clientgallery.io

Comparison

Pic-Time vs Pixieset: Which Is Better?

Both ladders in one table, the commission rule that actually separates them, the Lightroom gap that runs the other way, and what each company publishes about going over your storage limit.

Updated September 2026

Pic-Time and Pixieset are the two default answers to "where do I put the client gallery". Most comparisons rank features. The decision is usually made by four things instead: what a gigabyte costs on each ladder, what the store takes, what the Lightroom plugin gives back, and what each company says happens when you run out of room.

This page settles those four from first-party pages fetched on 4 September 2026. Each platform wins some of them outright, and the verdict names which studio should buy which. Our own product is one short section at the end, with a plain statement of who should not buy it.

The two ladders, side by side

Both companies quote a monthly rate and a lower monthly rate for paying a year up front. Neither publishes a yearly dollar total anywhere, so the annual columns below are the rates each company prints, not a yearly charge. All figures are US dollars.

PlatformPlanPer month, billed annuallyPer month, billed monthlyPhoto storageCommission on store sales
Pic-TimeFree0 $0 $10 GB, reduced to 3 GB after 3 months15%, always
Pic-TimeBeginner7 $8 $20 GB15%, always
Pic-TimeProfessional21 $25 $100 GB8% when Pic-Time collects, 0% when you collect
Pic-TimeAdvanced42 $50 $Unlimited, fair use applies6% when Pic-Time collects, 0% when you collect
PixiesetFree0 $0 $3 GB15%
PixiesetBasic8 $10 $10 GB0%
PixiesetPlus16 $20 $100 GB0%
PixiesetPro24 $30 $1 TB (the page prints 1000 GB)0%
PixiesetUltimate40 $50 $Unlimited, RAW capped at 1,000 GB0%

Read the ladder by rung, not by tier name. At the entry rung Pic-Time is better value: 20 GB for 7 $ against 10 GB for 8 $. At every rung above that Pixieset is cheaper for the same space, 100 GB at 16 $ against 21 $, and it has a rung Pic-Time does not, 1 TB at 24 $, where a Pic-Time studio outgrowing 100 GB has nowhere to go but the 42 $ unlimited tier. At the top they converge again, 40 $ against 42 $.

One caution on the Pic-Time free plan. Its pricing page renders the free card with a stray "$8 Monthly" line copied from Beginner. Free is 0 $. The same page also shows the free storage drop as 3 months in the desktop table and 6 months on the mobile card; the help center says 3 months, which is the figure used here.

Commission: the one place they genuinely diverge

If you sell prints, this is the whole comparison, and Pixieset wins it clearly.

Pixieset's rule is one line with no conditions attached. Its help center lists the fee per tier as "Client Gallery - Basic, Plus, Pro, Ultimate : 0% / Suite - Starter, Pro, Ultimate: 0% / Studio 60, Studio 80, Studio 120 : 0% / Free: 15%". Any paid Client Gallery plan, from 8 $ a month billed annually, takes nothing from a sale.

Pic-Time's rule has an exception written into it. Its help center says Pic-Time "offers commission-free store sales for all paid plans (with the exception of Beginner Client Delivery Suite plan and Art Store Professional plan)", and that on Free and Beginner the commission "is always collected, regardless of store setup". The 0% is also conditional on who takes the money: when Pic-Time collects payment it charges 8% on Professional and 6% on Advanced, so 0% needs both a plan above Beginner and a studio that collects payments itself.

In numbers, a studio doing 20,000 $ of print sales a year pays nothing in platform commission on Pixieset Basic at 8 $ a month. The same studio pays 3,000 $ on Pic-Time Beginner at 7 $ a month, and 1,600 $ on Pic-Time Professional with Pic-Time collecting. The dollar of subscription difference is not the number that matters.

One footnote in the other direction. On either platform the commission sits on top of card fees, and Pixieset cites the payment processors it names at 2.9% plus 0.30 $ and 3.49% plus 0.49 $. Its own 15% on Free is charged on the pre-discount subtotal, so a coupon comes out of your share.

Branding and your own domain: Pixieset again

Pixieset unlocks both at its cheapest paid tier, 8 $ a month billed annually. The branding article says an upgraded plan lets you "add a Logo, Collection Cover Logo, and a Custom Favicon and have the ability to remove Pixieset Branding", which takes the "Powered by Pixieset" message off the gallery homepage footer and the bottom of collections. The domain article says an "upgraded Client Gallery or Suite subscription is required to set up a subdomain to your Client Gallery".

