Alternatives
WeTransfer Alternative for Photographers: A Gallery, Not a Link
WeTransfer delivers clean files and says so in writing. The problem is the object it delivers: a transfer with a clock on it, instead of a place your client can come back to.
Updated 2026-09-07
Most photographers arrive at WeTransfer because it is the fastest way to move a big folder to someone who is not technical. It works. Then the same three things happen: the client comes back in March asking for the files, the link is dead, and you go looking for the original folder on a drive.
This page is not an argument that WeTransfer degrades your photos. It does not, and WeTransfer says so in its own help center: "WeTransfer uses lossless compression, meaning your files are never altered or reduced in quality during the transfer process." Take that at face value. The file your client downloads is the file you sent.
The argument is about what a transfer is. A transfer is an event with an expiry date attached. A client gallery is a place with your name on it. For a one-off send those are the same thing. For photo delivery they are not, and the gap shows up months later, which is exactly when you cannot do anything about it.
One disclosure before the numbers. WeTransfer's pricing page is rendered in the browser and served no content when it was checked on 7 September 2026, so no WeTransfer price appears anywhere on this page, for any tier. Every WeTransfer figure below comes from an official WeTransfer help-center article read the same day and listed under Sources.
What WeTransfer gets right
Start with what you would be giving up, because it is real.
- The files are not touched. WeTransfer publishes an explicit lossless statement, and adds that when the size on your computer and the size on WeTransfer disagree, that is a display artefact rather than data loss. No photographer needs to worry about what comes out the other end.
- It previews camera RAW. WeTransfer previews JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, HEIC and HEIF, PSD and PSB, and the RAW formats: ARW, NEF, CR2 and CR3, DNG, RAF, RW2 and ORF. Each preview file can be up to 256 MB. Anyone telling you WeTransfer cannot show a RAW file has not read the page.
- Speed is not sold back to you. WeTransfer states there is no difference in upload or download speed between a free account and a paid subscription.
- Sensible security defaults. Files are encrypted in transit with TLS 1.2 or TLS 1.3 and at rest with AES-256, and are reachable only through the unique transfer links. Transfers can carry a password.
- You can see what happened. Transfer Activity shows who downloaded and when, including public transfers, and Access Control can restrict downloads to an email list.
- Zero learning curve for the client. Nobody has ever needed a tutorial to click a WeTransfer link.
None of that is what sends photographers looking for an alternative. The next two sections are.
The link is an event, and the clock starts when you press send
On the Free and Starter plans, WeTransfer states that uploads "can be kept online for up to 3 days". The countdown runs "from the exact moment the transfer is sent", not from the moment the client first opens it. A client who is on holiday for the week gets nothing.
Ultimate is different, and it is worth saying plainly: with an Ultimate subscription you can "keep transfers active for as long as you'd like". So permanence on WeTransfer is a plan you buy, not a thing you cannot have. What you still do not get on any tier is the second half of the sentence: the transfer stays alive, but it stays alive as a transfer.
After expiry, recovery is narrow. WeTransfer states that recovering an expired file "is available only to Ultimate, Teams, and Enterprise plan users". Within that, files smaller than 256 MiB can be recovered for up to one year, and files larger than 256 MiB for up to 90 days. If the transfer is not recoverable, the files are permanently deleted "within 48 hours after the selected expiration date".
There is one more window that gets misread. WeTransfer's branded personal page, the subdomain other people use to send things to you, holds those incoming uploads for four weeks. That is inbound work arriving from a client, not the gallery you deliver to them, and it does not change the outbound expiry above.
The rolling 30-day cap, in photographer terms
The volume limits are the part people meet late, because they are not a per-file limit and they are not a calendar month. WeTransfer calculates the allowance on "the transfers you've sent in the last 30 days", and slots come back on the date they were used rather than on the first of the month.
On the Free plan you can send "up to 10 transfers (or 3 GB total) in any 30-day rolling window". Note the word total. The 3 GB is shared across every client you send to in that window, not granted per send.
On the Starter plan the same article gives "up to 10 transfers (or 300 GB total) in any 30-day rolling window". The gigabytes go up a hundred times. The transfer count does not move. Ten sends in thirty days is roughly one client a week, with nothing left over for the resend when a client loses the email.
Ultimate removes the counter: "unlimited transfers up to 1 TB per transfer". Storage sits behind all of it, at up to 2 TB by default, and up to 5 TB on Teams, extendable to 30 TB on request.
One figure this page will not give you, because WeTransfer does not publish it on any page reachable today: the per-transfer size limit on the Free plan. The familiar 2 GB number circulates widely, it appears on no official page we could read, and so it is not printed here.
