# Lensdrop > Lensdrop is a pay-per-gallery photo delivery tool for professional photographers. Photographers upload a client gallery, share one PIN-protected link, and clients view watermarked previews or download clean full-resolution originals on any device, with no client signups. Lensdrop is a delivery tool, not a storefront: it never touches clients' money and takes no commission on a photographer's sales. ## Key facts - Pricing is pay-per-gallery, never a subscription: 5GB $6.99, 10GB $9.99, 25GB $14.99, each a one-time purchase, tax included, with the same numbers in rupees for India and euros for the euro area, and local currency elsewhere. Free tier: one gallery up to 2GB, online 30 days. Delivering often: the prepaid Studio Pass, $24.99 for 30 days or $249 for a year, unlimited galleries, never renews. - Galleries are active for 6 months and extendable. Watermarked previews and client downloads are independent per-gallery switches. - Clients need no account: one PIN-protected link, bulk zip downloads of original files. - Extras: live event mode, AI culling, AI highlight reels, client testimonials, desktop uploader. ## Machine-readable pages This site serves markdown for agents. Append `.md` to marketing URLs (for example https://lensdrop.app/pricing.md) or request any of them with `Accept: text/markdown`. The full corpus in one file: [llms-full.txt](https://lensdrop.app/llms-full.txt) - [Overview](https://lensdrop.app/index.md): what Lensdrop is and how delivery works. - [Pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing.md): tiers, add-ons, free tier, lifecycle, billing rails. - [Help and FAQ](https://lensdrop.app/help.md): common questions, answered. - [Lightroom Classic to a client gallery](https://lensdrop.app/help/lightroom.md): export settings, upload routes, and where the plugin stands. - [Use cases](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases.md): niche-specific delivery workflows. - [Compare](https://lensdrop.app/compare.md): Lensdrop against Pixieset, Pic-Time, ShootProof, CloudSpot, SmugMug, Picdrop and file-transfer tools. - [Blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog.md): guides and comparisons. - [Developer docs](https://lensdrop.app/developers.md): the content API, discovery files, error model, rate limits, versioning. ## For developers and agents - [Developer docs](https://lensdrop.app/developers): endpoints, RFC 9457 errors, RateLimit headers, Lensdrop API versioning and deprecation policy. - [OpenAPI 3.1 spec](https://lensdrop.app/openapi.json): operationIds, parameter schemas, typed error responses. - [API catalog](https://lensdrop.app/.well-known/api-catalog) (RFC 9727) and [auth.md](https://lensdrop.app/auth.md): anonymous access, nothing to register. - [Sitemap](https://lensdrop.app/sitemap.xml) and [robots.txt](https://lensdrop.app/robots.txt). ## Pages - [Home](https://lensdrop.app/): product overview, how it works, and features. - [Pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing): interactive tier picker with USD and INR pricing. - [Help](https://lensdrop.app/help): video tutorials and FAQ. - [Contact](https://lensdrop.app/contact): send the team a message. - [Download](https://lensdrop.app/download): desktop uploader for macOS and Windows. - [Developers](https://lensdrop.app/developers): the Lensdrop content API for agents and integrations. - [Sign in](https://lensdrop.app/login): photographer sign-in via email one-time code or Google. ## Use cases - [Wedding photography](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/wedding-photography): Deliver huge wedding galleries fast - [Event photography](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/event-photography): Same-day delivery for big crowds - [Portrait and family](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/portrait-photography): Private proofing and clean delivery - [Real estate](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/real-estate-photography): Per-listing delivery for agents - [Sports and school](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/sports-school-photography): High-volume delivery to families - [Brand and commercial](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/commercial-photography): Deliver assets to whole teams - [Photo and video](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/photo-and-video-delivery): Photos and the video in one link ## Blog - [Picdrop alternative: pay per gallery instead of 18 euros a month](https://lensdrop.app/blog/picdrop-alternative.md) - [Send photos straight from your camera to a client gallery, no laptop](https://lensdrop.app/blog/send-photos-from-camera-to-client-gallery.md) - [How to know when a client opens their photo gallery](https://lensdrop.app/blog/know-when-a-client-opens-their-gallery.md) - [ShootProof alternative: pay per gallery instead of $11 to $60 a month](https://lensdrop.app/blog/shootproof-alternative.md) - [CloudSpot alternative: pay per gallery, with no commission on the free tier](https://lensdrop.app/blog/cloudspot-alternative.md) - [Client