Comparison guide
The best client gallery for photographers depends on what you sell: four platforms compared
Four platforms do most of the client gallery work for photographers in Europe: Pixieset, Pic-Time, picdrop and Photoglacier. They are priced in different units, host in different countries and disagree about what a gallery is for. This guide puts them side by side, then sorts the wider field by what you sell, so the choice takes ten minutes rather than a weekend of free trials.
The four platforms, side by side
Prices are the monthly rate on the plan named, with the yearly rate in brackets where the provider publishes one, checked September 2026 and excluding VAT. Pixieset and Pic-Time bill in US dollars, picdrop and Photoglacier in euros.
| What matters | Pixieset Canada, USD | Pic-Time Israel, USD | picdrop Germany, EUR | Photoglacier Austria, EUR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 3 GB and unlimited galleries. No video. Store sales carry a 15% commission. | 10 GB of photos and 1 GB of video, cut to 3 GB after six months. | 1 GB and three galleries. | 5 GB and unlimited galleries, one video clip per gallery, Photoglacier branding shown. Galleries never expire. |
| First paid plan | Basic: USD 10 a month (USD 8 yearly) for 10 GB, 30 minutes of HD video, custom branding and a custom domain. | Beginner: USD 8 a month (USD 7 yearly) for 20 GB of photos and 5 GB of video. | Pro: EUR 14.99 a month for 500 GB, one hour of video conversion a month and custom branding. Cheaper on yearly billing. | Starter: EUR 12 a month (EUR 8 yearly) for 100 GB, branding removed, passwords and download PINs. |
| Price of 100 GB | Plus: USD 20 a month (USD 16 yearly). | Professional: USD 25 a month (USD 21 yearly), with 30 GB of video on top. | Pro at EUR 14.99 a month already includes 500 GB. There is no smaller paid tier. | Starter: EUR 12 a month (EUR 8 yearly). |
| Video | None on Free. 30 minutes of HD on Basic, up to about five hours in total depending on plan. Downloads capped at 2048px below Pro and Ultimate, which allow 4K. | A separate quota per plan: 1 GB free, then 5, 30 or 60 GB. Up to 4K. | Measured in conversion hours: one a month on Pro, two on Advanced, four on Business. | Counts against storage like any other file, up to 10 GB per clip. One clip per gallery free, three on Starter, unlimited from Pro. |
| Where the files are hosted | Data may be stored outside the EU. Transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses; the DPA is part of the terms. | Servers on Azure, AWS and MongoDB in the EU, the US and Australia. | Hosted in Germany, AVV available. States that no AI runs on user data. | Photos on Hetzner Object Storage in Germany. DPA and AVV signed electronically. |
| Print store | Yes. 15% commission on the free plan. | Yes, with automated marketing and more than 30 labs. | No. | No. |
| Client selection and proofing | A strong Lightroom plugin for building galleries. Check the selection tools on the plan you pick. | Client selections and album proofing from Professional; face recognition on Advanced. | The deepest set: selections, votes, colour marks, drawn Scribbles, file versions, an Inbox for receiving files. | Stars, likes and reject on every plan; filename export from Starter; pinned comments from Pro; Boards on Studio. |
| Best for | Photographers who want gallery, website, CRM, invoicing and store from one supplier. | Print and album sales with automation, and a premium gallery design. | Commercial and editorial proofing, team review and receiving files, hosted in Germany. | Plain delivery and proofing at a flat price, hosted in the EU, without a studio suite. |
Pick by what you sell
The four platforms do not compete for the same job. Most of the confusion in this market comes from comparing a gallery with a studio suite as if they were the same product. Decide what the gallery has to earn for you, and the shortlist gets short.
You sell the photographs, delivered as files
Weddings, portraits, events and brand shoots where the client walks away with the JPEGs. A gallery here is a delivery and a record: who opened it, what they downloaded, which ones they marked. Photoglacier and picdrop are built for exactly this and charge a flat price for storage rather than for a suite you will not use. Neither has a print store.
You sell prints and albums
If a meaningful share of income comes from prints, cards and albums ordered through the gallery, the store matters more than the storage price. Pixieset and Pic-Time both run one. Pic-Time adds automated marketing and more than 30 labs; Pixieset takes 15% of store sales on its free plan, so check the commission on the plan you would be on, and the lab list for your country.
You want website, CRM and gallery from one login
Some photographers would rather pay one supplier for the whole office: website, contracts, invoices, email, and the gallery at the end. Pixieset sells a website builder and a studio manager alongside its galleries; ShootProof builds contracts and invoicing in and prices by photo count; CloudSpot bundles a CRM. The gallery inside these suites is rarely the best gallery, but it is the one already wired to your invoices.
