Alternatives
Sprout Studio Alternative: Galleries Without the CRM
Sprout Studio bundles client galleries into a studio management suite. This page is about whether you want that bundle, and it says plainly when you should keep it.
Updated September 2026
Sprout Studio is an all-in-one studio management product for photographers. Bookings, invoicing, contracts, questionnaires and galleries live under one subscription and one login. Galleries are not an add-on there. Sprout's pricing page lists them in every plan, and the plan cards cap them: how many are active at once, how much photo storage you get, and how many people can log in.
clientgallery.io is the opposite shape. It does one job, gallery delivery and proofing, at one flat price of 10 $ a month or 100 $ a year. It has no CRM, no booking calendar, no invoicing and no print store. So the real question on this page is not which product is better. It is whether you want your galleries bundled into your CRM or kept separate, and that answer is different for different studios.
Who should stay on Sprout Studio
Start here, because for a large share of readers this page ends at this section.
If you want studio management, booking, invoicing, contracts, questionnaires and galleries in one subscription with one login, stay on Sprout Studio. Replacing an all-in-one with a gallery tool alone does not remove the CRM from your business. It just means you keep paying for a CRM somewhere else. Two subscriptions can easily cost more in total than the single one you left, and you add a second login, a second support contact and a second place where client data lives.
Three specific reasons to keep the bundle:
- You sell prints through the gallery. Sprout runs a print product called Freedom Print Lab, where clients order prints directly from a Sprout gallery. Sprout answers its own commission question with "No, never. What you earn, you keep." A gallery tool with no store cannot replace that revenue line.
- You proof album designs. Sprout's Design Proofs is a separate module from galleries, built for collaborating with clients on album layouts. That is a different job from picking photos, and it is not something a delivery-and-proofing tool covers.
- Your workflow automations are already wired. If a booking today already fires a contract, a questionnaire and a gallery in sequence, pulling the gallery out breaks a chain you spent time building.
Unbundling makes sense in one case: the gallery is the part of Sprout your clients actually touch, you are hitting a plan cap because of photos rather than because of jobs, and your CRM needs are small enough to live somewhere cheap or free.
What Sprout Studio prints on its pricing page, and what it does not
Sprout sells four plans: Lite, Basic, Pro (marked "Popular") and Unlimited. There is a 30-day trial with no credit card required.
One thing to know before you compare costs. Each plan card prints two figures, and both are suffixed "/month", under a currency toggle marked USD and CAD. The page carries no "Monthly", "Yearly" or "billed annually" label anywhere, so which figure is the monthly rate and which is the annual equivalent cannot be read off the page. Neither can the currency of each figure. The page does confirm that both annual and monthly plans exist. Check the billing toggle on Sprout's own pricing page before you budget, because the difference between the two readings is real money.
The figures below are reproduced exactly as printed, without a currency symbol and without a billing term, because the page does not supply either.
| Plan | Figures printed, both as /month | Active shoots + galleries | Photo storage | Users and brands |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | 24 and 19 | 10 | 50 GB | 3 users, 2 brands |
| Basic | 46 and 36 | 20 | 100 GB | 3 users, 2 brands |
| Pro | 66 and 51 | Unlimited | 200 GB | 3 users, 2 brands |
| Unlimited | 89 and 69 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited users, unlimited brands |
Read the gallery cap carefully. It is a combined "active shoots + galleries" count, not a separate gallery allowance. On Lite, ten of those between them. On Basic, twenty. A studio that keeps past galleries live for clients is spending that budget on delivery rather than on work in progress.
What the gallery module actually does
Sprout documents galleries as a show, share and sell surface. Clients submit favourites, you deliver digital files and can send images to a vendor, and the branding tools cover cover design and gallery aesthetics. The pricing comparison table lists gallery rows on all four plans, including Self Fulfillment, Lab Fulfillment, a 3D Visualizer, a row named Original Resolution Downloads, Gallery Templates, Placeholder Galleries, email collection inside galleries, slideshows, a Gallery Catalog, Custom Gallery Themes and Backend Downloads. Two rows scale by plan: gallery cover styles go 4, 8, 12+, 12+, and gallery watermarking is listed as Simple on Lite and Custom on the other three.
One vocabulary note that trips people up in comparisons. At Sprout, "proofing" means album design proofs, which is its own nav item and its own row in the pricing table, listed outside the galleries section. What the galleries module documents for images is favourites collection. If you are shopping for image proofing, those are two different products inside the same subscription, and it is worth confirming which one you are buying.
Where the caps bite, and what a flat plan does instead
Three ceilings decide whether Sprout gets more expensive as you grow: storage, the combined active count, and seats.
Storage. 50 GB, 100 GB and 200 GB on the first three plans, with unlimited only at the top. Photo storage is the cap that moves on its own, because every delivered gallery you leave online keeps consuming it. clientgallery.io handles this differently: galleries, photos and clients are unlimited under fair use, and the fair-use figures are published rather than implied. 1,000 photos per gallery. 250 GB of proofs per paid account. 5 GB on a free account. Those are abuse tripwires, not upgrade prompts, and hitting one does not move you to a higher price.
The active count. Ten or twenty combined active shoots and galleries is a real constraint for a volume studio, and archiving old galleries to free the count is a client-facing decision, not a housekeeping one. On clientgallery.io there is no gallery count and no per-gallery fee.
