Best Client Gallery for Photographers: Six Jobs, Six Answers

If a store is part of how you earn, the number that matters is the commission, and it changes by plan. The entry column gives the one figure each vendor publishes for getting started.

Verdict. ShootProof, on the plain reading of its own help centre: no commission, taken from nobody. Pixieset is level with it once you are on any paid plan. Pic-Time reaches 0% on Professional and Advanced when you collect payment yourself. Zenfolio's 7% applies on every plan, so a print-heavy studio pays it for as long as it sells. The setup that costs real money is a free or entry plan with a store attached. As arithmetic, 15% of a 1,000-dollar order is 150 dollars.

clientgallery.io is the wrong buy for this job. There is no store, no lab and no product catalog. If prints are revenue, choose one of the platforms above. The proofing without a print store guide covers the opposite case.

Some studios want the gallery, the booking, the contracts and the invoices in one login. That is a real product and it is not ours.

CloudSpot draws the line clearly. Free and Entry are gallery-only, with no Studio Manager. Lite, Pro and Unlimited get "the full suite of tools offered by CloudSpot". Lite is $17 a month or $144 a year with 100 GB and unlimited galleries. Pro is $34 a month with 500 GB. Unlimited is $50 a month. CloudSpot publishes no annual price for Pro or Unlimited, and no currency code on the pages we read.

Pixieset sells Suite and Studio plans alongside Client Gallery. Its help centre does not state their prices, and we do not quote prices we cannot verify, so they are left out.

Zenfolio sells a Booking and Scheduling add-on at CA$10 a month on Basic and Professional, included on Advanced at CA$55 a month. Its pricing page lists a custom domain among its plan features.

clientgallery.io has no CRM, no contracts, no booking and no seat model. A two-person studio shares one account. You can paste your own payment link into a gallery and attach a PDF invoice, but unlocking downloads after payment is a manual switch.

Verdict. CloudSpot Lite is the lowest published full-suite price on this page. Pixieset is the other natural choice if its Suite fits your budget once you see the price yourself.

If you keep large files online or deliver video, buy the platform whose storage ladder reaches your archive.

Three qualifiers. Pic-Time's unlimited plan has a fair-use line at more than 20 GB per gallery and 100 GB of bandwidth a month. Pic-Time's free 10 GB is reduced to 3 GB, and its pricing page gives the timing as 3 months in one view and 6 months in another, while its help centre says 3 months. Zenfolio includes 2 GB of RAW storage and charges per gigabyte above that.

Verdict. Zenfolio Advanced or Pic-Time Advanced. clientgallery.io is not a storage product. It hosts browser-compressed proof JPEGs, with 1,000 photos per gallery, and does not warehouse RAW files or master video. That is what keeps the price flat, and it is the wrong tool for an online archive of originals.

This is the job clientgallery.io is built for. One plan at 10 $ a month or 100 $ a year. Unlimited galleries, photos and clients under fair use, no per-gallery fee and no storage tier to climb. No platform branding on anything the client sees, your own subdomain, Face Search included. Hosted galleries never expire while the account exists.

The limits, stated in full. A gallery holds 1,000 photos. A paid account holds 250 GB of proofs. Full-resolution delivery is a ZIP per gallery that stays live for 3 days per handoff and can be uploaded again any time, with 100 GB of standing ZIPs per account.

Tiered platforms have to define what happens when you step down a tier, and the published rules are worth reading before you commit. CloudSpot states that on cancellation, "If you have over 5 GB stored on your account at this time, our system will remove all data from your account." Pic-Time keeps galleries uploaded since December 2024 immediately downloadable for three years, then moves them to long-term storage, where preparing a download takes 4 to 15 hours. Pixieset states that collections do not expire while you subscribe, and that after cancellation they are kept for an unstated period.

Verdict. clientgallery.io, unless you also need a store or originals kept online. The flat-price answer sets these ceilings against every other unlimited plan.

A brand, an agency or a publication needs the files fast, under your name, without creating an account. clientgallery.io fits that: no platform branding on client pages, your subdomain in the address bar, no client login, an optional password that protects viewing and downloading, and a full-resolution ZIP handoff.

Where it falls short, plainly. It is a subdomain, not your own domain. Zenfolio lists a custom domain among its plan features, and that is a genuine win if your domain in the address bar matters. There are no team logins, so an agency that needs named reviewers with their own access wants a dedicated review tool. Analytics are account-wide, not per gallery.

Avoid free tiers for this job. CloudSpot's Free plan adds "Powered by CloudSpot" to the gallery cover, limits image downloads to 2048 pixels on the longest edge, and expires direct download links after 7 days.

Verdict. clientgallery.io for an unbranded handoff at a flat price, Zenfolio if a custom domain is required. The commercial photographer guide covers the workflow.