Pic-Time splits the two. Your logo and watermark arrive at Beginner, at 7 $. Custom domain and removing Pic-Time branding are Professional features, at 21 $ a month billed annually or 25 $ monthly, so a studio that wants its galleries to carry no platform name pays about two and a half times as much on Pic-Time as on Pixieset. Extra brands are 6 $ a month each. This is a straightforward win for Pixieset, and it compounds: the same 8 $ that removes the branding also buys the commission-free store.

Lightroom: this one goes to Pic-Time

Both plug into Lightroom Classic. They are not doing the same job.

Pic-Time lists upload from Lightroom on every plan including Free, then gates a second group to Professional and Advanced: importing project structure, batch rename, and syncing client selections and favourites. That last item is the one that saves an afternoon, and it costs 21 $ a month billed annually to reach.

Pixieset's plugin is upload-only, and Pixieset says so itself. Its install article opens with "The Pixieset Lightroom Plug-in allows you to upload photos to Pixieset directly from Lightroom Classic". The sync option pulls collection and set names only, and the documentation is emphatic: "Your photos from Pixieset will not be imported into Lightroom."

Client favourites come back as text rather than as data. The documented route is the Lightroom Copy List, which "will create a list of all images in a Favorite List, formatted perfectly for Lightroom's search function". You paste the list into the Library filter with "Any Searchable Field" and "Contains". Pixieset documents two ways that goes wrong, which is to its credit. Over-selection: "If you are searching for IMG_1, for example, IMG_101 might come up as well." And silent misses: "If you use virtual copies when editing images, and export these virtual copies, the Lightroom Copy List will not pull the virtual copies up."

Be fair about it. The copy list works, it is free on every tier, and for a photographer with tidy filenames who does not use virtual copies it is a two-minute job that needs no upgrade. Pic-Time's selection sync is better, but it is a paid feature two tiers up, and below Professional the Pic-Time plugin uploads only, the same as Pixieset's. On paid tiers, Pic-Time wins Lightroom.

Going over your limit: what each one actually publishes

This is the section other comparisons skip, and it is the one that costs people photos.

Pic-Time publishes deletion, in writing, with a clock. On a drop to Free, storage falls to 3 GB and "any galleries above that limit will be permanently deleted 1 week after the plan changes (oldest galleries first)". Asked whether purged galleries can be recovered, the help center answers "No. If the gallery has been purged for over 1 week, the high res photos cannot be restored." A paid downgrade uses the same wording with a longer clock: Advanced to Professional means storage "limited to 100GB only ... permanently deleted 45 days after the plan changes (oldest galleries first)", repeated at each tier boundary below it.

SituationPic-Time, publishedPixieset, published
Dropping to the free planGalleries above the cap permanently deleted 1 week after the change, oldest firstNo rule published
Downgrading between paid plansGalleries above the new cap permanently deleted 45 days after the change, oldest firstNo rule published
Over the limit while still payingNot addressed by the downgrade articleUploads stop; the remedy given is to delete or upgrade
Can deleted content be recoveredNo, once purged for over a week the high resolution photos cannot be restoredNo, deletion is permanent and cannot be undone

Pixieset has no equivalent article, and no published rule for what happens to galleries above your cap. What exists is the upload side: the amount you can upload "depends on your remaining storage space and your subscription plan", and the remedy offered is "You can always delete collections/photos/videos to free up space or upgrade to unlock more storage". Deleting is one-way: "Deleting content from Client Gallery is permanent. Deletion cannot be undone."

Read that difference carefully, because it is a difference in documentation, not a proven difference in behaviour. Pixieset never states that delivered galleries stay viewable when you are over your limit, and never states that they do not. Silence is not a promise. What is fair to say is that Pic-Time tells you the worst case in advance and gives you a week or 45 days to act on it, while Pixieset leaves you to find out. Keep your own copy of the originals either way.

Two companies, the same two fair-use numbers

Both sell an unlimited tier, and both reserve the right to bill you above the same two figures.

