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Answer

How Long Does It Take to Migrate Client Galleries?

We are not going to invent an hours figure. The transfer itself runs unattended from one click and its length depends on how many galleries and photos you have and on your connection. The number worth planning around is your own time, and that part is small and knowable.

Updated September 2026

You are asking a time question because you are afraid of losing a week. That is the right fear to have about a migration, and it is the wrong fear to have about this one, but not for the reason a marketing page would give you.

Here is the honest shape of the answer. The part that moves your galleries is machine time. You click a bookmark on your Pixieset dashboard, the whole account comes across, and you go and do something else. We have not measured that transfer across a range of real accounts, so we are not going to publish a duration, a photos-per-hour rate or any other elapsed-time figure. It depends on how many galleries you have, how many photos are in them, and your connection. A page that made up an hours number would be worse than one that declines to.

The part that actually costs you something is your time, and there are exactly four pieces of it: deciding what moves, checking a few galleries against the originals, swapping the links you have already sent, and cancelling Pixieset on your own terms. None of those has to happen in one sitting, and none of them blocks you from working.

The two clocks, and only one of them is yours

Every migration has an unattended clock and a human clock. People conflate them, which is how a switch that costs a morning of attention gets described as losing a week. Split them apart.

StepWhose clockWhat sets its length
Decide what movesYoursHow many old galleries you are willing to leave behind. Most studios do not need all of them.
Click the bookmarkYoursOne click on the Pixieset dashboard. It covers the whole account.
The transferUnattendedNumber of galleries, number of photos, your connection. Not measured, so not published.
Spot-check galleriesYoursHow many you open side by side with the original. Three or four is usually enough to trust the rest.
Swap sent linksYoursHow many clients have a live link in their inbox right now, which is far fewer than your gallery count.
Cancel PixiesetYoursYour billing date, not ours. There is no reason to rush this one.

Notice what is not in the table. There is no re-uploading, no exporting, no waiting on a download, no file wrangling on your desktop and no support ticket. Those are the steps that turn a migration into a week, and the one-click import is specifically the thing that removes them.

What one click actually carries across

The import runs from a bookmark you click while you are signed in to your Pixieset dashboard, and it brings the whole account over rather than one gallery at a time. There is also a single-gallery bookmark if you want to try it on one before committing to the lot. Here is exactly what arrives and what does not.

WhatCarriedDetail
Gallery titlesYesKept as they were.
PhotosYesAt the largest web size Pixieset serves, not the original file. See the section below.
Photo orderYesThe sequence you arranged is preserved.
SetsYes, as sectionsOnly when a collection has more than one set. Your client sees one scrolling page with a jump-to bar at the top.
PasswordsYesThe gate here is server-side and also guards the whole-gallery ZIP and the full-resolution download.
Event dateAs a notePlaced in the gallery welcome note rather than in a field.
Set descriptionsAs a noteAlso placed in the welcome note.
Cover photoNoThere is no cover photo here to carry it into.
Collection description fieldNoNo such field exists here, which is why the text lands in the welcome note.

Two properties of the import matter more than the list. Re-running it skips whatever has already been imported, so it can be run again safely and a migration can be done in stages without producing duplicates. And every call it makes to Pixieset is a read. Nothing is written to your Pixieset account, nothing is deleted there, and no Pixieset password reaches clientgallery.io. Your old galleries are exactly as you left them while you decide.

The resolution question, answered before you ask it

The import brings photos at the largest web size Pixieset serves. It does not bring your original files, and we will not describe it as full resolution, because it is not. This is the single most important thing to understand before you plan around it.

In practice that is the correct source for a proofing gallery, which is what the imported galleries are. Your clients browse, star and love, and send picks from web sized images on their phones. But it means the import is not a backup and it is not a way to recover masters you no longer have.

Full-resolution delivery here works differently and deliberately so: you upload your own full-resolution ZIP per gallery from your own drives, and the client link is live for 3 days per handoff, re-uploadable any time. If your masters are only on Pixieset and nowhere else, get them onto your own storage first, and treat that as a separate job from the migration. The manual route below is how that is done, and it is the part that genuinely takes time.

Doing it by hand, and why that is the slow version

It is worth knowing what the manual path looks like, both because some people want their masters out and because it explains what the one click is replacing.

Start with the button that sounds like it should do the job. Pixieset has an Export button, reached from Collections by selecting a folder, and it produces a CSV. Pixieset states that "the export includes folder details only" and that it "does not contain any photos or videos". The columns are collection and client details plus the various password fields. Useful for an inventory of what you have. It moves nothing.

To get the actual files, Pixieset states that "as a Pixieset user, you can download photos from your collection in the same way your clients would", and recommends checking your collection settings first "to make sure your photos are available in their original resolution". Pixieset states that original resolution "can be offered on any upgraded Client Gallery or Suite plan". The download is processed asynchronously and arrives as a ZIP by email, and Pixieset states that "for very large collections, downloads may be split into multiple ZIP files".

Then there is the clock that catches people out. Pixieset states that "all download links are designed to expire after 7 days for security purposes", and that a new download can be generated from the gallery to get a new link. So a manual migration is not one long unattended job. It is a sequence of per-collection downloads you have to be present for, each with a link you have a week to use, and the whole thing is documented collection by collection.

