How to choose client gallery software

Every client gallery platform shows you the same screenshot: a grid of photographs on a laptop, a clean typeface, a price. They differ enormously underneath that, and almost none of the differences are visible on the pricing page.

These are the questions worth asking, in the order they will cost you money if you skip them. They are written to be asked of any platform, including this one.

1. Is full-resolution download included, or is it a tier?

This is the first question because it is the one most often answered ambiguously. Three separate things get called “download”:

• Web-sized download — a resized copy, usually around 2048px. Fine for social, useless for print.
• Full-resolution download — the file you uploaded, untouched. This is what a client believes they are getting.
• Metered download — full resolution, but counted against a bandwidth allowance you pay for.

Ask which one is included at the tier you would actually buy, and whether there is a per-download or per-gigabyte charge behind it. A platform that meters downloads has made your client's enthusiasm into your cost, which is a strange incentive to sign up for.

2. Can access be scoped per group, or only per gallery?

One password for eight hundred photographs is the level of control most platforms offer. It answers “can this person get in” and says nothing about “what should this person see”.

The test case is the one every wedding produces: the bride's aunt wants the four photographs she is in. If the only answer your platform has is “export a separate folder and upload it again”, that is an afternoon per request, forever. Per-group links are the feature that makes this a two-minute job.

3. How does it actually load on a phone, on cellular?

Every platform's marketing says fast. The only measurement that means anything is the one you run yourself:

1. Upload a real gallery — four hundred frames, not four.
2. Open the link on your phone with wifi turned off.
3. Scroll to the bottom.

You are looking for two things: whether the first screen paints quickly, and whether scrolling stays smooth after a few hundred tiles. A platform that generates previews server-side, in a queue, will also make you wait after upload before the gallery is usable at all — worth timing, because it is the delay that turns “I'll send it tonight” into tomorrow.

4. What does the bill look like in year three?

Pricing shape matters more than the headline number, because your first year is the cheapest year on every platform. There are three common shapes:

• Per gallery or per client — predictable per job, and it grows with your business exactly when you can least afford surprises.
• Per storage — grows with your archive, which is the thing that actually accumulates. Easiest to forecast: your storage next year is roughly your storage this year plus what you shoot.
• Per bandwidth — grows with how much your clients use it, which is the one variable you neither control nor want to discourage.

Whichever shape, do the arithmetic for three years of your real shooting volume before you commit. And check what happens when you exceed the limit: a platform that stops serving existing galleries has taken your delivered work hostage, while one that stops accepting uploads has merely stopped accepting uploads.

5. What happens to old galleries?

Every gallery you ever deliver stays on your account unless something removes it. Ask two things: does the platform let you expire or delete a gallery on a schedule, and does deleting one actually reclaim the storage you are billed for.

This sounds like housekeeping and is really about cost control. A photographer three years in has hundreds of finished jobs, and the ones from 2023 are not being opened. If the only way to reclaim that space is deleting galleries one at a time, the space will not be reclaimed.

6. Can you get your work back out?

The last question, and the one nobody asks until they need it. If you stopped paying tomorrow, could you retrieve everything you uploaded, in bulk, at full resolution? Some platforms make this easy. Some make it a support ticket. Some make it a click-per-gallery job that nobody finishes.

You are unlikely to ever need it if you keep your own masters, which is precisely why keeping your own masters is the answer to this question as well as to the last one.

What actually matters, ranked

If you only check three things: full-resolution download included and unmetered, per-group access, and a real mobile test on cellular. Everything else on this page is a cost question, and cost questions can be corrected later. Those three are the ones your client experiences.