A transfer list against a client gallery
WeTransfer figures are as published in its help center on 7 September 2026. "Not published" means WeTransfer does not publish the figure on a page that could be read that day.
| Question | WeTransfer | clientgallery.io |
|---|---|---|
| How long the client's link works | Free and Starter: up to 3 days, counted from the moment you send. Ultimate: kept active as long as you like | The gallery never expires while the account exists |
| Recovering it after expiry | Ultimate, Teams and Enterprise only. Under 256 MiB: up to 1 year. Over 256 MiB: up to 90 days | Nothing to recover; the gallery was never taken down |
| What happens to non-recoverable files | Permanently deleted within 48 hours after the expiration date | Proofs are hosted for as long as the account exists |
| Sends allowed in a rolling 30 days | Free: 10 transfers or 3 GB total. Starter: 10 transfers or 300 GB total. Ultimate: unlimited, up to 1 TB per transfer | No send counter. Fair-use ceilings are 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB of proofs per paid account, which is hundreds of thousands of photos. Free accounts hold one gallery and 5 GB |
| Included storage | Up to 2 TB by default. Teams up to 5 TB, extendable to 30 TB on request | Unlimited galleries under fair use. Photos are browser-compressed proof JPEGs of about 0.6 MB each |
| Whether files are altered | WeTransfer states files are never altered or reduced in quality during transfer | Proofs are browser-compressed JPEGs by design. Full-resolution delivery is a separate ZIP you upload per gallery |
| Photo previews | JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, HEIC and HEIF, PSD and PSB, ARW, NEF, CR2, CR3, DNG, RAF, RW2, ORF, up to 256 MB each | A designed gallery page of proof JPEGs, with a lightbox and sections |
| Branding on the page the client opens | Transfer background colour or image, plus a branded personal subdomain for uploads sent to you | Your logo, studio name, colours and fonts, on your own subdomain, with no platform name, badge or footer anywhere |
| Client chooses favourites | Comments on previews | Star and heart picks, sent with the client's name and email, which notifies you by email and on your phone |
| Whole set in one click | Download the transfer | Download all photos as one ZIP, or any single image on its own |
| Password on the delivery | Transfer passwords, case-sensitive, with no character restrictions | Per-gallery password checked on the server, so without it the page returns only the prompt |
| Price | Not published in a form this page could read on 7 September 2026 | 10 $/month, or 100 $/year, which works out to 8.33 $/month |
What a gallery does that a transfer list cannot
WeTransfer shows a list of files with previews attached. That is the correct design for a transfer. It is the wrong design for the last thing a client sees you make.
- It carries your name, not a platform's. Galleries live on your studio's own subdomain, yourname.clientgallery.io, with your logo, your colours and your fonts. There is no platform name, badge, footer or link anywhere on the page the client sees.
- The picks come back to you. The client stars what they like and hearts the must-haves, then presses send and types their name and email. No account and no password to create; the link is the login. You get an email and a phone notification the moment the selection lands.
- You can see whether it was opened. Each gallery card shows a green or red dot for whether the client has opened it, with a filter for the ones nobody has opened yet, and the analytics view holds visits, unique visitors, photo views, favourites, downloads and time spent.
- A long shoot has structure. A gallery can be divided into named sections, getting ready, ceremony, reception, which the client sees as headed blocks on one page with a jump bar at the top.
- Guests can find themselves. Face Search is included, so someone at a wedding or a corporate event can pull their own photos out of a large gallery.
- It comes out of Lightroom and goes back in. The Lightroom Classic plugin publishes proofs from the catalog and pulls the client's picks back in as ratings, a Pick flag and a collection named after the gallery.
Our full-resolution handoff also expires. Here is the exact difference
It would be dishonest to sell this page on expiry without saying that part of clientgallery.io expires too.
Full-resolution delivery here is a handoff, not storage. You upload one full-resolution ZIP per gallery, it stays live for 3 days per handoff, and an account can hold 100 GB of live ZIPs at once. Every upload restarts the clock, and the ZIP can be replaced at any time. That is a three-day window, the same order of magnitude as WeTransfer's three days on Free and Starter.
The difference is what sits behind the window. On WeTransfer, when the transfer goes, the delivery goes with it, and unless you are on a recovery-eligible plan the files are permanently deleted within 48 hours of the expiry date. Here, only the heavy ZIP goes. The gallery stays live, the client keeps opening the same link, the proofs are still there, the picks are still there, and the whole gallery still downloads in one click.
So the client never loses access to the work. They lose access to the heavy archive file, and getting it back takes you one upload rather than a search through your drives for a folder from two years ago.
The honest ceiling on that: clientgallery.io hosts JPEGs. It does not warehouse RAW files or master video, and that is precisely why the plan is one flat price with no storage ladder to climb.
When you should just use WeTransfer
For a one-off send to someone who will never need the files again, use WeTransfer. Sending a logo pack to a designer, a single file to a magazine, a folder to a colleague who is going to open it this afternoon: a transfer is the right shape, it takes ten seconds, and there is no reason to sign anyone up for a gallery. Nobody needs a permanent branded page for a file that has one job.
Three more cases where staying put is the right call:
- You are moving RAW files or video masters. WeTransfer takes them and delivers them untouched. clientgallery.io hosts JPEG proofs and a full-resolution ZIP handoff; it is not an archive for camera originals.
- You need a receiving portal. WeTransfer's branded personal page is built so clients can send things to you, and it holds those uploads for four weeks. That is a genuinely different job.
