Skip to content
Sign inStart free

A Pixieset alternative for photographers and videographers in Africa

Pixieset is a well-known, well-made client gallery platform. If you work in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Abidjan, Dakar or Douala, though, the questions that decide your choice are often different. This guide sets them out, with an honest account of where Aurant fits and where it doesn't.

Updated 4 October 20264 min read

Where Pixieset is strong

Pixieset is built around selling prints, and it does that well. Here is what we checked on Pixieset's own pages (as of September 2026; prices and features change, so check their site before you decide):

  • A built-in store with automatic fulfilment through partner labs (such as WHCC, Miller's and Mpix, depending on region), or self-fulfilment. Their commission is 15% on the free plan and 0% on paid plans.
  • Unlimited storage on their top Client Gallery plan.
  • A free plan with 3 GB of photo storage and no card required.
  • Studio Manager, a separate product with a CRM, invoices, contracts and online booking, which has a free tier.

If print sales through a professional lab are a big part of your income, Pixieset is the stronger choice, and we would rather say so here.

The questions that matter when you work in Africa

Whatever platform you look at, these are worth asking before you move your galleries:

  • Can I pay for my plan in my own currency, without an international card?
  • Can my clients pay me by mobile money, and where does the money land?
  • Does it work in French, for me and for my clients?
  • Will uploads survive a dropped connection?
  • Can my clients open a gallery without creating an account or installing an app?

Paying for Aurant in your own currency

Aurant plans can be paid in local currency: Kenyan shillings (KES) by M-Pesa or card, cedis (GHS) by mobile money or card, CFA francs (XOF and XAF) by mobile money (such as Orange Money, MTN or Wave, depending on your country) or card, and naira (NGN) by card or bank transfer. These plans are prepaid and never renew automatically: nothing is taken from your wallet without you. The Free plan needs no card at all and includes 5 GB of storage, unlimited galleries and no limit on files per gallery. Current prices for each plan are on the pricing page.

Getting paid by your clients

From the Basic plan, you can send invoices and quotes that clients pay online, and sell downloads from a gallery. Payments go through a provider you connect, and that provider pays you:

  • Paystack: cards, bank and mobile money in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
  • Flutterwave: cards and mobile money across Africa, including CFA francs.
  • CinetPay: mobile money and cards in francophone Africa (XOF, XAF), paid straight into your own CinetPay merchant account.
  • Stripe: cards in USD, EUR, GBP, CAD and AUD, paid out to your own Stripe account.

When you sell gallery downloads, you set the price and Aurant takes no cut; the provider charges its own processing fees. The guide to selling event photos with mobile money walks through the setup.

English and French, for you and your clients

The app, and every page your clients open (galleries, invoices, contracts), are fully in English and French. For a studio that shoots in Abidjan one week and Accra the next, or works with clients across both languages, that matters more than any feature list.

Built for real connections

  • Uploads retry by themselves when the connection drops, wait while you are offline and continue when the network returns. Parts already sent are not sent again.
  • Files are kept exactly as you exported them, at full resolution, and never recompressed.
  • Clients can download a web-size copy (a 2048 px JPEG) when they only need to share on their phone, and the original when they need to print.
  • Clients open one link, with no account and no app. When it is pasted into WhatsApp, the preview shows your cover.

Galleries and the client work around them

Aurant keeps the files, the galleries and the client work in one account. Contracts with online signing and booking pages are on every plan, Free included. Invoices, quotes and client management start on Basic. You also get transfers with personal download links, and review links where clients comment on a film at an exact timecode. There are no fees per gallery or per client.

What Aurant does not do

An honest comparison has to include this part:

  • No print store or lab integration. You can sell digital downloads, not prints.
  • No unlimited storage. The largest plan, Ultimate, has 4 TB, and storage add-ons are not on sale yet.
  • No free invoicing. Invoices and quotes start on Basic.
  • No automatic import from Pixieset. You move your galleries by uploading your original files.
  • Face search has limits. On Basic, it indexes up to 500 photos per gallery and 2,000 per month, with up to 100 guest searches per gallery per day. Pro (1,500 per gallery, 6,000 per month, 300 searches a day) and Ultimate (4,000, 25,000 and 1,000) allow more.
  • Aurant does not process payments itself. To take mobile money or cards, you connect Paystack, Flutterwave, CinetPay or Stripe, and which wallets your clients see depends on that provider and your country.

Moving from Pixieset

There is no automatic import, so the move starts with your original files: the ones on your drive, or downloaded from your galleries. Upload them to Aurant at full resolution and rebuild each gallery from the same files, starting with the ones clients still visit. If you have a lot to move, tell us where your galleries are and we will help you plan it. For prices, storage and features side by side, read the full comparison.