Dropbox vs a client gallery for photo delivery

Dropbox is storage with sharing attached. The unit is the file. You put files in a folder, the folder is on every machine you own, and a link hands that folder to someone else. Dropbox publishes a maximum upload size of 2 TB per file, and it previews camera raw formats, .psd and .tif alongside ordinary JPEGs. For moving a shoot between two professionals, that is close to ideal.

clientgallery.io is delivery with storage attached. The unit is the gallery: one page, one client, one shoot. It is one plan at $10 a month or $100 a year, the first gallery is free, and it hosts JPEGs rather than warehousing RAW files or master video. The page the client opens lives on the studio's own subdomain and carries the studio's logo, name, colours and fonts, with no platform name, badge, footer or link on it anywhere.

Read that way, the comparison stops being about which is better. It is about which job you are doing on a given afternoon.

Dropbox amounts are the strings its pricing pages rendered on 7 September 2026, in Canadian dollars, with no billing-period claim attached because the page's monthly and yearly toggle states could not be told apart reliably. "Not covered" means no official Dropbox page fetched for this comparison describes the feature, so it is left unscored rather than guessed at.

This page is not going to tell you that a gallery saves you money. Dropbox Plus is listed at CA$12.99 a month for one person with 2 TB. clientgallery.io is $10 a month, or $100 a year. Those are two different currencies and two different things, and nobody should switch tools over the difference.

What the two amounts buy is not comparable, though. The Dropbox figure buys 2 TB that holds anything: RAW files, master video, your accounting, a client's deliverables. The gallery figure buys presentation for JPEGs, with fair-use ceilings of 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB of proofs per paid account, at roughly 0.6 MB per proof JPEG. A free account holds one gallery and 5 GB.

So the honest framing is that for about the same monthly cost you can add a tool that does the delivering, rather than replacing the tool that does the storing. Most studios that make the move keep both.

It does not put your brand in front of the client. A Dropbox link opens a Dropbox page. Your files are inside somebody else's furniture, at the exact moment your client is most likely to forward the link to a friend who needs a photographer. A gallery page on yourname.clientgallery.io carries your logo across the top and nothing else.

It does not tell you they opened it. No official Dropbox page fetched for this comparison describes per-link view reporting, so this page does not score it. On the gallery side the dashboard shows a green or red dot per gallery, plus a filter for the galleries nobody has opened yet, and the analytics view holds visits, unique visitors, photo views, favourites, downloads and time spent. Knowing a link went unopened for nine days is the difference between a polite nudge and a silent client.

It does not collect picks. A folder holds files. It does not know which ones the client wants. In a gallery the client stars what they like and hearts the must-haves, then presses send and types their name and email. There is no account to create; the link is the login. The photographer is notified when the selection lands. The alternative on Dropbox is the spreadsheet of filenames every photographer has received at least once.

It does not carry a payment link. A gallery has a payment link field. You paste your own link and a Pay your invoice button appears on the client's page. No money passes through the platform, and the button is not wired to anything: it is not connected to the downloads switch, so nothing unlocks automatically. If you want to hold files until an invoice clears, you leave downloads off and switch them on yourself once you are paid. That switch is enforced on the server for the whole-gallery ZIP.

The wider case for a gallery over a file transfer is in the complete photo delivery guide.

Dropbox does not expire a shared link on its own. Expiration is set per link, and Dropbox publishes it as available on Professional, Essentials, Standard, Advanced, Business, Business Plus and Enterprise. A link with a date set expires at 11:59 pm on the chosen day, in the link owner's time zone. Shared-link passwords are published on the same list of plans, and Dropbox never re-displays an existing password; it can only be reset.

Two practical consequences. If you are on a plan outside that published list, you are sharing a link that has no password and no end date. And if you set a password and forget it, Dropbox will not show it to you again.

On the gallery side a hosted gallery does not expire, and the password check runs on the server: without it the page returns only the prompt, the photos are never queried, and the whole-gallery ZIP and full-resolution handoff refuse as well. The one timed item is the full-resolution ZIP, which is a handoff rather than storage. It stays live for three days per handoff and can be re-uploaded at any time, with 100 GB of live ZIPs per account.

Dropbox is the more generous tool here, and it says so plainly. The maximum file size you can upload is 2 TB. Dropbox does warn that uploading files larger than 375 GB in a web browser may cause timeouts or interrupted uploads, and points you at the desktop app or the API above that size. It also warns that large uploads may be unreliable on mobile because of operating-system limits, and it blocks any upload that would push the account past its storage limit.

For previews, Dropbox publishes size ceilings per file category rather than one blanket number. Images preview up to 100 to 200 MB or 50 megapixels, with .psd allowed up to 1024 MB. Above the ceiling Dropbox cannot generate a preview and the viewer has to download the file to see it.

A gallery's ceilings are lower and shaped differently, because the proofs are compressed in the photographer's own browser before they are uploaded: about 0.6 MB each, 1,000 per gallery, 250 GB per paid account. Those are abuse tripwires rather than tiers. The full-resolution files travel separately, as the ZIP.

There are deliveries where a gallery is the wrong tool, and pretending otherwise would waste your afternoon.

• Your client is a business that wants files in their own storage. An agency, a magazine, a marketing team with a shared drive and a naming convention does not want a page to browse. They want a folder they can pull into their system. Send the Dropbox link.
• You are delivering RAW files. clientgallery.io hosts JPEGs. It does not warehouse RAW files. Dropbox stores them and previews the camera raw formats besides.
• You are delivering video. Master video does not belong in a photo gallery, and this product does not hold it.
• The handoff is vendor to vendor. Passing a shoot to a retoucher, a designer or a second shooter needs sync, not presentation.
• You need one enormous file to move. Dropbox takes up to 2 TB in a single file, from the desktop app.

Most working studios end up using both, and that is the correct outcome. Dropbox keeps the masters and moves the heavy files. The gallery is what the paying client actually opens.

Every Dropbox figure on this page traces to one of the pages below, fetched on 7 September 2026. Dropbox's storefront resolved to the Canadian site on that date, so every Dropbox amount quoted here is in Canadian dollars. Prices change without notice; re-check them before you make a decision on one. Every clientgallery.io figure describes the product as it ships, verified in the product on the same date.

• Dropbox plans, https://www.dropbox.com/plans, fetched 2026-09-07
• Dropbox business plans comparison, https://www.dropbox.com/business/plans-comparison, fetched 2026-09-07
• Dropbox help center: upload limitations, https://help.dropbox.com/sync/upload-limitations, fetched 2026-09-07
• Dropbox help center: file types that preview, https://help.dropbox.com/view-edit/file-types-that-preview, fetched 2026-09-07
• Dropbox help center: set link permissions, https://help.dropbox.com/share/set-link-permissions, fetched 2026-09-07