The best client gallery software for photographers in 2026

The best client gallery software, by job

Eight photo delivery platforms, sorted by what you need them to do, as each company’s own website showed them on 25 October 2026:

• Selling prints and albums: Pic-Time (30+ labs worldwide, print shop on every plan), ShootProof (labs in North America, Europe, the UK and Australia) and Pixieset (store built in).
• Selling with no commission: ShootProof, on every plan, Free included.
• The best free plan for delivering client work: Aurant (5 GB, unlimited galleries, films, contracts and booking, no card). ShootProof’s free plan is the one to try if you sell prints.
• Video delivery: Aurant for finished films delivered untouched; Pixieset for video minutes on every paid plan; Picflow for review with frame-accurate comments.
• All-in-one (galleries plus invoices, contracts and booking): Aurant, in one account on every plan; CloudSpot in the US; Pixieset with its separate Studio Manager.
• French, and francophone studios: Aurant, fully in English and French for you and your clients.
• Event photographers (face search): Pic-Time Advanced, Zenfolio and Aurant, which all let guests find their photos with a selfie.
• Unlimited storage and a portfolio site: SmugMug, unlimited on every plan.
• Proofing and commercial review: Picflow.

How we checked. Every price and feature of another company in this guide was read on that company’s own website on 25 October 2026, and the pages are listed under Sources at the end. Dollar prices are as each page showed them, before tax. Plans change, so check before you decide. Aurant is our product, and we have held it to the same standard, gaps included. If you are leaving Pixieset specifically, the best Pixieset alternatives walks through each platform in turn.

What to check before you choose client gallery software

Feature lists look alike. These eight questions are where client gallery platforms really differ, and each answer is on the platform’s pricing page or in its terms:

1. Resolution and recompression. Is the file your client downloads the file you uploaded, at the same resolution? Some free plans cap download size, and some uploaders shrink files to save space. Download a test file and compare it with your export.
2. Video length. How many minutes of video, or how many GB, does each plan hold, and at what quality? A single wedding film can use up a small plan’s allowance.
3. Client account required, or not. Can your client open the gallery from a link alone, or must they sign up to download, buy or search for their photos?
4. Download controls. Can you switch downloads on and off, limit them, and see who downloaded what?
5. What happens if you stop paying. Are your galleries kept, frozen or deleted when you downgrade or cancel, and how quickly? Read the terms, not the marketing.
6. Commission on sales. What percentage does the platform take from print and download sales on your plan, and does it change if you collect payments yourself?
7. Languages. Are the galleries, and the emails, invoices and contracts your clients receive, in their language?
8. Payment methods. How do your clients pay you (card, PayPal, bank transfer, mobile money), and in which countries can you take payments online at all?

Best for selling prints and albums: Pic-Time

Pic-Time is the strongest pick when prints, albums and wall art are a real part of your income. Its print shop works with more than 30 labs in the US and Canada, Europe, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and India, and it is included on every plan, the free plan too. Paid plans cost $7 a month billed annually ($8 monthly) for Beginner, $21 ($25) for Professional and $42 ($50) for Advanced, as of October 2026.

• Pic-Time’s commission is calculated on your markup, not the full order. When Pic-Time collects the payment it is 15% on Free and Beginner, 8% on Professional and 6% on Advanced; Professional and Advanced pay none when you collect payments yourself.
• ShootProof fulfils orders through Bay Photo, Miller’s, WHCC and Mpix (USA, Mexico, Canada), Loxley Color (Mexico, Europe and the UK), Atkins Pro Lab and HC Pro (Australia and New Zealand), and Technicare, GTA Imaging and The Print Refinery (Canada), with no commission.
• Pixieset has a store built into its galleries. Its free plan takes a 15% commission on store sales; paid Client Gallery plans, from $8 a month billed annually ($10 monthly), take none.
• Zenfolio sells prints, digitals and packages with integrated lab fulfilment (Miller’s, Mpix, Bay Photo, Fujifilm and others) from its Professional plan, at $23 a month billed monthly, with a 7% commerce fee per order.

Aurant does not fit this job: it has no print store and no lab integration. See Aurant vs Pic-Time and Aurant vs ShootProof for where each one is the better choice.

Best client gallery with no commission: ShootProof

ShootProof takes no commission on any plan, Free included: its pricing page says “ShootProof will never take a commission”. Paid plans run from Starter at $8.33 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly), with 20 GB for photos and video, to Premium at $50 a month billed annually ($60 monthly), with unlimited photos and 150 GB of video (October 2026).