That is the honest comparison. The one-click import is fast because it never involves your desktop. The manual route is slow because every file makes a round trip through it. If what you need is masters on your own drives, the manual route is the only one that does that, and it is worth its time. If what you need is your client-facing galleries live somewhere else, it is not.

The four pieces of work that are genuinely yours

Deciding what moves. This is the step people skip and then regret, because it is the one that actually sets the size of everything after it. You almost certainly do not need every gallery you have ever published. Bring the ones a client might still open, the ones you show as samples, and the current season. Leave the rest where they are. A smaller migration is a faster migration and a much faster check.

Checking. Open three or four imported galleries beside the Pixieset originals and look at the things the table above says are carried: the title, the order, the sections, the password. Pick galleries that are unalike, so one with several sets, one with a password, one that is large. If those are right, the rest are right, because the same code did all of them.

Swapping the links you have already sent. This is the only part that touches your clients, and it is much smaller than it sounds. Your gallery count is not the relevant number. The relevant number is how many clients have a live link in their inbox that they might actually click this month. Send those people the new link at yourname.clientgallery.io. For everyone else, the old link keeps working for as long as your Pixieset subscription is active, and Pixieset states that collections "will stay online for as long as you have an active subscription, or until you delete them yourself; they do not expire", unless the Auto-Expiry feature is used. That is what buys you an unhurried overlap.

Cancelling, on your own terms. Do not cancel Pixieset the day you import. There is nothing to gain by it. Pixieset states that "refunds are not issued for account cancellations" and that yearly plans can be cancelled at the end of the cycle, so ending early does not return money to you. It states that cancelling "fully ends the subscription and removes access to that product". Keep both live until you have checked what you moved and swapped the links that matter, then cancel at your renewal date. One thing we will not tell you, because Pixieset does not document it: what a downgrade does to your existing collections. Do not build a plan on that.

When you should not do this at all

Some studios should stay where they are, and the speed of the import is not an argument against that.

If your revenue runs through a print store attached to your galleries, this is not a replacement for it. There is no print store here, no commission and no sales automation, and no import speed compensates for removing a sales channel you rely on. If you deliver video or need RAW files hosted, this does not do it either. Uploads accept JPG and PNG. No RAW and no video. That constraint is what keeps the price flat at 10 $/month or 100 $/year with everything included, and it is a real constraint, not a roadmap item.

And if you are unsure, the staged path is the reason you do not have to decide today. Import one gallery with the single-gallery bookmark. Look at it. Import a season. Look at that. Re-running skips what is already there, so nothing duplicates and no stage commits you to the next. The guide to migrating in batches walks through that order in more detail, and the switching guide covers what changes in your day to day once the galleries are here.

Sources

This page publishes no migration duration, no transfer rate and no elapsed-time figure, because none has been measured. Where a claim about Pixieset appears above, it is worded as "Pixieset states" and cited to the help-centre article it came from, with that article's own update date rather than the date we read it, because that is the date Pixieset last stood behind the wording. Pixieset per-tier prices and storage figures are deliberately absent: they are not available from an automated read of the marketing pages and are not inferred here. The clientgallery.io behaviour described above was checked against the running product on 12 September 2026.

Frequently asked

Why will you not tell me how many hours it takes?

Because we have not measured it across real accounts, and an invented figure would be worse than none. The transfer runs unattended and its length depends on how many galleries and photos you have and on your connection. The time that is actually yours is deciding what moves, checking a few galleries, swapping the links you have already sent, and cancelling at your renewal date.

Can I keep working while the import runs?

Yes. It is unattended once you click the bookmark, and nothing about it stops you using either platform. Your Pixieset galleries stay exactly as they were, because every call the import makes to Pixieset is a read.

Does the import change or delete anything in my Pixieset account?

No. It only reads. Nothing is written there, nothing is deleted there, and no Pixieset password reaches clientgallery.io. You click a bookmark while signed in to your own dashboard.

Do I have to migrate everything at once?

No. Re-running the import skips whatever has already been imported, so it can be run again safely and in stages without creating duplicates. There is also a single-gallery bookmark if you want to test on one gallery before bringing the account over.

What resolution do the imported photos arrive at?

At the largest web size Pixieset serves, not your original files. That is the right source for a proofing gallery, but it means the import is not a backup and cannot recover masters you no longer hold. Full-resolution delivery here uses a ZIP you upload yourself from your own drives, live for 3 days per client handoff and re-uploadable any time.

What happens to the gallery links I have already emailed to clients?

They still point at Pixieset and are untouched by the import. Pixieset states that collections stay online for as long as your subscription is active and do not expire unless you use its Auto-Expiry feature. So send the new link only to the clients with a live link they might click this month, and let the rest lapse when you cancel.

Should I cancel Pixieset as soon as the import finishes?

No. Pixieset states that refunds are not issued for account cancellations and that yearly plans can be cancelled at the end of the cycle, so cancelling early gains you nothing. Keep both live until you have checked what you moved, then cancel at your renewal date.

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Related guides

How Long Does It Take to Migrate Client Galleries? (2026)