picdrop Gallery Not Visible to a Client? Check the Storage Limit First

This takes about two minutes and it settles the question before you start suspecting the link, the browser or the client.

1. Which plan you are actually on. Not which one you meant to be on. A trial that ended, a cancellation that came into effect, or a card that stopped working all put you somewhere other than where you think you are.
2. Your storage against your plan's cap. Free includes 1 GB. Pro includes 500 GB, Advanced 1 TB, Business 3 TB and Enterprise 5 TB. If you are on the free plan and you delivered a wedding, 1 GB was gone in the first few minutes of uploading.
3. Your gallery count, if you are on the free plan. Free includes 3 galleries. The gallery cap bites on its own, without any storage problem: a fourth gallery is over the line even if your account holds almost nothing.
4. Whether a plan ended recently. picdrop's trial runs 14 days, needs no credit card and ends automatically. Cancellation follows the billing period, monthly for monthly, semi-annually for semi-annual, annually for annual, and picdrop states that a proportional repayment of the current billing period is not possible. Either way you land back on the free plan and its two limits, 3 galleries and 1 GB, start applying to an account that was built while they did not.

If any of those four turns up something, you have your cause. The delivery a client paid for went quiet because a meter on your side crossed a line, not because anything went wrong with the gallery.

picdrop publishes this twice, on two separate FAQ pages, and the wording is plain enough that it is worth quoting rather than summarising. On the page about what happens after the 14 day trial:

"if your uploaded files exceed the storage limit or the number of galleries included in the free plan, any files and galleries above those limits can no longer be downloaded or accessed by third parties, such as your clients."

https://www.picdrop.com/web/faq/what-happens-to-my-pictures-after-the-14-day-trial

And again, on the page covering the trial month and the contract:

"Existing galleries and files that exceed the maximum of 3 galleries or the 1 GB storage of the free plan are no longer available for third parties and cannot be downloaded anymore."

https://www.picdrop.com/web/faq/trial-month-contract

Now the part that matters if you are reading this in a panic. Your work is still there. picdrop states on the same page that all galleries created so far and all uploaded files will of course be preserved. Nothing has been erased, no countdown to deletion is running, and picdrop publishes no expiry, auto-archive or auto-deletion policy at all. The files survive. Your client's access to them does not, until you are back inside your limits. Keep those two ideas apart, because the fix follows from the difference.

There are two routes back, and they are not the same kind of decision.

Get back under the cap. Remove enough older material that your account fits inside the plan you are on, and the current job comes back within reach of the people who need it. On the free plan that means holding to 3 galleries and 1 GB, which in practice means finishing and clearing one job before starting the next. Deleting is not instant and irreversible: picdrop keeps deleted galleries in a trash bin, described in the next section, and material in the bin does not count toward your storage.

Buy the storage. picdrop publishes storage add-ons on each paid plan, each with a ceiling of its own. The prices below are exactly as published, in euros. picdrop states that all prices listed are net prices, which means before VAT, so the amount that reaches your card is higher than the number on the page.

Note the shape of it. Each add-on has its own ceiling, so buying storage on Pro solves the problem up to 750 GB and then hands you a plan change instead. The meter does not go away, it moves.

Here is the whole ladder, so you can see which line you crossed and what the next one costs. picdrop publishes three currencies on the same pricing page. They are reproduced as published, with no conversion, and all of them are net of VAT. No price is published for the free plan or for Enterprise in dollars or pounds.

The gallery cap only exists on the free plan. Every paid plan carries unlimited galleries, so above Free the only line that can make a delivered gallery unreachable is storage. Branding is the other free-plan gap: picdrop states that branding features are available starting from the Pro plan.

If the gallery is missing from your own dashboard rather than just unreachable for the client, the cause is different and the clock is real. picdrop states that it keeps deleted galleries "for a short period of nearly 7 days in the trash bin".

Three details decide what you can do about it:

• Galleries in the trash bin do not count toward your storage, so moving a job to the bin is one of the ways back under a cap.
• Only complete galleries can be restored. Individual files cannot be pulled back on their own, so a single deleted image inside a gallery you kept is a re-upload.
• The window is roughly a week. This is the one situation on this page where waiting costs you something.

So the two causes separate cleanly. Gallery visible to you but not to the client: check your plan limits. Gallery gone from your dashboard: check the trash bin today.