Elsewhere, “no commission” depends on the plan and on who collects the payment:

• Pixieset: no commission on paid plans; 15% on the free plan.
• Pic-Time: none on Professional and Advanced when you collect payments yourself; 15%, 8% or 6% when Pic-Time collects.
• CloudSpot: none on the full-suite plans (Lite, Pro and Unlimited), which carry a 2.5% card processing fee; 15% on Free and Entry.
• Zenfolio: a 7% commerce fee on each order’s subtotal, plus $0.09 per single digital file downloaded.
• Aurant: no cut of gallery sales. From Basic you can sell digital downloads from a gallery at your price; there is no print store. Invoices your clients pay by card through Stripe carry an Aurant platform fee, shown in your payment settings before you send anything.

Best free client gallery software: Aurant

Aurant’s free plan gives the most room for delivering client work among the free plans checked in October 2026: 5 GB of storage, unlimited galleries with no limit on files per gallery, 30 minutes of video per gallery, contracts with online signing, booking pages, and up to 3 clients and 3 invoices or quotes. No card, no time limit. It does not sell prints.

• ShootProof: 3 GB of photos only (about 1,000), with no video, invoicing or e-sign contracts, and no commission on sales.
• Pixieset: 3 GB, with a 15% commission on store sales.
• CloudSpot: 5 GB and up to 3 client galleries, JPEG files only, downloads capped at 2048 px, and a 15% commission.
• Pic-Time: starts with 10 GB, which falls to 3 GB three months after the account is created; galleries over 3 GB are then permanently deleted a week later, oldest first. The print shop is included.
• Picflow: 2 GB, with no time limit.
• Zenfolio and SmugMug have free trials, not free plans.

Pick a free plan by the job: Aurant to deliver galleries and films and run the paperwork, ShootProof to sell prints without a commission, Pic-Time to try its print shop before you pay.

Best for video delivery: Aurant

Aurant is built for delivering finished films: the film plays in the browser from the gallery link, and the download is the file you uploaded, at the same resolution, codec and bitrate, never recompressed. Free and Basic hold 30 minutes of video per gallery, Pro 90 and Ultimate 120, and films sit beside the photographs in the same gallery. See video delivery.

• Pixieset includes video on every paid plan: 30 minutes in HD on Basic, 1 hour on Plus, 2 hours in 4K on Pro and 5 hours in 4K on Ultimate.
• Pic-Time counts video storage separately: 1 GB on Free, 5 GB on Beginner (about 30 minutes), 30 GB on Professional (about 3 hours) and 60 GB on Advanced (about 6 hours), up to 4K.
• ShootProof supports video up to 4K on every paid plan, with 150 GB of video on Premium. The free plan has no video.
• Picflow is for review rather than delivery: Full HD video on Plus, 4K HDR on Pro, with frame-accurate comments and annotations.
• CloudSpot adds video to galleries as Vimeo or YouTube links.

Best all-in-one: galleries, invoices, contracts and booking

Aurant puts client galleries, invoices, quotes, contracts and booking in one account. Contracts with online signing and booking pages are on every plan, Free included. Free includes 3 invoices or quotes; from Basic (£9 a month), invoices are unlimited, with deposits, instalments and automatic reminders. Clients pay invoices by card into your own Stripe account. See invoices and payments.

• CloudSpot’s full-suite plans include contracts with e-signatures, questionnaires, invoicing and payments, lead forms and scheduling. Invoicing and online payments are only available in the US.
• Pixieset sells this as a separate product, Studio Manager: free, Plus at $12 a month billed annually ($15 monthly), or Pro at $18 ($24). The Pixieset Suite, which bundles its apps, is listed from $28 a month.
• ShootProof includes contracts and invoices on every paid plan; online booking is a $6.99-a-month add-on.
• Zenfolio offers booking and scheduling as a $10-a-month add-on, included on Advanced.
• Pic-Time connects to CRMs instead: HoneyBook, Studio Ninja, VSCO Workspace, Iris Works and Light Blue.

Best in French, and for francophone studios: Aurant

Aurant is fully in English and French: the app you work in, and every page your clients open, galleries, quotes, invoices and contracts included. Each invoice and quote follows your client’s language, and so do its emails, PDF and payment page. Clients open one link, with no account and no app.

• Pic-Time lists multi-language galleries, where you set each gallery’s language; its pricing page does not say which languages.
• For the other platforms, the pricing pages we read do not say which languages client galleries support, so check their help centres before you choose.
• Paying for Aurant in Africa: in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Benin, Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the DRC, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Mozambique and Sierra Leone, Aurant plans can be prepaid in local currency by mobile money; the pricing page shows the local price. Not yet in Nigeria or Ghana. Your clients still pay you by card, through Stripe: client payments by mobile money are not open yet.

