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Client Gallery Proofing Without a Print Store

If you deliver digital files and never sell a print, the storefront is not a benefit you are declining. It is a thing sitting between your client and their picks.

Updated 2026-09-07

Almost every client gallery platform is built around a store. The gallery is the shop window, the proofing round is how a client fills a basket, and the commission table is how the platform is paid. That design works. For a portrait or wedding studio selling albums and wall art, a good storefront can pay for the whole subscription several times over.

It works less well when nothing is for sale. A commercial, corporate, editorial, real estate or event photographer hands over finished files and invoices separately. For that business the store is a section of the settings screen that must be configured and then left alone, and, more importantly, the control that decides whether a client may download their photos is expressed in the language of a shop.

This guide covers what the print-store commissions actually are on the major platforms, read off their own pages on 7 September 2026, and how a proofing round runs on a platform that ships no store at all. It also says plainly who should ignore the whole argument and keep the storefront they have.

On a selling platform, the download switch is a store setting

This is the practical complaint, and it is narrower than the usual one. It is not that a storefront is loud. It is that on a platform built to sell, free downloading and paid downloading are two settings of the same control.

CloudSpot disables free downloads by default, and the photographer has to turn them on before a client can take anything. Pixieset tells photographers who want digital files sold rather than given that they should make sure the Download Status is off in the collection settings, so the only path to a file is the Store. Pic-Time puts the same decision under Gallery Setup, then Photo Downloads, where the photographer sets which photos and which user types can download free images, and anything not marked free stays purchasable.

None of that is a flaw. Each vendor is doing exactly what a selling platform must do. But it means that on those platforms every gallery you send carries a small configuration question with commercial consequences, even when you have no commercial intent. Get it wrong on a delivery job and a client is either looking at a price where you meant to give, or downloading files you meant to hold.

Where there is no store, that question does not exist. A download switch means downloads, on or off, and nothing else.

The commissions, as the vendors publish them

The 15% figure that circulates in photographer forums is real, but it is mostly a free-plan rule. On paid plans most of these platforms take nothing. Anyone arguing against print stores on cost alone is arguing against a number that has already gone to zero for most paying subscribers. Here is what the vendors published on 7 September 2026.

PlatformPlanStore commissionWhat the vendor publishes about it
PixiesetFree15%Calculated on the order subtotal, before any discounts, coupon codes, taxes or shipping fees, and in addition to the processor fees and, with automatic fulfillment, the printing and shipping costs
PixiesetBasic, Plus, Pro, Ultimate0%Listed as commission-free on every paid Client Gallery plan
Pic-TimeFree15%Applied to the markup only, not to production costs; the 15% also applies when the photographer collects the payment themselves
Pic-TimeBeginner15%Same rule as Free: the 15% applies whether Pic-Time collects or the photographer collects
Pic-TimeProfessional8%Charged when Pic-Time collects the payment; no commission on self-collected payments
Pic-TimeAdvanced6%Charged when Pic-Time collects the payment; no commission on self-collected payments
CloudSpotFree, Entry15%Published as a small commission on print sales for these two plans
CloudSpotLite, Pro, Unlimited0%Zero commission on print sales on all Full Suite plans, with a 2.5% processing fee listed against those same plans
ShootProofEvery plan, including Free0%States it never takes a commission on sales; the only charges beyond the plan are archiving and a payment-processing fee
clientgallery.ioOne planNo store, so no commission10 $/month or 100 $/year, which is 8.33 $/month; a free account holds one gallery

Read that table against your own situation before you draw a conclusion from it. If you are on a paid Pixieset, CloudSpot Full Suite or any ShootProof plan, the commission is already zero and no page should tell you otherwise. The rates that survive on paid plans are Pic-Time's 8% and 6%, and only when Pic-Time collects the money for you.

So the honest version of this argument has nothing to do with percentages. It is that a store you never use still shapes the product you use every day.

Keep the print store if you sell prints

This section is not a formality, and it is not buried at the bottom on purpose.

A print store is a revenue line, not a defect. If album sales, wall art and reprints are money you actually bank, the platform that sells them for you is earning its subscription and then some. Pixieset, Pic-Time, CloudSpot and ShootProof all have labs, product catalogues, order handling and fulfillment behind their storefronts. clientgallery.io has none of that and never will, because it ships no store at all. Nothing here is an argument for giving up a sales channel that works.

Stay on your current platform if any of the following is true. You sell prints, albums or digital packages from the gallery. Your post-session sales conversation depends on the client seeing products next to their photos. You are on a paid plan where the commission is already zero and the store simply sits there unused, costing you nothing. You need invoicing, contracts and scheduling in the same tool, which Pixieset, ShootProof and CloudSpot all sell as part of their suites. Or you upload RAW files or video, which a JPEG-only delivery service cannot hold.

The rest of this guide is for one reader: the photographer who delivers digital files, invoices outside the gallery, and has never sold a print through a platform and does not intend to.

The proofing round with nothing to buy in it

Strip the store out and a proofing round is three events. The client opens a link. The client marks the photos they want. You receive the list.

On clientgallery.io the client marks in two levels. A star is a yes. A heart is a must-have. A tray at the bottom of the page keeps a running count of each. When the client is finished they press Send my picks, confirm in a short modal that this locks the selection, and type their name and email. There is no account to create and no password to invent, because the share link is the login.

You are told three ways: an email with the client name and the counts, a push notification on your phone, and the gallery card in your dashboard, which flips to show that the picks arrived. Until then the same card tells you the client has marked photos but not sent them.