Seats. Sprout gives 3 users and 2 brands below the top plan, and unlimited users and brands on Unlimited. clientgallery.io has no seat model at all. There are no multi-user accounts, no roles and no per-assistant logins. A two-person studio shares one account. That is stated plainly because it is a genuine difference: if you need separate logins with separate permissions, we do not have them and Sprout does.
Side by side on the things that actually differ
| Sprout Studio | clientgallery.io | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Studio management suite, galleries as one module | Gallery delivery and proofing, nothing else |
| Price | Two /month figures per plan, billing term not labelled on the page | 10 $ a month or 100 $ a year, one plan |
| Photo storage | 50 GB, 100 GB, 200 GB, then unlimited on the top plan | 250 GB of proofs per paid account, 5 GB free |
| Gallery count | 10 or 20 combined active shoots + galleries on Lite and Basic | Unlimited under fair use, 1,000 photos per gallery |
| Seats | 3 users and 2 brands below the top plan | No seat model, one shared account |
| Print sales | Freedom Print Lab, no commission taken | No print store, no commissions |
| Album design proofs | Design Proofs, a separate module | Not offered |
| CRM, invoicing, contracts | Included | Not offered |
Read that table as a shape comparison rather than a scorecard. Four of those rows are things Sprout has and we deliberately do not build.
How the unbundled stack works in practice
If you do split, the division of labour is clean. The CRM keeps the lead, the contract, the invoice and the calendar. The gallery keeps the proofs, the client picks and the handoff. They meet in exactly one place: you paste the gallery link into the email or portal the CRM sends.
On the gallery side, here is what one flat price covers and where its edges are, stated so you can price the swap honestly. Galleries carry your branding with no platform branding on client-facing pages, on your studio's own subdomain. Uploaded photos are hosted as compressed proof JPEGs, sized for fast viewing, and they stay online for as long as the account exists. We host JPEG proofs and do not warehouse RAW files, which is the trade that keeps the price flat.
Full-resolution delivery is a separate, paid part of the same plan and it is not permanent hosting. You upload a full-resolution ZIP per gallery, it stays live for three days per handoff, and you can re-upload it any time the client needs it again, within 100 GB of standing ZIPs per account. If you were expecting a gallery tool to double as your archive, that is not what this is, and any storage claim that sounds unlimited deserves the same scrutiny on our page as on anyone else's.
One migration caveat before you plan a move. The one-click whole-account import reads Pixieset accounts. There is no Sprout Studio importer, so moving galleries across means re-uploading them from your own catalogue, gallery by gallery. Plan that work before you cancel anything, and keep the old subscription running until clients who still need their galleries have their files.
Sources
- Sprout Studio pricing, plan names, printed figures, plan caps, comparison table, trial terms and the all-in-one positioning. https://getsproutstudio.com/pricing/ (fetched 23 September 2026)
- Sprout Studio galleries feature page, documented gallery capabilities and the Design Proofs distinction. https://getsproutstudio.com/features/gallery/ (fetched 23 September 2026)
- Freedom Print Lab, print ordering from a Sprout gallery and the commission answer. https://getsproutstudio.com/freedom-print-lab/ (fetched 23 September 2026)
- clientgallery.io plan price and fair-use limits, verified in the product on 23 September 2026. https://clientgallery.io/
Frequently asked
Should I replace Sprout Studio with a gallery tool?
Only if the gallery is the part you are outgrowing. Sprout bundles booking, invoicing, contracts, questionnaires and galleries into one subscription with one login. If you want all of that in one place, stay. Replacing the bundle with a gallery tool alone means keeping a separate CRM, and two subscriptions can cost more in total than the one you left.
How much does Sprout Studio cost per month?
Sprout's pricing page prints two figures per plan and suffixes both with /month, under a currency toggle marked USD and CAD, without any Monthly, Yearly or billed annually label. The printed pairs are 24 and 19 for Lite, 46 and 36 for Basic, 66 and 51 for Pro, and 89 and 69 for Unlimited. Which figure is the monthly rate cannot be read off the page, so check the billing toggle on Sprout's own pricing page.
How many galleries can I have on Sprout Studio?
Lite allows 10 and Basic allows 20, but the cap is a combined active shoots plus galleries count rather than a separate gallery allowance. Pro and Unlimited list unlimited active shoots and galleries. clientgallery.io has no gallery count and no per-gallery fee, with unlimited galleries under fair use and a ceiling of 1,000 photos per gallery.
What are Sprout Studio's storage limits?
The pricing page lists 50 GB of photo storage on Lite, 100 GB on Basic, 200 GB on Pro and unlimited on the Unlimited plan. On clientgallery.io the published fair-use figures are 250 GB of proofs per paid account and 5 GB on a free account, at the same flat price rather than at a higher tier.
Does Sprout Studio take a commission on print sales?
No. Sprout answers its own commission question about Freedom Print Lab with 'No, never. What you earn, you keep.' clientgallery.io has no print store at all, so if print sales through the gallery are a real revenue line for you, that is a reason to stay on Sprout rather than to switch.
Can my second shooter have their own login on clientgallery.io?
No. There is no seat model: no multi-user accounts, no roles and no per-assistant logins. A two-person studio shares one account. Sprout lists 3 users and 2 brands below its top plan and unlimited users and brands on Unlimited, so if separate logins with separate permissions matter, Sprout has them and we do not.
Can I import my Sprout Studio galleries automatically?
No. The one-click whole-account import reads Pixieset accounts only. Moving from Sprout means re-uploading galleries from your own catalogue, so plan that work before you cancel anything and keep the old subscription running until clients who still need their galleries have their files.
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.
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