section 6 of Pixieset's Terms, last updated March 20, 2026, reserves the right to charge additional fees to users who go above 20 GB per collection and 100 GB of bandwidth per month. 'Unlimited' on Ultimate describes storage, not bandwidth.
Can I export my photos from Pixieset?
Not in bulk. Pixieset's folder export includes passwords, download PINs, client details and links, and states that it does not contain any photos or videos. You can download one collection at a time as a client would, at 3600px or, on upgraded Client Gallery or Suite plans, at Original resolution. clientgallery.io's import reads your whole account from one click on the Pixieset dashboard instead, but it takes Pixieset's largest web size rather than your original files, so it moves your delivery and is not a backup of your masters.
Will Pixieset refund me if I cancel mid-year?
No. Pixieset's billing help says you can cancel at any time, that cancelling ends the subscription and removes access, and that refunds are not issued for account cancellations. Import first, verify, send clients the new links, then cancel at the end of the paid period.
Does clientgallery.io store RAW files or video?
No. It hosts JPEGs and does not warehouse RAW files or master video, which is what keeps the plan at a flat 10 $/month. If you need RAW uploads, Pixieset's pricing page lists RAW upload on Pro and up to 1,000 GB of RAW on Ultimate, with a 100 MB ceiling per file; stay there.
Your client galleries, under your name
Branded galleries, client selections and a Lightroom Classic workflow. Start with your first gallery, then compare the current plan. Full-resolution delivery is a separate handoff with its own limits and conditions.
Move my Pixieset galleries