You proof and review with commercial clients
Agencies, art directors and editorial desks do not want a slideshow. They want to vote, mark a crop, leave a note on a spot in the frame and see version two next to version one. picdrop was built for this, with votes, colour marks, drawn Scribbles and file versions. Photoglacier covers the smaller version of the job: pinned comments from Pro, and Boards with annotations, approval status and versions on Studio.
The wider field
The four above cover most searches, but they are not the whole market. Prices here are rough, quoted as from about, and worth checking on the day.
The US suites
ShootProof starts from about USD 19 a month, is priced by the number of photos rather than by gigabytes, and has contracts and invoicing built in. CloudSpot has a free tier, a Lite plan at about USD 17 and an Unlimited plan at about USD 50, with a CRM bundled. SmugMug runs from about USD 13 to 55 with unlimited storage and a portfolio focus. Zenfolio sits at about USD 9 to 40. All four treat the studio suite as the product and the gallery as one part of it.
The European providers, by country
Germany has the deepest bench. scrappbook offers 5 GB and three galleries free, a Starter plan at about EUR 19 with unlimited storage but a limited number of galleries, and Professional at about EUR 39, all with EU hosting and an AVV. Pictrs has 10 GB free, Profi at about EUR 11.90 for 100 GB and Ultimate at about EUR 49.90. PictoMento, from the Netherlands and Germany, charges about EUR 199 a year for unlimited storage and includes face recognition. In France, Lumys and pelli host on French servers. Poland has LookAt and wybierajka, Spain has Arcadina.
Self-hosted
Lumio is source-available and runs on your own server, so the files sit wherever you put them and nobody else's price list applies. The cost is your time: installation, updates, backups, certificates, and the evening the server goes down during a delivery. It is a reasonable choice for a photographer who already runs infrastructure and a poor one for someone who wanted to stop thinking about it. Lightroom shared albums and a cloud folder are the other zero-cost routes; the first needs Adobe cloud storage, the second shows a file list.
Switching without losing a gallery
Moving platforms is mostly a scheduling problem. The photos are already on your drives; what takes care is the galleries clients are still using.
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Upload from your own archive, not from the old platform
Your exports are the source. Downloading galleries back from the old platform works, but you get whatever size you uploaded, and it is slower than exporting a fresh set from Lightroom or your archive. Bring active galleries across first, then the last twelve months, then stop; older jobs can be sent from your archive when someone asks.
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Run both accounts for one billing cycle
Do not cancel first. New jobs go to the new platform from day one; galleries that clients are still opening stay where they are until they have gone quiet. A month of overlap costs one subscription and saves the phone call from a couple who cannot find their photos.
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Rebuild what does not travel
Presets, cover styles, the welcome text, email wording, the DNS record for a custom domain and the download settings you rely on all have to be set up again. Do it on a test gallery with real photos and open it on a phone before a client does.
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Re-send the links, then cancel
For every gallery you moved, send the new link with one line saying the old one will stop working. Give it two weeks. Then cancel the old plan and, the same day, open one of the old links yourself, because whatever it shows now is what a late guest will see.
What to check before you commit
Four questions that separate the platforms more than the feature lists do. Ask them of any provider on this page.
Hosting and the processor agreement
Where the servers are decides which law covers the people in your photos. Ask for the storage region in writing and for a data processing agreement, an AVV in German, that you can actually sign, not a paragraph inside the terms. A provider outside the EU needs a transfer mechanism such as Standard Contractual Clauses; a provider inside it does not. picdrop and Photoglacier host in Germany; Pic-Time has EU servers alongside US and Australian ones; Pixieset says data may be stored outside the EU.
What happens when you stop paying
Free plans change shape: Pic-Time's 10 GB drops to 3 GB after six months. Paid plans carry a quieter version of the same question. If you downgrade or cancel, what happens to galleries above the free limit, to their links and to the custom domain? Ask before you upload three years of work, and prefer a plan where galleries never expire on their own.
Getting everything out again
You will switch again one day. Check that you can download whole galleries at the size you uploaded, that client selections leave as a list of filenames you can paste into Lightroom, and that the export is not throttled or hidden behind support. A platform that makes leaving easy is usually one that expects you to stay.
Video and file limits
Every platform limits video differently, and the unit matters. Pixieset counts minutes of HD and caps downloads at 2048px on its lower plans; Pic-Time gives a separate quota in gigabytes; picdrop counts hours of conversion per month; Photoglacier counts video against ordinary storage with a 10 GB cap per file. Take your last wedding film and work out which unit it fits.
Where Photoglacier sits in this comparison
Photoglacier is the column on the right: a gallery platform from Austria, running on servers in Germany, that does delivery and proofing at a flat price and does not try to be a studio suite. It is the right choice when what you sell is the photographs and you want them hosted in the EU. It is the wrong choice if you need a print store, a CRM, invoicing, watermarking, face recognition or an unlimited-storage tier, because it has none of them.
