clientgallery.io

Notifications

The App That Notifies You When a Client Picks Their Photos

A phone notification the moment picks land, not a bell you have to remember to check. What clientgallery.io sends, what the four big platforms document today, and what a push honestly does not do for you.

Updated 5 September 2026

The gap between a client finishing their selection and you finding out about it is dead time. Nothing is blocked by you. Nothing is blocked by them. The job simply sits there until you happen to open a dashboard and notice a number changed.

Most client gallery platforms close that gap with an email and a bell icon in the web dashboard. Both work. Both depend on you looking. This guide covers the narrower thing people actually search for: an app that puts a notification on your phone the moment a client sends their picks. It states exactly what clientgallery.io does, what each of the four major platforms documents in its own help pages today, and where a push notification stops being useful.

Three different things get called a notification

Before comparing anything, separate the channels. They are not interchangeable, and vendors describe all three with the same word.

A dashboard bell is a list inside the web app. It is accurate and it is complete, but it is passive. You see it when you log in, which is exactly the moment you were going to check anyway.

An email reaches you where you already are, which is why almost every platform sends one. It also lands in the same inbox as invoices, vendor newsletters and the client asking about parking, so it competes for attention.

A push notification is the only one that interrupts. It arrives on a lock screen without you asking. That is its entire advantage, and it is worth exactly as much as the interruption is worth to you.

What clientgallery.io sends, precisely

The clientgallery.io iOS app has been live on the App Store since 30 August 2026. There is no Android app.

Push fires on exactly two events. Nothing else generates a push, and it is better to say that plainly than to let you discover the boundary later:

  • Picks sent. The client has finished and pressed send. Not opened the gallery, not starred one photo, not thought about it. Sent.
  • A full-resolution ZIP download. Someone pulled the final delivery you uploaded for that gallery.

Each of those two has its own toggle, per device. If you want the picks alert on your phone and nothing else, turn the download one off and leave the other on.

Email is narrower than push. Email fires only on picks, to the photographer's address. The subject line carries the client's name, the fact that they sent their picks, and the gallery title, so the whole event is legible in a notification preview without opening anything. The body states how many photos were loved and how many were starred. There is no email on a download. Downloads are push only.

The counts in that email are meaningful because picking has two levels rather than one. A single tap stars a photo, a double tap loves it. So "40 loved, 112 starred" tells you the shape of the selection before you have opened anything: a manageable album set with a wide maybe pile behind it.

Why the send step matters more than the notification

A notification is only as trustworthy as the event behind it. If a platform pings you every time a heart is clicked, you learn to ignore it within a week.

On clientgallery.io the client picks freely with no account, authenticated only by the share link, and nothing is reported to you while they browse. The "Send my picks" dialog is the deliberate step: it requires a name and a validated email address, and the server rejects a submission missing either. That is the moment the push and the email fire.

The practical effect is that the alert means one specific thing. A client is done. It does not mean a client is browsing, and it will not fire five times while a couple argues over the same frame. Picking can also be switched off per gallery if a delivery is not meant to be a selection round; it is on by default.

What the four major platforms document today

Every row below is drawn from that vendor's own documentation, fetched on 5 September 2026 and linked in the Sources section. The framing throughout is not documented, never "cannot". A feature that exists but is undocumented would not show up in this table, and that is a real limitation of the method.

PlatformWhat it documents when a client finishes pickingPhotographer-facing phone app
clientgallery.ioPush on picks sent, with a second push on a full-resolution ZIP download. Email on picks only, with the loved and starred counts.iOS app, live since 30 August 2026. No Android app.
PixiesetA dashboard bell and email settings. The help centre describes the bell as showing "the most recent events that have occurred in your Account" when you click it in the top right corner of the dashboard.Studio Manager, documented around bookings and payments in real time. No push on client picks is documented.
ShootProof"You'll receive a notification on your ShootProof Dashboard, as well as an email notification, sent to the ShootProof account owner email's address".Its mobile apps are client-facing, and "Clients are not able to Favorite or download images ... from a Mobile App".
CloudSpotThe closest behaviour of the four. The client presses an "Alert Photographer" button and "You'll receive an email notification", plus a dashboard Notification Center whose toggle list includes "New Favorites List Created".Not documented.
Pic-TimeIts activities feed documents an entry for "When the client has completed and sent their Selection to you". Favourites are not among the documented activity types.A mobile app with notifications you enable. Which activities reach the phone is not enumerated.

Pic-Time deserves the credit here, and so does CloudSpot. Pic-Time genuinely ships a photographer app, and its help centre genuinely documents a completed-selection entry in the activity feed. What it does not do is state which of those activities push to a phone. CloudSpot gets you an email the instant the client decides they are done, which solves most of the same problem for most people.

A push is a convenience, not a workflow

This is the part a comparison page usually skips. A notification tells you that picks arrived. It does not tell you which photos, and it does not do a minute of the work that follows.

You still open the gallery. You still look at what they chose. The two counts in the email narrow your expectations, and that is all they do. Nobody has ever edited a wedding from a lock screen.

