How Long Should Clients Have to Choose Their Photos?

Seven to fourteen days, counted from the moment the gallery link leaves your outbox and stated in that same email. Under a week is tight for a household that has to sit down together. Over two weeks and you are the one paying for it.

We will not dress that up as research. A number with no method behind it is worth less than an argument you can check, so here is the argument.

A selection deadline is not a politeness. It is where four separate pressures meet, and the useful window satisfies all four at once.

• The edit has to stay in your head. In the days right after culling you still remember which frame had the light and which one needs the sign taken out of the corner. A list that comes back a week later lands on a warm job. A list that comes back in two months means re-learning your own work first.
• The client needs one normal work week plus a weekend. Almost nobody chooses photos on a Tuesday at 3pm. They open the gallery on their phone, decide they want a bigger screen, and the real sitting happens on a Saturday. A window with no full weekend in it assumes your client has a free evening, which is an assumption rather than a plan.
• One traveller should not blow up the schedule. Two weeks absorbs a work trip or a holiday without a renegotiation. Ten days usually does not. If you already know the client is away, start the clock from the day they get back rather than shortening everyone else's window to match.
• You should never be filing a half-finished job. A month invites the gallery to go cold, and a cold gallery becomes three reminder emails, a partial list and an invoice you feel awkward sending. The deadline is what stops a two-week job becoming a two-month one.

Seven days is the shortest window that still contains a weekend. Fourteen is the longest that still lands while the shoot is warm and before the job goes quiet. That is the whole derivation, and it is why the range has two ends rather than one number.

Pick the end of the range that matches how many people have to agree and how long the list is. These are our suggestions, and a starting point you adjust after three or four jobs.

A deadline introduced later reads as pressure. The same deadline in the email that carries the link reads as how the studio works. Send it once, in that first message, and say what happens after the date.

The consequence is the part most photographers leave out, and it is the part that does the work. Not a threat, just the operational fact: editing is scheduled, and a late list arrives into a schedule that has moved on. A version you can steal:

Your gallery is live at [link]. Open a photo, star what you like, then love the ones you want in the album, and hit Send my picks when you are done. Please send them by [date], two weeks from today. After that date I edit in the order picks come in, so a later list means a later delivery. Take the two weeks if you need them, and tell me if something has come up.

Two details matter. Name the date, not the duration, because "within two weeks" makes the client do arithmetic. And tell them what to do, not only when: a gallery on clientgallery.io opens with the instruction to star what you like, love your favorites, then send your picks, so an email echoing those three verbs is one the client does not have to interpret.

Before the deadline arrives you want to know one thing: has the client started. A client who never opened the gallery needs the link again. A client who opened it and picked eleven photos needs a nudge to finish, which is a different message.

Here is exactly what clientgallery.io tells you, and nothing beyond it.

• An opened indicator on each gallery tile. In the studio dashboard you can see, per gallery, whether it has been opened at all. That one signal separates "the email never landed" from "they are thinking about it".
• Pick and comment counts per gallery on the clients page. Picks accumulating means the client is mid-decision. Comments with no picks means they have questions rather than a shortlist.
• A push notification the moment picks are sent. The iOS app has been live since 30 August 2026, and push fires on exactly two events, picks sent and a full-resolution ZIP download, each with its own per-device toggle. You hear that the client finished while you are away from the desk.
• An email on picks that carries the numbers. It names the client and the gallery, and the body states how many photos were loved and how many were starred. That is usually enough to tell a finished selection from a first pass before you open anything.

Now the limits. The analytics dashboard is account-wide, not per gallery. It reports Gallery visits, Unique visitors, Photo views, Favourites, Picks sent, ZIP downloads and Shares against the previous period, plus an average time per visitor, a device split and a top-five photo list. There is no per-client behaviour trail and no per-gallery analytics screen. You cannot see that one client stalled at photo forty. You can see whether the gallery was opened and how many picks and comments it holds, and that is the honest set.

Most missed deadlines are not indifference. They are a client who opened the gallery, felt the size of the decision and closed the tab. Shrinking the decision beats shortening the window.

• Give them two answers instead of one. In our galleries a single tap stars a photo and a double tap loves it. A star is a yes, a love is album-worthy. Two levels let a client commit to a photo without ranking it in the same instant, which is the moment most people stall. Pixieset instead pairs one heart with multiple favorite lists, so clients can "create multiple lists to organize different selections", which asks them to manage folders rather than rank a photo.
• Break a big event into chapters. Sub-galleries are exactly one level deep, and each has its own share link and can hold its own access code. A wedding split into getting ready, ceremony, portraits and reception is four approachable sittings instead of one intimidating grid, and one of them fits in a lunch break.
• Send fewer photos. A gallery holds up to 1,000 photos, which is a ceiling and not a target. Every near-duplicate you leave in is a decision you have handed to someone less qualified to make it than you are.
• Say the target number. "Star the ones you like, love about twenty five for the album" turns an unbounded judgement into a countable task.