- You send in both directions with collaborators, not clients. If the recipient is a retoucher or an editor rather than the person paying for the shoot, the branding, the picks and the permanent link are all overhead.
The switch is worth it when the recipient is a paying client, the delivery is the last impression they get of your studio, and you would rather answer "it is still at the same link" than go looking for the folder.
Sources
Every WeTransfer number, quote and policy on this page was read on the official pages below on 7 September 2026. No WeTransfer price is stated anywhere on this page, because WeTransfer's pricing page is rendered in the browser and served no content when it was requested that day, and a figure that cannot be verified is not printed here.
- WeTransfer help center: Plan limits (plan names, rolling 30-day transfer caps, storage, speed), fetched 2026-09-07, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/subscriptions/plan-limits
- WeTransfer help center: Transfer availability (how long uploads stay online, when the countdown starts), fetched 2026-09-07, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/transfer-availability
- WeTransfer help center: Download an expired transfer (who can recover, and for how long), fetched 2026-09-07, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/download-expired-transfer
- WeTransfer help center: How do we protect your files (deletion after expiry, encryption, storage region), fetched 2026-09-07, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/security-privacy/how-do-we-protect-your-files
- WeTransfer help center: File size difference (WeTransfer's lossless-transfer statement), fetched 2026-09-07, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/file-size-difference
- WeTransfer help center: What are previews (previewable formats and per-file preview size caps), fetched 2026-09-07, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/what-is-previews
- WeTransfer help center: Personal page overview (branded subdomain, four-week window on uploads sent to you), fetched 2026-09-07, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/personal-page-overview
- WeTransfer help center: Track downloads and access control (Transfer Activity, download restrictions), fetched 2026-09-07, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/track-downloads-access-control
- WeTransfer help center: Add a password to a transfer, fetched 2026-09-07, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/add-password-to-transfer
- clientgallery.io pricing, fair-use ceilings, the full-resolution ZIP handoff, Face Search, gallery analytics (visits, unique visitors, photo views, favourites, downloads, time spent), the opened indicator and its filter, named sections with a jump bar, and the server-side password gate (all verified in the shipped product the same day), fetched 2026-09-07, https://clientgallery.io/
- clientgallery.io Lightroom Classic plugin: publishing proofs and pulling picks back into the catalog, fetched 2026-09-07, https://clientgallery.io/lightroom
Frequently asked
Is WeTransfer a good way to deliver photos to clients?
It is a good way to move files and a poor way to deliver a shoot. WeTransfer states that on the Free and Starter plans uploads can be kept online for up to 3 days, counted from the moment the transfer is sent rather than from first download, and that non-recoverable files are permanently deleted within 48 hours after the expiration date. A client gallery is a permanent page under your own brand that your client can reopen months later.
Does WeTransfer reduce photo quality?
No. WeTransfer's help center states that it uses lossless compression, meaning files are never altered or reduced in quality during the transfer process, and that any size difference you notice between your computer and WeTransfer is a display artefact rather than data loss. Quality is not the reason to move off WeTransfer; permanence and workflow are.
How long does a WeTransfer link last?
WeTransfer states that on the Free and Starter plans uploads can be kept online for up to 3 days, and that the availability countdown starts from the exact moment the transfer is sent. With an Ultimate subscription you can keep transfers active for as long as you like. Uploads sent to you through a branded WeTransfer personal page stay available for four weeks.
Can you recover a WeTransfer transfer after it expires?
Only on some plans. WeTransfer states that recovering an expired file is available only to Ultimate, Teams and Enterprise users. Files smaller than 256 MiB can be recovered for up to one year after expiry, and files larger than 256 MiB for up to 90 days. Non-recoverable transfers are permanently deleted within 48 hours after the expiration date.
How many transfers can you send on WeTransfer in a month?
WeTransfer publishes a rolling 30-day allowance rather than a calendar-month one. The Free plan allows up to 10 transfers or 3 GB total in any 30-day rolling window, and the Starter plan allows up to 10 transfers or 300 GB total in the same window. Ultimate provides unlimited transfers up to 1 TB per transfer. Slots return on the date they were used, not on the first of the month.
Does clientgallery.io have a time limit on downloads?
On one part of it, yes, and it is worth being precise. The full-resolution ZIP you upload for a gallery stays live for 3 days per handoff, and an account can hold 100 GB of live ZIPs at once. Every upload restarts the clock and the ZIP can be replaced at any time. The gallery itself never expires while the account exists, so the client keeps the same link, the same proofs and the same one-click whole-gallery download.
When should I just use WeTransfer instead of a client gallery?
For a one-off send to someone who will never need the files again. A logo pack to a designer, one file to a magazine, a folder a colleague will open this afternoon: a transfer is the right shape and there is no reason to sign up for a gallery. WeTransfer is also the better tool when you are moving RAW files or video masters, or when you need a portal for clients to send work to you.
Your client galleries, under your name
Unlimited galleries, your branding, one-click Pixieset import, and a Lightroom plugin, all on a flat 10 $/month with everything included. Your first gallery is free.
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