The selection round ends with a list. If it arrives as text, you paste or retype it. If it arrives as catalog data, you start editing.

clientgallery.io ships a two-way Lightroom Classic plugin on the one plan. You publish proofs from the catalog. The client stars or loves photos, and can add colour labels and comments where you switch those on. The plugin pulls the picks, labels and comments back into Lightroom, matched to your own galleries. A photo you re-edit and publish again replaces itself in the gallery and keeps its picks. For Capture One or another editor, the picked filenames export as a plain text list. The plugin is Classic only.

We did not re-check competitors' Lightroom features for this page, so none are stated here. The Lightroom plugin comparison sets Pixieset's plugin against ours with its own sources.

Verdict. clientgallery.io, if the round trip is where your hours go.

• ShootProof if you sell and never want a commission taken on any sale.
• Pixieset if you want a free plan that does not expire, 0% commission from the first paid plan, and Client Gallery, Suite and Studio from one vendor.
• Pic-Time if you sell on Professional or Advanced and want commission applied only to markup, or need video storage alongside photos.
• CloudSpot if you want studio management at the lowest published full-suite price on this page.
• Zenfolio if you want your own domain in the address bar, or unlimited JPEG storage with 150 GB of video.

Every competitor page below was fetched on 15 September 2026. Help-centre articles carry their own update date. Prices are shown in the currency each vendor publishes and are not converted. CloudSpot publishes a dollar sign without a currency code, and Pixieset's entry price is quoted as Pixieset writes it.

• ShootProof, "Are there any other fees?" (never takes a commission), updated 2 March 2026, help.shootproof.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008032267
• Pixieset, "How does the 0% commission fee work?" (15% Free, 0% paid, subtotal basis, plan names), updated 8 September 2026, help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002975072
• Pixieset, "What is the cost of goods sold application fee?" ($8 a month billed annually, $10 monthly), updated 11 September 2026, help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003793352
• Pixieset, "Managing your Pixieset subscription" (Free plan does not expire), updated 11 September 2026, help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003816812
• Pixieset, "Do my Collections expire?" (no expiry while subscribed, unstated period after cancellation), updated 14 July 2026, help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002975012
• Pic-Time pricing (US$0, US$8 or US$7 annually, US$25 or US$21, US$50 or US$42; photo and video storage per plan; free reduction stated as 3 and 6 months; commission on markup only), pic-time.com/pricing
• Pic-Time, commission rates by plan (15%, 15%, 8%, 6%; commission-free when you collect except Beginner), updated 25 April 2025, help.pic-time.com/en/articles/7901454
• Pic-Time, unlimited storage accounts (20 GB per gallery, 100 GB bandwidth a month), updated 20 August 2025, help.pic-time.com/en/articles/12002681
• Pic-Time, why free plan storage is reduced to 3 GB (after 3 months), dated 11 June 2026, help.pic-time.com/en/articles/9210592
• Pic-Time, unarchiving an older gallery (three years since December 2024, 4 to 15 hours), no absolute update date shown, help.pic-time.com/en/articles/8951337
• CloudSpot pricing (15% on Free and Entry, commission-free from Lite; 5, 15, 100, 500 GB and unlimited; Free up to 3 galleries), no update date shown, cloudspot.io/pricing
• CloudSpot, subscription plans compared ($7 or $72 a year, $17 or $144 a year, $34, $50; full suite from Lite), dated 21 January 2026, help.cloudspot.io/en/articles/13287496
• CloudSpot, free plan features (branded cover, 2048 px downloads, links expire after 7 days), updated 22 July 2026, help.cloudspot.io/en/articles/1090678
• CloudSpot, print sales (0% on auto-fulfilled lab orders on paid plans, 15% on Free), updated 19 August 2025, help.cloudspot.io/en/articles/114592
• CloudSpot, cancelling a subscription (over 5 GB, all data removed), updated 5 January 2026, help.cloudspot.io/en/articles/4450102
• Zenfolio plans and pricing (CA$12, CA$55 monthly; 15 GB, 150 GB, unlimited JPEG plus 150 GB video; booking add-on CA$10; custom domain listed as a plan feature), zenfolio.com/plans-pricing
• Zenfolio, how the service fees are calculated (7% per order, regardless of plan), updated 10 July 2026, support.zenfolio.com/hc/en-us/articles/7432680665619
• Zenfolio, RAW file storage (2 GB included, then charged per GB), updated 19 March 2024, support.zenfolio.com/hc/en-us/articles/7432716203411
• clientgallery.io plan, fair-use ceilings, full-resolution handoff and Lightroom plugin behaviour, checked in the product on 15 September 2026, clientgallery.io