Pic-Time, on unlimited storage accounts: the plan "is designed for individual photographers' business only... If your usage exceeds the fair limits (more than 20GB per gallery and 100 GB of bandwidth per month), additional fees may apply."

Pixieset, in section 6 of its Terms, last updated 20 March 2026: "We reserve the right to charge additional fees to users who go above the fair usage amount that is determined to be more than 20 GB per collection, and 100 GB of bandwidth per month." The same section adds that "Our client gallery plans are meant for individual photographer business use only" and points multi-photographer businesses at the Studio plans.

Twenty gigabytes per gallery, one hundred gigabytes of bandwidth a month, individual photographers only. Two independent companies, the same three limits, and neither publishes what the additional fee would be. A single large wedding gallery that a family downloads repeatedly is exactly what these clauses describe, on either platform.

Archiving and expiry

Pic-Time archives old galleries automatically. Galleries uploaded before December 2024 are archived after 1 year, and from December 2024 onward after 3 years. Getting one back is not instant: de-archiving "will take 4-15 hours to package", and clients can start it themselves through a "Prepare & Notify Me" button. No de-archiving fee is published.

Pixieset has no archive tier and no archived-gallery pricing. Its Auto-Expiry feature is not an archive: "When the Collection 'expires', it will be set to Hidden status, and your clients will no longer be able to view their images. This does not delete the Collection, or remove it from your Pixieset account." It frees no storage. Pic-Time's own expiry behaves the same way: an expired gallery "will remain on your account (and will be counted towards your account storage) but won't be accessible to your client", with alerts at 7, 4 and 1 day. On both platforms, expiring a gallery is a courtesy to your client list, not a way to get storage back.

The verdict

If print sales are your revenue: Pixieset. Zero percent on every paid tier from 8 $ a month, with no exception clause and no requirement that you collect the payments yourself. Pic-Time's store can also reach 0%, but only above Beginner and only if you take the money, and its Beginner tier charges 15% permanently. At any meaningful print volume the commission dwarfs the subscription difference.

If you deliver files and never sell a print: Pixieset above 20 GB, Pic-Time below it. Pic-Time Beginner at 7 $ gives 20 GB, twice Pixieset Basic's 10 GB for a dollar less, and that is the right buy if your whole business fits in 20 GB and you accept Pic-Time branding and no custom domain. The moment you want your own domain, an unbranded gallery, or more than 20 GB, Pixieset is cheaper at every rung: 100 GB at 16 $ against 21 $, and 1 TB at 24 $ with no Pic-Time equivalent below 42 $.

If your work lives in Lightroom Classic: Pic-Time, on Professional or above. Syncing client selections and favourites back from the gallery is a documented Pic-Time feature at 21 $ a month billed annually. Pixieset's documented return path is a copy-pasteable filename list that it warns can over-select and can miss virtual copies. If you will not pay 21 $, this reason evaporates, because Pic-Time's Beginner plugin uploads only, the same as Pixieset's.

One thing that should not break the tie: Pic-Time publishes a strict deletion policy and Pixieset publishes none. That reads as a point for Pixieset and is not one. A rule you can plan around beats a silence you will meet by surprise, so treat it as a reason to keep your own archive rather than as a reason to choose.

A third shape of product, briefly

Everything above is a ladder: you buy a tier, the tier holds a number of gigabytes, and crossing the number costs money. clientgallery.io is not a cheaper rung on that ladder, it is a different shape. One plan, 10 $ a month or 100 $ a year, which is 8.33 $ a month. No storage tiers, no store, no commissions, no per-gallery fees. Galleries, photos and clients are unlimited under fair use, on the studio's own subdomain, with no platform branding on any client-facing page on any plan. Face Search and a two-way Lightroom Classic plugin are included rather than gated.

Fair use, in plain figures, because a page that argues against someone else's caps owes you its own. Uploaded photos are browser-compressed proof JPEGs of about 0.6 MB each, hosted for as long as the account exists. The abuse tripwires are 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB of proofs per paid account, which is hundreds of thousands of photos. Free accounts hold 5 GB and one gallery. Full-resolution delivery is a paid feature and works differently: you upload a full-resolution ZIP per gallery, it stays live for 3 days per handoff and can be re-uploaded any time, with 100 GB of standing ZIPs per account.

