How to Send 100 GB of Photos to a Client Without Dropbox

Start by turning the storage number into a frame count. The table below is built from assumed per-file sizes, chosen to bracket the range a working photographer sees. These are worked assumptions, not manufacturer figures, and no camera maker published them. Throughout this page, 1 GB means 1,000 MB, which is a convention, not a measurement.

Read the table in both directions. A 2,000-frame wedding at an assumed 25 MB a file is about 50 GB, which is half the number in the headline. A shoot that genuinely fills 100 GB is either several thousand delivered frames or a file type heavier than a delivered JPEG. Your own numbers are the only ones that count: export one folder, look at its size, divide by the file count, and use that figure instead of ours.

This matters because the two cases want different answers. Four thousand delivered frames is a selection problem, and a client who receives four thousand files without a way to choose will not open most of them. A hundred gigabytes of TIFFs going to a retoucher or a printer is a transfer problem, and nothing about proofing helps.

The second piece of arithmetic is the one clients feel. A 100 GB download is 800,000 megabits. The nominal column below divides that by the connection speed and assumes the link runs flat out, which nothing ever does. The realistic column assumes the transfer sustains 70 percent of the nominal speed. That 70 percent is an assumption we chose to keep the estimate honest, not a measurement of any particular network.

Your upload is the same arithmetic in reverse, and most residential connections upload far more slowly than they download. If your upload runs at 25 Mbps, pushing 100 GB out of your studio is most of a day of uninterrupted transfer. Plan the upload the night before, not an hour before you promised the link.

One practical consequence: a three-day window is generous for a client on 300 Mbps and tight for a client on 25 Mbps who only sits at their computer in the evening. Ask the client where they will download before you decide how to send.

Splitting a large delivery is not a workaround for a limit. It is usually the better delivery. A client who receives one 100 GB archive has a single all-or-nothing task that can fail at 90 percent and start over. A client who receives the ceremony first, then the reception, has something usable within the hour.

Splitting also changes the capacity picture. The 100 GB allowance counts what is live at once, so two 40 GB handoffs sent a week apart never occupy more than 40 GB of it. One 100 GB handoff occupies all of it for three days. If you deliver to several clients in the same week, sequencing the handoffs is what keeps the account workable.

A sensible split for a large job: one gallery per part of the shoot, each with its own full-resolution ZIP, sent as each part is finished. The client gets the first files days earlier, the download is a size a laptop can finish in one sitting, and a failed transfer costs one part instead of everything.

There are two different assets in a gallery, and confusing them is the source of most disappointment. The photos the client browses are proof JPEGs, compressed in your own browser as they upload to roughly 0.6 MB each, and hosted for as long as the account exists. Full resolution is the ZIP you attach to the gallery. The proofs are for choosing and sharing. The ZIP is the delivery.

Run the earlier frame count through those figures. A 4,000-frame delivery is at least four galleries, because a gallery holds 1,000 photos. Those 4,000 proofs take about 2.4 GB of proof storage, which is a rounding error against the 250 GB ceiling, and more than a free account's 5 GB allows. The heavy number is the ZIP, and that is the one bounded at 100 GB live.

What you get for it that a file host does not do: the page carries your logo, your colours and your studio name, on your own subdomain, with no platform branding anywhere on it. The client stars and hearts the frames they want and presses send, and you get the selection by email and on your phone. You can see whether the gallery was opened at all, and the analytics view shows visits, unique visitors, photo views, favourites, downloads and time spent. Any gallery can carry a password, checked on the server, and without it the photos are never sent to the page at all.

Dropbox is in the keyword, so here is the honest version. Dropbox is a genuinely capable place to put 100 GB. It states a maximum upload file size of 2 TB, which is twenty times the job. Its Plus plan is listed at CA$12.99 a month with 2 TB of storage on the Canadian storefront, and every price on this page is in Canadian dollars because that is the storefront that served us. Dropbox does warn that uploading files larger than 375 GB in a web browser may cause timeouts, and recommends the desktop app above that size, but a 100 GB upload sits well under that threshold.

So the contrast is not capacity. The contrast is what the client meets. A shared folder shows no brand, collects no picks and tracks nothing you can act on. Dropbox does publish shared-link expiry dates and link passwords, on Professional, Essentials, Standard, Advanced, Business, Business Plus and Enterprise, so link control exists if you pay for the right plan. What does not exist is a delivery that looks like it came from your studio, or a client selection you can pull back into your catalog.

