Maternity Session Photo Delivery: A Private, Simple Handoff

A maternity client often is not choosing from a proofing round. They booked a short session and may simply expect a finished set. So the delivery is the whole experience of the product.

Three things matter more here than on a family session. Privacy comes first, because some images show skin or a very intimate moment. The first viewing matters, because the parents often open it together. Continuity matters, because the same family may come back within months for newborn photos.

A good maternity delivery answers all three without adding steps for the client. They should install nothing and create no account. On clientgallery.io, the client opens a web page, types the password if you set one, and sees the photos.

Cull before you upload. A maternity set reads best when every frame earns its place. Near-duplicates make the slideshow drag and dilute the strongest images.

Because this is a delivery, not a selection round, switch picks off for the gallery. The picks switch and the download switch are separate, so turning picks off leaves downloads on. With picks off, the intro line on the client page changes to tell the client their photos are ready.

If the session had distinct parts, such as a studio set and an outdoor set, you can split the gallery into sections. The client still sees one scrolling page. A jump-to bar at the top shows each section with its photo count. Photos you did not place in a section show first, under Highlights.

Use the welcome note for a short personal message. It appears under the gallery title and your studio details. A few plain sentences about the day are enough.

Set a password on the gallery. Anyone who opens the link sees a password page before any photo loads. The same password covers every section in the gallery. There is no separate password per section.

Then switch the share button off for that gallery. The share button is a per-gallery switch, so your other galleries can keep theirs. With it off, the client page does not invite the client to send the gallery on.

Be plain with yourself and with your client about the limit. A password and a hidden share button cannot stop someone from copying the address and texting it, with the password, to a sister or a friend. No web gallery can prevent that once a person who is allowed in decides to pass it on. If some images must never leave the couple, say so in your agreement, and consider leaving the most private frames out of the shared set entirely.

The gallery lives on your own subdomain, in the form studio.clientgallery.io/slug. The page carries your studio name and logo, with no platform branding. The client can switch between a light and a dark page, and the choice is remembered for that gallery.

For the full detail of what the password gates, read the guide on password protecting a client gallery.

Parents may want to watch the set together before they scroll through it. The slideshow button gives them that. It opens the photos full screen with no buttons or labels on top.

The slideshow advances on its own and loops back to the start. A tap or the Escape key ends it. It does not show file names, so nothing technical interrupts the viewing.

The button appears only when the gallery holds more than one photo. It is also a per-gallery switch, so you can hide it if a set is too short to need it.

A simple suggestion for the message you send with the link: tell the client to open it on the largest screen they have and press the slideshow first. That turns the delivery into a small moment instead of a download notice.

When the client is ready to keep the photos, one button downloads the whole gallery as a ZIP. They can also download any single image from its own view. Both depend on the gallery password and on the download switch being on.

That one-click ZIP holds the hosted proof JPEGs, which are sized for fast viewing on screens. If you promised full-resolution files, a paid account can attach a full-resolution ZIP to the gallery. That file stays live for a set number of days per handoff, and you can upload it again at any time, which restarts the clock. The client sees how many days remain.

One detail matters if you use the download switch as a hold. Switching downloads off hides the download-all button and the per-photo download buttons. It does not hide a full-resolution ZIP you have already uploaded. If you want nothing downloadable yet, do not upload the full-resolution ZIP until you are ready.

If the client has an invoice to settle, you can paste your own payment link and attach an invoice PDF. The client sees a button to pay and a button to download the invoice. Nothing unlocks automatically when they pay. You switch downloads on yourself once you see the payment.

More detail on the bulk download, including what a phone does with a ZIP, is in can clients download all photos at once.

These are the product limits that touch a maternity delivery.

A maternity client may book a newborn session in the same conversation. Treat the two as separate deliveries.

Create a second gallery for the newborn session when that session is done. On the paid plan, galleries are unlimited under fair use and there is no per-gallery fee, so the second gallery costs nothing extra. The free account holds one gallery only, so a studio delivering both sessions needs the paid plan.

A second gallery gives the newborn set its own password and its own switches. You might keep the maternity gallery private and let the newborn gallery be shared with grandparents. Separate galleries make that choice clean.

The maternity gallery does not expire, so it is still there when the newborn gallery goes out. Use the same client name and a matching title on both, and the pair reads as one story. A gallery goes dark only if you revoke it or delete it, and deleting a gallery is permanent.

The newborn delivery has its own considerations. Those are covered in the newborn photo delivery guide.

In your studio, each gallery tile shows whether the client has opened it. You can filter your galleries by Seen by client or Not opened yet. That tells you when a gentle follow-up makes sense.

If you use the iPhone or iPad app with download notifications on, you get a push when the client opens the full-resolution ZIP. A proof ZIP or a single-photo download does not send a push.

Account analytics count visits, photo views and ZIP downloads across all your galleries together. They are not broken out per gallery, and visitors are never identified.

Maternity work can also be sold as wall art and albums. clientgallery.io has no print store and takes no commission. If your studio earns most of its revenue from prints and wall art ordered inside the gallery, keep a platform with a built-in store.

If you sell in person, the gallery still works as the digital handoff after the order is placed. It hosts JPEG files and does not store RAW files or master video, so your originals stay on your own drives.

This page states no external figures. Every number and feature above describes clientgallery.io itself and was checked against the product code on September 16, 2026. That covers the plan prices, the gallery and storage ceilings, the slideshow timing, and the full-resolution ZIP window. It also covers the password gate, the per-gallery switches for sharing, slideshow, picks and downloads, and the opened indicator.