Best for event photographers: face search

At a wedding, a conference or a race, most guests want one thing from a gallery of hundreds: the photos they are in. Three of the platforms checked let guests find them with a selfie:

• Aurant: guests tap Find photos of me, take a selfie and see only the photos they appear in, with no account. Each guest consents first, and the selfie is used for that search only and never stored. Included from Basic, within limits: on Basic, up to 500 photos indexed per gallery and 2,000 a month; Pro and Ultimate allow more.
• Pic-Time: its Advanced plan ($42 a month billed annually, $50 monthly) lists “Smart Search for Clients”: face recognition, where visitors click a face to find related images, and selfie search.
• Zenfolio: its Face Finder lets a visitor take or upload a selfie to highlight the photos with a similar face. Zenfolio’s help centre says visitors must create a free account to use it, and that the selfie is deleted after the search.

For school, sports and other high-volume work, Zenfolio also has a Volume Wizard and a QR code workflow: up to 5 uses each on Professional, unlimited on Advanced.

Best for unlimited storage and a portfolio site: SmugMug

SmugMug includes unlimited photo storage on every plan: Direct at $20 a month, Portfolio at $23.50 and Pro at $37, each billed annually, with a 14-day free trial. Selling prints and downloads starts on Portfolio, where you set your own margins and SmugMug handles order fulfilment. RAW files are an add-on: up to 1 TB for $10 a month, then $6 a month per extra TB.

Unlimited photo storage is also on the top plans of Pixieset (Ultimate, $40 a month billed annually), Pic-Time (Advanced), ShootProof (Premium) and Zenfolio (Advanced, JPEGs). Aurant has no unlimited plan: its largest, Ultimate, has 4 TB, and extra storage is not on sale yet.

Best for proofing and commercial review: Picflow

Picflow suits work that clients review and approve rather than buy: commercial shoots, agencies, video. Plus is $12 a month billed yearly or $15 month to month, with 100 GB and Full HD video; Pro is $18 a month billed yearly or $24 monthly, with 1 TB, RAW photos and 4K HDR video. The free plan has 2 GB. Lightroom and Capture One integrations send work straight to a gallery, and its pricing page lists no print store.

What happens to your galleries if you stop paying

This is the question most comparisons skip, and the answers differ more than prices do (as each company’s own pages said in October 2026):

• Pixieset: its terms say that if an account is cancelled or terminated, its contents “may be removed immediately”.
• Pic-Time: a downgrade permanently deletes the galleries over the new plan’s limit, oldest first; on the free plan, galleries over 3 GB are deleted a week after the plan changes.
• CloudSpot: its help centre says that when an account moves to the free plan with more than 5 GB stored, data is removed.
• Zenfolio: after a downgrade, your website and galleries stay and existing files are not deleted. After a cancellation, once the billing period ends, the website goes offline and the content becomes inaccessible.
• Aurant: nothing is ever deleted. If you downgrade or stop paying, your galleries, files and portfolios stay online, read-only; you just can’t add more until you are back within your plan.

Where Aurant fits, and where it doesn’t

Aurant is our product. Free has 5 GB and unlimited galleries, with no card. Basic is £9 a month with 200 GB, Pro £49 with 1 TB, and Ultimate £149 with 4 TB; paying yearly saves 15%. List prices are in £, and the pricing page shows an estimate in your currency. There is no fee per gallery or per client.

• It fits if you want client galleries and the paperwork around them in one account, you deliver films, you or your clients work in French, or you want galleries that are never deleted.
• It doesn’t if prints and albums are a large part of your income (no print store or lab integration), if you need unlimited storage, or if your clients must pay online by mobile money.
• Aurant is a small company, younger than most names on this list.

Side by side with the platform you use now: Aurant vs Pixieset, Aurant vs Pic-Time, Aurant vs ShootProof, Aurant vs SmugMug, Aurant vs Zenfolio, Aurant vs CloudSpot and Aurant vs Pixpa.

Sources

Every fact about another company above was read on these pages on 25 October 2026:

• Pixieset: Client Gallery pricing, Studio Manager pricing, Terms of Service
• Pic-Time: pricing, commission rates, free plan storage, downgrading, print store, CRM integrations
• ShootProof: pricing, printing labs
• Zenfolio: plans and pricing, Face Finder for gallery visitors, using Face Finder
• SmugMug: plans
• CloudSpot: pricing, cancelling a subscription
• Picflow: pricing