WeTransfer vs Dropbox Transfer for Photos

For a single large handoff from a free account, Dropbox Transfer gives the link more time. Dropbox lists 7 days on Basic, Family and Plus. WeTransfer lists up to 3 days on Free and Starter.

For volume, the two count differently. Dropbox caps each transfer by plan. WeTransfer Free and Starter cap what you send across a rolling 30-day window.

For presentation, both list passwords and branding on paid plans. On WeTransfer they are listed on Ultimate. On Dropbox they are listed for Standard, Professional, Education, Essentials, Business, Business Plus, Advanced and Enterprise.

If the files are going to a paying client who will want them again next year, both are the wrong object. The last section explains why, and what to use instead.

WeTransfer's plan names are Free, Starter, Ultimate, Teams and Enterprise. Dropbox states that Transfer is available to all Dropbox users, with the size limit set by the plan you have.

This is the difference that surprises people most.

Dropbox Transfer sets a ceiling on each transfer. On the free Basic plan that ceiling is 2 GB. On Plus it is 50 GB, and on Standard and Advanced it is 100 GB. Dropbox also states that its Replay add-on raises the limit to 250 GB.

WeTransfer Free and Starter work on a budget instead. WeTransfer states that Free allows up to 10 transfers, or 3 GB in total, in any rolling 30-day window. Starter allows up to 10 transfers, or 300 GB in total, in a 30-day period. Ultimate drops the count and allows unlimited transfers of up to 1 TB each.

For a photographer, the rolling window matters more than any single figure. A busy wedding month can mean more than ten handoffs. On Free or Starter, the eleventh one has to wait for the next window.

WeTransfer's help pages fetched for this comparison did not state a per-transfer size for Free or Starter, so this page does not give one.

Both services treat the link as temporary by default.

WeTransfer states that on Free and Starter, uploads can be kept online for up to 3 days. It also states the window is calculated from the exact moment the transfer is sent. A transfer sent on Friday evening can be gone by Monday evening.

On Ultimate, WeTransfer states you can keep transfers active for as long as you like. Custom expiration is also listed on Ultimate.

Dropbox states that transfers on Basic, Family and Plus expire after 7 days. On the other plans you can pick a custom expiration date, and the default is 30 days.

Either way, the client who comes back in six months finds a dead link. That is not a flaw in either product. It is what a transfer is for.

On both services, the page the client lands on belongs to the vendor unless you pay for branding.

Dropbox states the recipient does not need a Dropbox account to access or download a transfer. Custom expiration dates, passwords, logos and backgrounds are listed for Standard, Professional, Education, Essentials, Business, Business Plus, Advanced and Enterprise. The plans page lists branded transfers on Advanced.

WeTransfer lists custom expiration, password protection, branded pages and Access Control on Ultimate. WeTransfer's help index also lists articles on download counts and Access Control. Those articles were not opened for this comparison, so their behaviour is not described here.

None of the transfer documentation fetched for this page describes a way for the client to tell you which frames they want. A transfer delivers files. The selection comes back however the client chooses to send it.

Prices were left out of the table on purpose. WeTransfer's pricing did not load, and a comparison with one price in it is not a comparison.

A client delivery is usually two things. There are the photos the client looks at, shares and picks from. And there is the full-resolution set they download to keep.

A transfer handles only the second, and only for a few days. A gallery handles both.

On clientgallery.io, the gallery is a page on the studio's own subdomain with no platform branding on it. Each gallery can have its own password. The client can like and love frames and send the selection back, and the two-way Lightroom Classic plugin pulls those picks into the catalog. The client can download the whole gallery in one click or any single image.

Be clear about what is timed, because it is comparable to a transfer. Full-resolution delivery is a paid feature: you upload one full-resolution ZIP per gallery, and it stays live for 3 days per handoff. That is the same length as WeTransfer's free window. The difference is what surrounds it. You can re-upload the ZIP any time the client asks, and there are 100 GB of standing ZIPs per account.

The gallery itself does not expire. Hosted galleries stay up for as long as the account exists, so the link the client saved last year still opens. Uploaded photos are browser-compressed proof JPEGs of about 0.6 MB each, with fair-use ceilings of 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB of proofs per paid account.

The price is one plan at $10 a month or $100 a year, with the first gallery free. The longer argument against a transfer for client work is on the WeTransfer alternative page. The mechanics of the two-part handoff are in how to send full-resolution photos to a client. If Dropbox is already your storage, the Dropbox versus a client gallery comparison covers that pairing row by row.

When should you skip the gallery? When the recipient is a colleague, a lab or an agency that wants raw files in its own system. Send a transfer and move on.

• WeTransfer help centre, plan limits, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/subscriptions/plan-limits, article updated 30 May 2026, fetched 24 September 2026. Free and Starter transfer windows, Ultimate per-transfer size, features listed on Ultimate.
• WeTransfer help centre, transfer availability, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/transfer-availability, article updated 29 May 2026, fetched 24 September 2026. Up to 3 days on Free and Starter, open-ended on Ultimate, window counted from sending.
• WeTransfer help centre, subscriptions, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/subscriptions, fetched 24 September 2026. Plan names.
• Dropbox help centre, Dropbox Transfer: an overview, https://help.dropbox.com/share/dropbox-transfer, article updated 14 July 2025, fetched 24 September 2026. Size limits per plan, expiry, password and branding plan list, no account needed.
• Dropbox plans, https://www.dropbox.com/plans, fetched 24 September 2026, Canadian storefront. Plus at CA$12.99 a month billed monthly with 2 TB, transfer sizes, branded transfers on Advanced.
• clientgallery.io product facts as shipped, checked 24 September 2026: plan price, subdomain, per-gallery password, picks, Lightroom Classic plugin, proof size, fair-use ceilings and the full-resolution ZIP window.