One note on the finish line. Picking needs no client account and is authorized by the share link alone, but the send dialog asks for a name and a valid email, and the server rejects a submission without both. Say so in your delivery email so it does not surprise anyone at the last step.

Galleries on clientgallery.io never expire, and no code path deletes a gallery or its proofs. There is no expiry date field, no countdown shown to the client, and no automatic lock when your date passes. The one thing on a clock is the full-resolution delivery ZIP, which stays live for three days per handoff and can be re-uploaded at any time.

So your deadline is a promise between you and your client, backed by your contract and your schedule, not by software. If that sounds like a weakness, look at the alternative: a platform that enforces a deadline is a platform that will eventually take something away from a paying client on a date you set months ago, usually while you are on a shoot. We prefer the pressure coming from you, in writing, once. That is a philosophy rather than a fact, and the next section is the case for the other one.

An expiry date is itself an enforcement mechanism, and some platforms build the consequence into the product. That is a legitimate reason to choose one of them over us. Three verified examples.

ShootProof attaches a cost to keeping galleries alive past your plan. Its plan cards read "Archive for a fee" on every tier except Unlimited, where they read "Archiving Included". The fee is "a minimum monthly charge of $2.99 for up to 25 GB of storage", and above that "you will be charged $.05 per additional GB". Billing runs for the previous month, so when you stop, "you will still incur one more bill". A studio that pays every month a job stays open has an incentive to close jobs.

Pic-Time's free plan removes the gallery on a clock. The pricing page states the free storage drops to 3 GB, printed as "Reduced to 3GB after 3 months" in the desktop table and "after 6 Months" on the mobile card, a contradiction worth knowing before you rely on either. The help centre says three months, and adds that galleries above the limit "will be permanently deleted 1 week after the plan changes (oldest galleries first)", and that once "the gallery has been purged for over 1 week, the high res photos cannot be restored". That is the hardest deadline on this page, enforced whether or not your client was ready.

Pic-Time also caps the selection itself. Its Selection Request tool is photographer-initiated and count-limited: "The Amount is the maximum number of images the client can select", included in the Professional and Advanced plans. If your recurring problem is a client who picks eighty photos for a thirty-photo package rather than one who picks nothing, that is the closest published equivalent to a hard cap, and we do not have it.

Stay with them if platform enforcement is worth the trade, or if your business runs through an integrated print store and CRM. Our position is narrower: a flat 10 $ a month, galleries that never expire, and a deadline you enforce in your own words. See how to remind clients without nagging for what to send when the date arrives and the picks have not.

The seven to fourteen day range on this page is our editorial recommendation and its reasoning, not a measured figure, and it is not attributed to any survey, study or average. Every number, price, policy and quote below traces to the source next to it. Product behaviour was verified in the clientgallery.io code on 5 September 2026, and every competitor page was fetched on 5 September 2026.

• clientgallery.io product behaviour verified in code, 5 September 2026: two pick levels with a star and a love, single tap stars and double tap loves, the gallery instruction to star what you like and love your favorites then send your picks, the name and validated email required to send picks, sub-galleries exactly one level deep with their own share links and access codes, the opened indicator on each gallery tile, per-gallery pick and comment counts on the clients page, the account-wide analytics dashboard and its labels, push on picks sent and on full-resolution ZIP download with per-device toggles, the iOS app live since 30 August 2026, the pick email stating how many were loved and how many starred, 1,000 photos per gallery, the three-day full-resolution ZIP window, galleries that never expire, and the 10 $ a month price. https://clientgallery.io
• Pixieset, How does my client create multiple Favorite Lists (one heart icon per photo, added to a new or existing favorite list, and create multiple lists to organize different selections), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003733251-How-does-my-client-create-multiple-Favorite-Lists
• ShootProof, What does archiving cost (minimum monthly charge of $2.99 for up to 25 GB, $.05 per additional GB, billed for the previous month, one more bill after you stop), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.shootproof.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008322408-What-does-archiving-cost
• ShootProof plans (Archive for a fee on every tier except Unlimited, where archiving is included), fetched 5 September 2026, https://www.shootproof.com/plans/
• Pic-Time pricing (free plan storage reduced to 3GB, printed as after 3 months in the desktop table and after 6 Months on the mobile card), fetched 5 September 2026, https://www.pic-time.com/pricing
• Pic-Time help centre, why has my free plan storage been reduced to 3GB (three months, galleries above the limit permanently deleted 1 week after the plan changes, oldest first, high res photos not restorable after a week), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.pic-time.com/en/articles/9210592-why-has-my-free-plan-storage-been-reduced-to-3gb
• Pic-Time help centre, how do I request a client selection (the Amount is the maximum number of images the client can select, included in the Professional and Advanced plans), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.pic-time.com/en/articles/7831183-how-do-i-request-a-client-selection