gallery software for US photographers, priced per gallery](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-software-usa.md) - [Client gallery software for photographers in Singapore](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-software-singapore.md) - [Client gallery software for photographers in the UAE](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-software-uae.md) - [Client gallery software in India: what photo delivery really costs in 2026](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-software-india.md) - [Pixieset in India: what the dollar subscription really costs you](https://lensdrop.app/blog/pixieset-alternative-india.md) - [Client gallery pricing compared: Pixieset, Pic-Time, ShootProof, SmugMug](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-pricing-comparison.md) - [Pic-Time alternative: pay per gallery instead of $8 to $50 a month](https://lensdrop.app/blog/pic-time-alternative.md) - [How to send wedding photos to clients in India: pen drive, Drive link, or gallery](https://lensdrop.app/blog/send-wedding-photos-to-clients-india.md) - [Client galleries without a subscription: the 2026 cost breakdown](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-without-subscription.md) - [Pixieset alternative: pay per gallery instead of a monthly plan](https://lensdrop.app/blog/pixieset-alternative.md) - [How to deliver photos to clients: a practical guide](https://lensdrop.app/blog/how-to-deliver-photos-to-clients.md) - [WeTransfer and Google Drive for client photos: where they fall short](https://lensdrop.app/blog/wetransfer-google-drive-for-photographers.md) --- # Lensdrop: Effortless photo delivery for photographers Lensdrop is a pay-per-gallery photo delivery tool for professional photographers. Photographers upload a client gallery, share one PIN-protected link, and clients view watermarked previews or download clean full-resolution originals on any device, with no client signups. Lensdrop is a delivery tool, not a storefront: it never touches clients' money and takes no commission on a photographer's sales. ## How it works 1. Upload the gallery: drag in the full shoot. Resumable, parallel uploads survive flaky networks, and a desktop uploader handles very large shoots. 2. Share one PIN link: send a single private link with an optional shared PIN. No client accounts, no app downloads. 3. Clients view and download: show watermarked proofs, then flip to clean downloads. Clients bulk-download the whole gallery as a zip on any device. ## Key features - Watermarked previews and client downloads are independent switches per gallery, so proofing and delivery are separate decisions. - PIN-protected, unguessable share links; galleries stay off search engines. - Bulk zip download of the full gallery or a selection, always the original files. - Live mode for events: photos appear for guests as you upload, shareable by QR code. Uploads can come from the browser, the desktop app's folder watch, or straight from a pro camera (Sony, Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm) over Wi-Fi FTP with no laptop on site. - AI tools: automatic culling of blurry frames, closed eyes, and near-duplicates, plus AI highlight reels for social media. - Video delivery: MP4, MOV and M4V videos go in the same gallery as the photos, play in the browser above the grid with Lensdrop's own player, and download with the same PIN. A video is stored and streamed exactly as exported, never re-encoded, and counts toward the gallery size like a photo, with no video plan and no per-minute charge. Details: [photo and video delivery](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/photo-and-video-delivery). - Client testimonials: collect and publish testimonials on a shareable wall or website embed. - Free tier: your first gallery, up to 2GB, online for 30 days. Paid galleries are one-time purchases, never a subscription; photographers who deliver often can prepay a Studio Pass for a month or a year, which never renews on its own. ## Learn more - [Pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) ([markdown](https://lensdrop.app/pricing.md)) - [Help and FAQ](https://lensdrop.app/help) ([markdown](https://lensdrop.app/help.md)) - [Lightroom Classic to a client gallery](https://lensdrop.app/help/lightroom) ([markdown](https://lensdrop.app/help/lightroom.md)) - [Use cases](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases) ([markdown](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases.md)) - [Compare](https://lensdrop.app/compare) ([markdown](https://lensdrop.app/compare.md)) - [Blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog) ([markdown](https://lensdrop.app/blog.md)) - [Features](https://lensdrop.app/features) - [Changelog](https://lensdrop.app/changelog) - [Contact](https://lensdrop.app/contact) - [Desktop uploader](https://lensdrop.app/download) - [Developer docs](https://lensdrop.app/developers) ([markdown](https://lensdrop.app/developers.md)): the content API for agents, error model, rate limits, versioning. - Contact: hello@lensdrop.app --- # Lensdrop pricing Lensdrop has no subscription. Photographers pay once per gallery, sized to the shoot, and the first gallery is free. Photographers who deliver often can prepay a Studio Pass instead. Clients never pay Lensdrop anything. ## Free tier - Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB (around 190 photos). One free gallery per account. - Full-resolution downloads, RAW, JPEG and video uploads, watermark and PIN included. A free gallery stays online for 30 days; paying for it keeps it online for 180 days (6 months) from the payment. - Delivery essentials: PIN-protected link, watermark and download controls, bulk zip download. - No credit card required, no commission. - A small "Powered by Lensdrop" branding shows inside free galleries; it comes off, account-wide, with the first paid gallery. The browser tab, favicon, and link preview always carry the photographer's brand. ## Paid galleries (one-time purchase, per gallery) Upload first; the size is set from the bytes you stored when you share, and you pay once. Every paid gallery also includes auto clean-up (AI culling), highlight reels, live mode for events, camera upload over Wi-Fi, Find my photos (selfie search, where local law allows), a website embed, and no Lensdrop branding. A free gallery can be unlocked to the same features for the price of the size it holds. Prices are set in USD, EUR (the euro area, same number: $6.99 is EUR 6.99) and INR (India). Everywhere else the USD price is shown and charged in the local currency at the day's rate. Tax is included. | Size | Capacity guide | USD | EUR (euro area) | INR (India) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 5GB | ~480 photos | $6.99 | €6.99 | ₹699 | | 10GB (default) | ~970 photos | $9.99 | €9.99 | ₹999 | | 25GB | ~2,400 photos | $14.99 | €14.99 | ₹1,499 | In plain words: - 5GB: around 480 photos, $6.99 (€6.99 in the euro area, ₹699 in India), one-time. - 10GB: around 970 photos, $9.99 (€9.99 in the euro area, ₹999 in India), one-time. - 25GB: around 2,400 photos, $14.99 (€14.99 in the euro area, ₹1,499 in India), one-time. Bigger than 25GB? That is the Studio Pass. ## Studio Pass (one payment, not a subscription, for photographers who deliver often) - Unlimited galleries and 1TB of uploads a year: $249 (€249 in the euro area, ₹24,900 in India) for a year (saves $50 against twelve months), or $24.99 (€24.99 in the euro area, ₹2,499 in India) for a month (85GB of uploads). - Prepaid, one payment. It never renews on its own; photographers are emailed before it ends. - Galleries delivered on the pass stay online for their full 6 months, even after the pass ends. Extending one uses its size from the pass's storage. ## Add-ons - Gallery upgrade: move a gallery up to the next size and pay only the difference, so the total always equals the size the gallery ends at. - Gallery extension: +6 months of active time at the gallery's own price, from $6.99 (€6.99 in the euro area, ₹699 in India). A free gallery is kept online by paying for it instead. ## Gallery lifecycle - A paid gallery is active for 180 days (6 months); a free gallery for 30 days from creation. - Extensions add 6 months at a time; photographers are reminded before a gallery expires. - Pricing is per gallery, so an idle month costs nothing. ## Billing notes - Pay at share: create and upload first, then pay once when you share the link. The price is set by the storage the gallery actually holds. No recurring fees, no auto-renewal, the Studio Pass included. - Dodo Payments is the merchant of record for both currencies. Photographers in India pay in INR (UPI supported); everywhere else pays in USD. INR prices are set for India, not currency conversions. - Lensdrop has no storefront and no client payments, so there is no commission of any kind. Full details and the interactive tier picker: [https://lensdrop.app/pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # Lensdrop help and FAQ Answers to common questions about Lensdrop, plus the short video tutorials available at [https://lensdrop.app/help](https://lensdrop.app/help). ## Frequently asked questions ### Do my clients need an account? No. They open the link, enter the PIN if you set one, and view or download straight away. No signup, on any device. ### How many photos can a gallery hold? Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, around 190 photos. A paid gallery holds 5GB (about 480 photos), 10GB (about 970) or 25GB (about 2,400), and the Studio Pass covers anything bigger. Videos count too: an MP4, MOV or M4V goes in the same gallery, plays above the photos, and uses the gallery's size like any photo. A gallery can move up a size later, so you are never stuck at a limit mid-shoot. ### Are the photos watermarked or clean? You choose per gallery. Show watermarked previews while clients make their picks, then switch to clean, full-resolution downloads when you are ready to deliver. ### How long does a gallery stay online? A paid gallery stays online for 6 months, and a free gallery for 30 days. Keep a free gallery online by paying for it, or