- 5 GB free with unlimited galleries that never expire and no credit card; Photoglacier branding shows on the free plan and goes with Starter at EUR 8 a month billed yearly
- 100 GB for EUR 8 a month yearly, 500 GB for EUR 19, 2 TB for EUR 45, all excluding VAT, with no commission and no per-download fees
- Photos on Hetzner Object Storage in Germany under a DPA or AVV you sign electronically; breach notification within 48 hours
- Stars, likes and reject on every plan, filename export for Lightroom from Starter, pinned comments from Pro, Boards for team review on Studio
- Photos and video in one gallery, video counted against storage, clips up to 10 GB, one per gallery free and unlimited from Pro
Questions people are asking
What is the best client gallery for photographers?
There is no single best one; the right client gallery follows what you sell. Pixieset suits photographers who want gallery, website, CRM and store from one supplier. Pic-Time is the strongest for print sales and gallery design. picdrop is the pick for commercial proofing hosted in Germany, and Photoglacier for plain delivery and proofing hosted in the EU at a flat price.
Which client gallery is cheapest?
For 100 GB, Photoglacier Starter at EUR 8 a month billed yearly (EUR 12 monthly) is the lowest figure on this page, followed by Pixieset Plus at USD 16 yearly and Pic-Time Professional at USD 21 yearly. If you need more than that, picdrop Pro at EUR 14.99 a month buys 500 GB, the best price per gigabyte here. On free plans Pic-Time starts largest at 10 GB but drops to 3 GB after six months; Photoglacier's 5 GB stays at 5 GB.
Which client galleries host in the EU?
picdrop and Photoglacier both host in Germany and offer a signable AVV or DPA. In the wider field, scrappbook and Pictrs host in Germany, PictoMento in the Netherlands and Germany, and Lumys and pelli on French servers. Pic-Time runs servers in the EU but also in the US and Australia, and Pixieset says data may be stored outside the EU, with transfers under Standard Contractual Clauses.
Pixieset or Pic-Time?
Pixieset if you want the suite: website builder, studio manager with CRM and invoicing, a strong Lightroom plugin, and a store. Pic-Time if print sales are the point: automated marketing, more than 30 labs, a premium gallery design and video up to 4K. At 100 GB they cost USD 16 and USD 21 a month billed yearly, and neither hosts only in the EU.
Is picdrop a Pixieset alternative?
For delivery and proofing, yes, and a strong one: 500 GB for EUR 14.99 a month, hosted in Germany with an AVV, and the deepest set of selection and annotation tools on this page. It does not replace Pixieset's print store, website builder or studio manager, because picdrop has none of those. Wedding photographers who liked Pixieset's presentation may also find picdrop's interface built more for commercial review than for a couple.
Do I need a print store?
Only if clients order prints through the gallery often enough to matter. Portrait, family and some wedding photographers do; commercial and editorial work almost never does. If prints are an occasional request, a gallery without a store and a lab you order from yourself is simpler, and you keep the margin. If they are a real income line, look at Pixieset or Pic-Time and check the commission: Pixieset takes 15% on its free plan.
Can I switch platforms mid-season?
Yes. Run both platforms for one billing cycle: new jobs go to the new one from day one, and galleries clients are still opening stay on the old one until they go quiet. Rebuild presets and test on a phone before the first real gallery. Re-send links for anything you move, wait two weeks, then cancel.
Are free client galleries good enough?
For a low volume, yes, if you know the shape of each one. Pixieset gives 3 GB with no video and a 15% commission on sales; Pic-Time 10 GB that becomes 3 GB after six months; picdrop 1 GB and three galleries; Photoglacier 5 GB with its branding shown. 5 GB holds roughly one wedding at 2048px, around 600 to 800 JPEGs at 1 to 1.5 MB each, so a photographer delivering several jobs a month will outgrow any of them.
Client gallery software for photographers, on one page
Searches for the best client gallery for photographers usually end in a row of pricing pages that do not measure the same thing. One platform counts gigabytes, another counts photos, a third counts minutes of video, and the free plans are shaped to make the next tier look inevitable. The useful comparison starts from your own work: what you sell, how much a year of it weighs in files, whether video is part of the delivery, and where the people in your photographs would expect their images to be stored. Client gallery software is a small decision once those four things are written down.
Photoglacier is one of the four in the table above: an Austrian company hosting photos on servers in Germany, with a free plan of 5 GB and unlimited galleries that never expire, and paid plans from EUR 8 a month billed yearly for 100 GB. It covers delivery and proofing, with photos and video in one gallery, stars, likes and reject on every plan, and a filename export for Lightroom. It does not sell prints, run a CRM or watermark images, which is why picdrop, Pixieset and Pic-Time sit next to it on this page rather than beneath it.
More guides
Pixieset, Pic-Time, picdrop and the other product names on this page belong to their respective owners. Photoglacier is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any of them. Prices and plan limits were checked in September 2026 and may have changed since; confirm them on the provider's own pricing page before you decide.
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