One detail worth knowing before you send a 100 GB archive through any file host: Dropbox caps ZIP and archive previews at 512 MB, so a delivery archive will not preview in the browser. The client downloads the whole thing or nothing. That is fine when the client wants exactly that, and it is the wrong shape when the client actually wanted to look first and choose.

WeTransfer is the reflex for large files, and for a 100 GB job the reflex needs checking against the published caps. The Free plan allows up to 10 transfers, or 3 GB in total, in any 30-day rolling window, so 100 GB is simply out of reach. The Starter plan allows up to 10 transfers, or 300 GB in total, in the same rolling window, so a single 100 GB delivery consumes a third of the month before you send anything to anyone else. The Ultimate plan provides unlimited transfers up to 1 TB per transfer.

The window is rolling, not a calendar month, so the allowance comes back in the same shape it was spent. On Free and Starter, uploads can be kept online for up to three days, and the countdown starts the moment the transfer is sent, not when the client first clicks. No WeTransfer price could be verified today, so this page states none.

One thing WeTransfer should be given credit for: it states officially that its transfers use lossless compression and that files are never altered or reduced in quality. Nobody should tell you otherwise. The real limit for a photo delivery is what the recipient can see before downloading, since image previews are capped at 256 MB per file, and that a transfer is a list of files rather than a gallery your client can work in.

This is the concession, and it is not a small one. If the client just wants the files, has no interest in choosing anything, and will hand them straight to a retoucher or a printer, a shared folder is a perfectly good answer. Dropbox handles 100 GB comfortably. Google Drive stores files up to 5 TB, and Google publishes an upload allowance of 750 GB per user per 24 hours for Workspace accounts, so a 100 GB upload fits inside a single day there. Nothing about a gallery improves that job.

And on a slow connection, a drive genuinely wins. Look again at the download table. At 25 Mbps a 100 GB download runs close to thirteen hours in the realistic column, and that assumes nothing interrupts it. An overnight courier beats that outright, and the client ends up with a physical copy they can put on a shelf. Ship the drive, and put the frames they need this week online so they are not waiting on a truck for the three images going to the client's own newsletter.

A gallery earns its place when the client has to choose, when the delivery should carry your name rather than a file host's, or when you want the selection back in your catalog without retyping filenames. If none of those apply to this job, use the simpler tool and keep the gallery for the jobs where it pays.

• Measure first. Export one folder, divide its size by the file count, and multiply by the number of delivered frames. Half the 100 GB deliveries people worry about turn out to be 40 GB.
• Ask the client what they are downloading on, and on which device. The answer decides between a link and a drive.
• Split the job by part of the shoot, one gallery each, and send each part as it is finished. Keep any single handoff to a size the client can finish in one sitting.
• Upload the ZIP the night before you send the link. The three-day clock starts when you upload, so send the link the same day.
• Tell the client the window in plain words, in the same message as the link. Two sentences prevent most of the emails you would otherwise get.
• Re-upload when they miss it. A handoff can be replaced at any time, and the expired one gives its space back, so a missed window costs an upload rather than an apology.
• Keep your own archive somewhere else. A three-day handoff is a delivery mechanism, and no delivery mechanism is a backup.

• WeTransfer, Plan limits, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/subscriptions/plan-limits, fetched 2026-09-07
• WeTransfer, Transfer availability, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/transfer-availability, fetched 2026-09-07
• WeTransfer, File size difference, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/file-size-difference, fetched 2026-09-07
• WeTransfer, What is previews, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/what-is-previews, fetched 2026-09-07
• WeTransfer, Personal page overview, https://wetransfer.com/help-center/how-to/personal-page-overview, fetched 2026-09-07
• Dropbox, Plans, https://www.dropbox.com/plans, fetched 2026-09-07
• Dropbox, Upload limitations, https://help.dropbox.com/sync/upload-limitations, fetched 2026-09-07
• Dropbox, File types that preview, https://help.dropbox.com/view-edit/file-types-that-preview, fetched 2026-09-07
• Dropbox, Set link permissions, https://help.dropbox.com/share/set-link-permissions, fetched 2026-09-07
• Google, Files you can store in Google Drive, https://support.google.com/drive/answer/37603, fetched 2026-09-07
• Google, Storage and upload limits for Google Workspace, https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/drive/storage-and-upload-limits-for-google-workspace?hl=en, fetched 2026-09-07
• clientgallery.io product figures (price, proof size, per-gallery photo ceiling, proof storage ceilings, 100 GB standing full-resolution allowance, three-day handoff) verified in the product on 2026-09-07.
• File sizes per frame, the 70 percent throughput figure and the 1 GB equals 1,000 MB convention are stated assumptions used for the arithmetic on this page, not measurements or manufacturer figures.