The restriction that keeps the price flat belongs here rather than in a footnote. clientgallery.io hosts JPEGs and does not warehouse RAW files or master video. If RAW delivery is part of your service, that is Pixieset Pro or Ultimate, not this. A one-bookmark import reads a whole Pixieset account from the Pixieset dashboard and rebuilds the galleries under your brand, reading only and changing nothing, and the Lightroom plugin publishes proofs from the catalog and pulls client picks back into it.

Who should not buy clientgallery.io

A studio whose revenue depends on print sales should buy Pixieset or Pic-Time, not us. We have no print store at all. Not a cheaper store, not a store with lower fees. There is no way to sell a print, an album or wall art through a clientgallery.io gallery, so a studio that makes real money from print orders would give up a revenue line to save a subscription line. On the numbers above, Pixieset Basic at 8 $ a month with 0% commission is the better buy for that studio, and it is not close.

The same applies to a studio that lives inside a full business suite. If your contracts, invoices, booking and email marketing sit in the same account as your galleries, moving the galleries out costs you those joins. clientgallery.io is for studios that deliver finished JPEG galleries and get paid somewhere else.

Sources

Every figure and quotation above comes from one of these pages, all fetched 4 September 2026. Both companies price in US dollars, and neither publishes a yearly dollar total, so no annual totals are stated on this page.

Frequently asked

Is Pic-Time or Pixieset better?

Pixieset for a studio that sells prints, because every paid tier is 0% commission with no conditions, while Pic-Time charges 15% on Beginner always. Pixieset for a delivery studio above 20 GB, because it is cheaper at every rung above the entry tier and unlocks branding removal and a custom domain at 8 $ a month. Pic-Time for a Lightroom-heavy studio on Professional or above, where syncing client selections back to the catalog is a documented feature.

Which one is cheaper, Pic-Time or Pixieset?

It depends on the rung. Pic-Time Beginner is 7 $ a month billed annually for 20 GB against Pixieset Basic at 8 $ for 10 GB. Above that Pixieset is cheaper for the same space: 100 GB at 16 $ against 21 $, and 1 TB at 24 $ with no Pic-Time tier between 100 GB and unlimited at 42 $. Neither company publishes a yearly dollar total, only a monthly rate billed annually.

Does Pic-Time take a commission on print sales?

Yes, on some plans. Its help center says commission-free store sales apply to all paid plans with the exception of the Beginner Client Delivery Suite plan and the Art Store Professional plan, and that on Free and Beginner commission is always collected regardless of store setup. When Pic-Time collects the payment it charges 8% on Professional and 6% on Advanced, so 0% needs both a plan above Beginner and collecting payments yourself.

Which plan removes the platform branding?

On Pixieset, any paid plan. Branding removal and a custom domain both unlock at Basic, 8 $ a month billed annually. On Pic-Time, your logo and watermark arrive at Beginner but removing Pic-Time branding and using a custom domain are Professional features, at 21 $ a month billed annually or 25 $ monthly.

What happens to my galleries if I downgrade?

Pic-Time publishes the rule: galleries above the new cap are permanently deleted 45 days after a paid downgrade, or 1 week after a drop to Free, oldest galleries first, and once purged for over a week the high resolution photos cannot be restored. Pixieset publishes no equivalent rule. It documents that uploads stop when you are out of space and that the remedy is to delete or upgrade, and it never states whether already-delivered galleries stay viewable while you are over your limit.

Can either one import client picks back into Lightroom?

Pic-Time can, on Professional and Advanced, where its feature list includes syncing client selections and favourites. Pixieset does not import picks into the catalog. Its documented return path is the Lightroom Copy List, a filename list you paste into Lightroom's search, and Pixieset itself warns that a Contains search can over-select and that virtual copies are not pulled up.

Where does clientgallery.io fit against these two?

One flat plan at 10 $ a month or 100 $ a year, no storage tiers, no store and no commissions, with the studio's own subdomain and no platform branding on any plan. Fair use means 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB of proofs per paid account, free accounts hold 5 GB and one gallery, and full-resolution delivery is a per-gallery ZIP that stays live 3 days per handoff. It hosts JPEGs and does not warehouse RAW or master video. A studio that sells prints should buy Pixieset or Pic-Time instead.

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.

See the one flat plan

Related guides

Pic-Time vs Pixieset: Which Is Better? (2026)