Getting that list into your editing software is the step that usually leaks time. If you use Lightroom Classic, the two-way plugin publishes proofs out of the catalog and pulls the picks back in by filename, so you edit exactly the frames the client chose. If you work in Capture One or Phocus, every completed gallery carries an Export picks button that hands you a plain text list of the selected filenames, loved ones first.

For a shoot with several parts, a gallery can be divided into sections. The client sees them as named blocks on one page with a jump bar at the top, in the order you arranged them, rather than folders to click into.

Getting paid, with your own link and a switch you flip yourself

Delivery-only does not mean payment-free. It means no checkout lives inside the gallery.

Each gallery has a payment link field. Paste your own checkout link into it and the client's gallery shows a Pay your invoice button in the header. Leave the field empty and there is no button. You can also attach an invoice PDF to the gallery, which the client sees as a download beside it. The money goes to your own processor. clientgallery.io is not in the transaction, holds no funds, and takes no percentage.

Separately, each gallery has an Allow downloads switch. Turn it off and the whole-gallery ZIP is refused on the server. Turn it back on and the client can take their files.

Be clear about how those two things relate, because they do not. Nothing in the product watches for a payment. There is no webhook, no paid status and no automatic switching. If you want to hold delivery until an invoice clears, the workflow is manual and looks like this: paste your payment link, leave downloads switched off, send the gallery, then switch downloads on yourself once you see the money in your own account. Any platform that promises automatic release on payment is doing something this one does not do.

One more honest limit. The download switch is enforced on the server for the whole-gallery ZIP and for the full-resolution handoff. Switching it off also hides the per-photo download button, but it is not a hard lock on an individual proof image, so do not treat it as a vault. It is a delivery control, not a security boundary. What is a real boundary is the per-gallery password: when a gallery carries one, the server returns only the prompt, and the photos are never queried and never reach the page source.

What you give up by removing the store

Every trade on this page runs in both directions, so here is the other side in one place.

  • No sales, ever. There is no lab, no product catalogue, no cart and no order. A client who wants a framed print buys it somewhere else.
  • JPEG only. The service hosts proof JPEGs. It does not warehouse RAW files or master video, and that is what keeps the price flat.
  • Fair-use ceilings exist. Uploaded photos are compressed in your own browser into proofs of roughly 0.6 MB each and hosted for as long as the account exists. The ceilings are 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB of proofs per paid account, which is hundreds of thousands of images. A free account holds 5 GB and one gallery.
  • Full-resolution delivery is a handoff, not storage. You upload one full-resolution ZIP per gallery. It stays live for three days per handoff and can be replaced at any time, with 100 GB of live ZIPs per account. The gallery itself never expires; only the ZIP does.
  • No invoicing suite. There are no contracts, questionnaires or scheduling. There is a field for your own payment link and a slot for your own invoice PDF.

What you get back is a gallery with one job. The client page carries your logo, your colours and your fonts on your own subdomain, with no platform name, badge or footer anywhere on it. The settings screen contains only things that affect delivery, and the only question your client is asked is which photos they want.

Sources

Every competitor figure on this page was read off the vendor's own page on 7 September 2026. Pixieset blocks automated fetching, so its pages were read in a browser session at the URLs below on the same date. Prices and rates change, so treat these as a snapshot of that day.

Frequently asked

Can I run client proofing without a print store at all?

Yes. clientgallery.io ships no storefront: no lab, no product catalogue, no price lists and no ordering step in the client's view. The client stars and hearts the photos they want, presses Send my picks, and types their name and email. It is one flat plan at 10 $/month or 100 $/year, which is 8.33 $/month, and a free account holds one gallery.

How much commission do print stores actually take?

Less than the forums suggest, on paid plans. Pixieset publishes 15% on its free plan and 0% on Basic, Plus, Pro and Ultimate. CloudSpot publishes 15% on Free and Entry and 0% on its Full Suite plans, which also carry a 2.5% processing fee. ShootProof states it never takes a commission on any plan. Pic-Time is the exception that survives on paid plans: 15% on Free and Beginner, 8% on Professional and 6% on Advanced when Pic-Time collects the payment. All figures read 7 September 2026.

What exactly is the Pixieset 15% calculated on?

Pixieset states the commission is calculated on the order subtotal, before any discounts, coupon codes, taxes or shipping fees are applied, and that it is in addition to the processing fees charged by the third-party payment processor as well as printing and shipping costs when using automatic fulfillment. It applies to the free plan only; the paid Client Gallery plans are listed as commission-free.

How do I get paid if the gallery has no checkout?

You paste your own payment link into the gallery and the client sees a Pay your invoice button. Leave the field empty and no button appears. You can attach an invoice PDF alongside it. The money goes to your own processor, so clientgallery.io holds no funds and takes no percentage.

Do downloads switch on automatically when the client pays?

No. Nothing in the product watches for a payment, and there is no webhook or paid status. The workflow is manual: paste your payment link, leave the Allow downloads switch off, send the gallery, then switch downloads on yourself once the money lands in your own account.

Does turning downloads off stop a client saving a single photo?

Not completely, and it should not be treated as a vault. The switch is enforced on the server for the whole-gallery ZIP and the full-resolution handoff, and it hides the per-photo download button, but it is not a hard lock on an individual proof image. For a real boundary, use the per-gallery password: without it the server returns only the prompt and the photos never reach the page source.

Who should keep their print store?

Anyone whose print, album or product sales are real revenue. Those platforms have labs, catalogues and fulfillment behind them, and clientgallery.io has none of that. Keep it too if the commission on your paid plan is already zero and the unused store costs you nothing, if you need contracts and scheduling in the same tool, or if you upload RAW files or video, which a JPEG-only service cannot hold.

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