extend a paid one by another 6 months from your dashboard. You will get a reminder as the date approaches. ### Do you take a commission on my sales? Never. Lensdrop is a delivery tool, not a storefront. We never touch your sales or your clients' money, so you keep 100% of what you charge. ### Can I see if my client opened the gallery? Yes. Every gallery has an Activity tab showing who opened it, when, how many people downloaded, and a world map of where it was viewed. Counts are real people, not page loads, and you get a quiet notification the first time a client opens. ### Can clients download everything at once? Yes. When downloads are on, clients grab the whole gallery as a single zip, or pick out individual photos. Originals, full resolution. ### Can I upload straight from my camera? Yes. Pro bodies from Sony, Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm with built-in Wi-Fi FTP can send JPEGs directly into a gallery as you shoot, no laptop needed. ## Video tutorials ### Get started - Create a gallery and upload: Start a gallery, name it, and drag the whole shoot in. Uploads resume if your connection drops. - Share a private link: Send one PIN-protected link. Clients open it on any device, no signup needed. ### Deliver the way you want - Watermarks and downloads: Show watermarked previews, then flip to clean, full-resolution downloads. - Bulk download and PINs: How clients grab the whole gallery as a zip, and how to set or change the PIN. - Go live at an event: Turn on live mode so photos appear as you upload, and share a QR for guests. ### AI tools - Clean up your gallery automatically: Let Lensdrop flag blurry frames, closed eyes, and near-duplicates for review. - Make a highlight reel: Turn the best shots into a short video for Reels, TikTok, or your client. ## Guides - [Lightroom Classic to a client gallery](https://lensdrop.app/help/lightroom.md): export settings that suit a gallery, three ways to send the export, RAW proofing, and where the plugin stands. ## Contact Email hello@lensdrop.app for anything not covered here. --- # Lensdrop use cases How photographers in different niches deliver with Lensdrop. The product works the same everywhere: upload, share one PIN-protected link, clients view and download. ## Photo delivery for wedding photographers A wedding is thousands of images and a couple who wants them now. Lensdrop lets you upload the full gallery, share a single private link, and let the couple and their family view and download on any device, with no signups and 0% commission. Perfect for: Wedding photographers, Engagement shoots, Elopements, Destination weddings. Why wedding photographers use Lensdrop: - Galleries too big to send: Resumable, parallel uploads take a multi-gigabyte wedding in one go and survive a dropped connection. - Everyone wants their own copy: One PIN-protected link for the couple, both families and the planner. Everyone downloads the whole gallery as a zip. - Clunky portals and forced signups: Nobody makes an account. The link opens on the phone the text arrived on, watermarked proofs first, clean files when you flip it. Page: [https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/wedding-photography](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/wedding-photography) ## Photo delivery for event and conference photographers Events live and die on turnaround. Lensdrop lets you go live while you shoot, with photos landing in the gallery straight from your camera or laptop, then share one link with the organiser or the whole guest list. Everyone views and downloads straight away, no apps and no accounts. Perfect for: Corporate events, Conferences, Parties, Festivals and concerts, Galas. Why event photographers use Lensdrop: - The client needs it yesterday: Photos land in the gallery while you shoot, from the camera over FTP or a watched folder on your laptop, so the link is live before people leave. - Hundreds of people want access: One link for the organiser or the whole room. Everyone opens it and downloads, no signup, one flat price. - Selection rounds before publishing: The client approves a watermarked set, then you switch the same gallery to clean downloads for release. Page: [https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/event-photography](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/event-photography) ## Photo delivery for portrait, family and newborn photographers Portrait work is personal, and so is its delivery. Lensdrop gives every session a private, PIN-protected gallery where clients select from watermarked proofs and then download the finals, all without creating an account. Perfect for: Portrait sessions, Family photography, Newborn and maternity, Senior and graduation, Headshots. Why portrait and family photographers use Lensdrop: - Privacy really matters: Every session is an unguessable link with an optional PIN, so it stays between you and the family. - Clients want to choose: They pick from watermarked proofs in the gallery, and you release the clean finals in a click. - Grandparents are not tech