Worth stating once, calmly, because it is the part that outlives this particular incident. The failure mode here is that a delivery your client already paid for depends on your storage meter staying under a line. The gallery did nothing wrong. The client did nothing wrong. An account-level number moved, and a piece of finished work stopped being reachable by the person it was made for.

clientgallery.io is built the other way round. One plan at 10 $ a month or 100 $ a year, with unlimited galleries, photos and clients under fair use, no storage tiers, no per-gallery fees, no print store and no commissions. Hosted galleries never expire. There is no platform branding on any client-facing page on any plan, and your galleries live on your own studio subdomain.

We have ceilings too, and here they are in plain figures rather than in a word like unlimited. Uploaded photos are browser-compressed proof JPEGs of about 0.6 MB each, hosted for as long as the account exists. The fair-use tripwires are 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB of proofs per paid account, which at that file size is hundreds of thousands of photos. Free accounts hold 5 GB and one gallery. Full-resolution delivery is a paid feature: 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 difference is not that the ceilings vanished. It is where they sit for a studio that delivers finished JPEG galleries, and that approaching one does not take a delivered gallery dark on your client. There is also a real limit worth naming before you switch: clientgallery.io hosts JPEGs. It does not warehouse RAW files or master video, and that is exactly what keeps the price flat.

picdrop is a proofing-first tool and a good one, and the limits above are the price of a free plan, not a trap. Several kinds of studio should stay where they are.

• You need the storage. Pro includes 500 GB, Advanced 1 TB, Business 3 TB. Our 250 GB fair-use ceiling for proofs is smaller than picdrop's entry paid tier in raw gigabytes. If your working set is genuinely large files rather than proof JPEGs, picdrop's ladder is built for that and ours is not.
• You need a European host. picdrop's pricing page carries the claims "Hosted in Germany" and "No AI training on your data". If your clients ask where their files sit, that is a published answer you can point at.
• You need team seats. Advanced includes 2 seats and goes to 4, Business includes 5 and goes to 9, Enterprise starts at 10. A studio with several people working the same jobs is buying seats, and picdrop sells them.
• You want no store at all. picdrop has no print store and takes no commission on anything, so nobody is selling to your clients behind you. That is a genuine reason to pick it, and it is the same reason people pick us.

What this page argues against is narrower than picdrop as a whole. It is one rule: that exceeding a limit removes your client's access to work you already delivered. If that rule is what brought you here, the fix today is on this page, and the longer answer is a plan without a storage meter attached to it.

All picdrop pages fetched 4 September 2026. Prices are stated in the currencies picdrop publishes and are not converted.

• picdrop pricing (EUR, USD and GBP prices, net of VAT, storage, galleries, seats, branding from Pro, hosted in Germany, no AI training), fetched 4 September 2026, https://www.picdrop.com/web/pricing
• What happens to my pictures after the 14 day trial (files and galleries above the limits can no longer be downloaded or accessed by third parties; all galleries and files preserved; 14 day trial with no credit card), fetched 4 September 2026, https://www.picdrop.com/web/faq/what-happens-to-my-pictures-after-the-14-day-trial
• Trial month and contract (galleries and files above 3 galleries or 1 GB no longer available for third parties; cancellation follows the billing period; no proportional repayment), fetched 4 September 2026, https://www.picdrop.com/web/faq/trial-month-contract
• I need more storage space, is that possible (add-on blocks, prices and ceilings on Pro, Advanced, Business and Enterprise), fetched 4 September 2026, https://www.picdrop.com/web/faq/i-need-more-storage-space-is-that-possible
• Restoring a deleted gallery (trash bin of nearly 7 days, does not count toward storage, only complete galleries can be restored), fetched 4 September 2026, https://www.picdrop.com/web/faq/restoring-a-deleted-gallery
• Can I personalize my picdrop account (branding features start with the Pro plan), fetched 4 September 2026, https://www.picdrop.com/web/faq/can-i-personalize-my-picdrop-account
• clientgallery.io plan and fair use (10 $/month or 100 $/year, one plan, JPEG proofs of about 0.6 MB, 1,000 photos per gallery, 250 GB of proofs per paid account, 5 GB and one gallery on free accounts, full-resolution ZIPs live 3 days per handoff with 100 GB standing, no print store), checked 4 September 2026, https://clientgallery.io/