What the alert actually buys you is scheduling. Knowing on Tuesday evening rather than Friday morning means the edit lands in the block you had already reserved. If you check your dashboard daily out of habit, an email is genuinely enough, and a push changes almost nothing about your week. Be honest with yourself about which of those two people you are before you move a business over it.

Where the notification does compound is on the step after it. On clientgallery.io the completed gallery exposes an "Export picks (.txt)" button, and the Lightroom Classic plugin pulls the selection back into the catalog, where a love becomes 5 stars plus a Pick flag and a star becomes 3 stars. The push is the starting gun for that, not a substitute for it.

What you can see per gallery, and what you cannot

Notifications are one signal. It is worth being exact about the others, because this is where marketing copy usually overreaches.

Per gallery, two things are visible. Each gallery tile in the studio dashboard carries an opened indicator, so you can tell whether a client has been in at all. The clients page shows pick and comment counts per gallery.

Beyond that the analytics are account-wide, not per gallery. The dashboard reports gallery visits, unique visitors, photo views, favourites, picks sent, ZIP downloads and shares, each against the previous period, plus average time per visitor, a device split and a top-photos list. There is no per-client behaviour trail. Nothing will tell you that one specific client favourited twelve photos and then stalled. If a platform promises you that, ask to see the screen.

Check this yourself before you switch

Vendors ship app updates constantly, and a help centre is a snapshot. Every competitor statement on this page describes what that vendor documented on 5 September 2026, at the URLs listed below. It is not a claim about what their software is capable of, and it may already be out of date by the time you read it.

So do not switch platforms on the strength of this page alone. Two checks take about ten minutes:

  • Open the linked help article for your current platform. If it now documents a push on client selections, this page is stale and your problem is already solved where you are.
  • Run one real gallery through end to end. Send yourself a share link, pick a few photos, press send, and watch what your phone actually does. That single test outranks every comparison table, including this one.

On clientgallery.io that test costs nothing. The free account holds one gallery within 5 GB, which is enough to fire a real notification at yourself. The paid plan is a flat 10 $ a month or 100 $ a year, and it includes everything described here.

When you should stay where you are

A notification is a small feature. It is not worth rebuilding a business around, and there are clear cases where switching would be a mistake.

If your studio runs on a print lab and a CRM, stay with Pixieset or Pic-Time. Their store, order and vendor machinery is the product you are actually buying, and a faster alert on picks does not replace it. If you sell prints through a fulfilment pipeline, that pipeline is the switching cost, not the galleries.

If an email at the moment the client presses a button already fits how you work, CloudSpot documents exactly that today, and you would be trading a working setup for a marginally faster one.

Also weigh what clientgallery.io does not do. It hosts JPEG proofs, not RAW files and not master video, which is what keeps the price flat. Galleries hold up to 1,000 photos each within 250 GB of proofs per paid account. Full-resolution delivery is a ZIP you upload per gallery that stays live for 3 days per handoff and can be re-uploaded any time, with 100 GB of standing ZIPs per account. If you need a print store or long-term master warehousing inside the same tool, that is a different product than this one.

Sources

Frequently asked

Is there an app that notifies me when a client picks their photos?

Yes. The clientgallery.io iOS app has been live on the App Store since 30 August 2026, and it sends a push notification the moment a client presses send on their picks. A second push covers full-resolution ZIP downloads, and each of the two has its own per-device toggle. There is no Android app.

Do I also get an email when picks come in?

Yes, and only on picks. The email goes to the photographer's address. The subject carries the client's name, the fact that they sent their picks, and the gallery title. The body states how many photos were loved and how many were starred. Downloads are push only, with no email.

Does Pixieset, ShootProof, CloudSpot or Pic-Time push to my phone when a client finishes picking?

None of the four documents that specific push, as of 5 September 2026. Pixieset documents a dashboard bell and email. ShootProof documents a dashboard notification plus an email to the account owner, and its mobile apps are client-facing. CloudSpot documents an Alert Photographer button that emails you, plus a dashboard Notification Center. Pic-Time ships a photographer app and documents a completed-selection activity, but does not enumerate which activities reach the phone.

Does the notification tell me which photos the client chose?

No. It tells you picks arrived, and the email adds two counts, loved and starred. You still open the gallery to see the selection. A push buys you scheduling, not the work itself. The step after it is where the time is saved, through the picks text export or the Lightroom Classic plugin.

Will it notify me every time a client hearts a photo?

No, and that is deliberate. Nothing fires while the client browses. The alert is tied to the send step, which requires a name and a validated email address before the server accepts the submission. So a notification means one thing only: that client is finished.

Can I see whether a client opened the gallery but never picked?

Partly. Each gallery tile carries an opened indicator, and the clients page shows pick and comment counts per gallery, so you can tell opened-but-no-picks apart from never-opened. Beyond that the analytics are account-wide rather than per gallery, so there is no per-client behaviour trail.

How should I verify this before switching platforms?

Open the linked help article for your current platform and check whether it now documents a push on client selections, since vendors update their apps and this page reflects 5 September 2026. Then run one real gallery end to end on a free clientgallery.io account, press send yourself, and watch what your phone does.

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