people: The link opens on any phone or laptop with nothing to install and no account to make. Page: [https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/portrait-photography](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/portrait-photography) ## Photo delivery for real estate and architecture photographers Real estate runs on turnaround. Lensdrop gives every property its own gallery, so you can shoot, upload, and send the agent a single link the same day, ready for them to download full-resolution files for the listing. Perfect for: Real estate, Architecture and interiors, Short-let and Airbnb, Drone and aerial, Commercial property. Why real estate photographers use Lensdrop: - The listing goes live tomorrow: Upload from the car and send the agent a link before you have left the driveway. - A gallery per property: Each listing is its own named gallery, with sections for exterior, interior and aerial, so nothing gets crossed. - They need the full-resolution files: The agent, the office and the marketing team pull print-quality originals in one zip, from one link, no accounts. Page: [https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/real-estate-photography](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/real-estate-photography) ## Photo delivery for sports, school and team photographers A Friday night game or a picture day produces huge volumes and a long list of families who all need access. Lensdrop keeps each team, roster or class in its own PIN-protected gallery, so parents can view and download their photos without an account. Perfect for: High school and varsity sports, Youth and club leagues, School and picture day, Dance, cheer and recital, Team and class portraits. Why sports and school photographers use Lensdrop: - Volume that breaks normal tools: Thousands of frames upload resumably and the viewer stays fast on a parent's phone, at any gallery size. - Every family needs access: One link per team or class. Parents open it with no signup, and Find my photos pulls their own child's frames from a selfie. - These are minors: Each group is a private, PIN-protected gallery, so families only see the group they belong to. The selfie is never stored. Page: [https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/sports-school-photography](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/sports-school-photography) ## Photo delivery for brand, product and commercial photographers Commercial work gets handed to a team, not a person. Lensdrop lets you deliver an organised gallery through one link the whole marketing department can open, review, and bulk-download from, with no accounts and 0% commission. Perfect for: Commercial and advertising, Product and e-commerce, Brand and lifestyle, Fashion and editorial, Food and hospitality. Why brand and commercial photographers use Lensdrop: - It goes to a whole team: One PIN-protected link for the brand and the agency. Everyone opens it, nobody makes an account. - Selection and approval rounds: Present a watermarked selection for sign-off, then release the retouched finals in the same gallery. - They need usable originals: Production-ready originals as one zip, organised by shoot, and we take 0% of your invoice. Page: [https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/commercial-photography](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/commercial-photography) ## Photo and video delivery in one link Couples do not want two links and a Dropbox folder for the film. Upload the gallery and the MP4 together, share one PIN-protected link, and they watch the video above the photos on whatever phone the text arrived on. The video is delivered exactly as you exported it, never re-encoded, and it counts toward the gallery size like any photo: pay once per gallery, from $6.99. Perfect for: Wedding photo and video teams, Hybrid shooters, Event videographers, Studios with a filmmaker. Why photo and video teams use Lensdrop: - The video lives somewhere else: MP4, MOV and M4V go in the same gallery as the photos. The video sits above the grid, plays in the browser with Lensdrop's own player, and downloads with the same PIN. - Video hosting means a second subscription: No plan, no monthly fee, no conversion hours. The video is stored and streamed as exported, and the gallery price is set by its size: 5GB is $6.99, 10GB is $9.99, 25GB is $14.99. - Exports are big and uploads fail: A 20GB ceremony edit uploads in resumable parts and survives a dropped connection. Files go straight to storage, never through our servers, and the client's download resumes too. ### Questions **Which video formats can I deliver with Lensdrop?** MP4, MOV and M4V, the containers Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro export for delivery. H.264 plays in every browser. An HEVC or ProRes export plays in Safari and is offered as a download elsewhere. Nothing is re-encoded: clients receive the exact file you uploaded. **How much does video delivery cost?** Nothing on top of the gallery. A video counts toward the gallery's size like a photo, and a gallery is a one-time price by size: 5GB for $6.99, 10GB for $9.99, 25GB for $14.99. There is no video plan, no per-minute charge and no subscription. Your first 2GB is free. **How large can a video be?** As large as the gallery it goes in: up to 25GB on a single gallery, more on the Studio Pass. Photos are capped at 500MB each. Uploads run in resumable parts straight to storage, so a 20GB ceremony edit survives a dropped connection. **Do clients need an account or an app to watch?** No. They open the link, enter the PIN if you set one, and the video plays in the browser above the photos. When downloads are on, each video has its own download button and the download resumes if it drops. **Are videos watermarked like the photos?** No. The watermark applies to photos while clients browse. A video always plays and downloads exactly as you exported it, and the download switch alone decides whether clients can save it. **Can I deliver a video without photos?** Yes. A gallery can hold only a video, or a video and thousands of photos. The link, PIN, expiry and pricing are the same either way. Videos are not included in the bulk zip; each one downloads on its own. Page: [https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/photo-and-video-delivery](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/photo-and-video-delivery) --- # Lensdrop desktop uploader The Lensdrop desktop uploader (version 0.3.6) uploads very large shoots from macOS or Windows with resumable, parallel transfers. It is optional: the browser uploader covers most galleries. Download links and setup notes: [https://lensdrop.app/download](https://lensdrop.app/download) --- # Lensdrop developer docs Lensdrop is a photo delivery tool for photographers, not a developer platform. Its one public API is this read-only content API: every marketing page as markdown, an llms.txt index, and the discovery files agents expect. It needs no key, no account, and no registration. Uploads, payments, and gallery delivery have no third-party API; see "What is not public" below. ## Discovery files - [/llms.txt](https://lensdrop.app/llms.txt) (text/markdown): Agent-readable index of Lensdrop's public content (llmstxt.org). - [/llms-full.txt](https://lensdrop.app/llms-full.txt) (text/markdown): Every public page as one markdown document. - [/openapi.json](https://lensdrop.app/openapi.json) (application/openapi+json): OpenAPI 3.1 description of the content API, with operationIds, typed errors, and headers. - [/.well-known/api-catalog](https://lensdrop.app/.well-known/api-catalog) (application/linkset+json): RFC 9727 API catalog pointing at the spec and the docs. - [/auth.md](https://lensdrop.app/auth.md) (text/markdown): Auth.md: how (and whether) agents authenticate. Short answer: anonymous. - [/developers.md](https://lensdrop.app/developers.md) (text/markdown): This page, as markdown. - [/sitemap.xml](https://lensdrop.app/sitemap.xml) (application/xml): Every indexable page. - [/robots.txt](https://lensdrop.app/robots.txt) (text/plain): Crawl rules. AI crawlers are allowed by name; galleries and the signed-in app are not crawlable. ## Quickstart Read the index: ```bash curl https://lensdrop.app/llms.txt ``` Fetch a page as markdown by URL: ```bash curl https://lensdrop.app/pricing.md ``` Or by content negotiation on the HTML URL: ```bash curl -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://lensdrop.app/pricing ``` Get the OpenAPI description: ```bash curl https://lensdrop.app/openapi.json ``` See an error (typed, RFC 9457): ```bash curl -i https://lensdrop.app/blog/no-such-post.md ``` ## Endpoints All operations are anonymous GETs on https://lensdrop.app. Every markdown page is also reachable by requesting its HTML URL with `Accept: text/markdown`. | Operation | operationId | Summary | Content type | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | GET /llms.txt | getLlmsTxt | Index of Lensdrop's agent-readable content | text/markdown | | GET /llms-full.txt | getLlmsFullTxt | The full agent-readable corpus in one document | text/markdown | | GET /index.md | getHomeMarkdown | What Lensdrop is and how delivery works | text/markdown | | GET /pricing.md | getPricingMarkdown | Lensdrop pricing: tiers, add-ons, free tier, billing | text/markdown | | GET /download.md | getDownloadMarkdown | Lensdrop desktop uploader | text/markdown | | GET /help.md | getHelpMarkdown | Lensdrop help and FAQ | text/markdown | | GET /use-cases.md | getUseCasesMarkdown | Lensdrop use cases, all niches in one document | text/markdown | | GET /compare.md | getCompareMarkdown | Lensdrop compared with other gallery tools, all in one document | text/markdown | | GET /blog.md | getBlogIndexMarkdown | Lensdrop blog index | text/markdown | | GET /developers.md | getDeveloperDocsMarkdown | Lensdrop developer docs | text/markdown | | GET /use-cases/{slug}.md | getUseCaseMarkdown | One use case as markdown | text/markdown | | GET /compare/{slug}.md | getComparisonMarkdown | One comparison as markdown | text/markdown | | GET /blog/{slug}.md | getBlogPostMarkdown | One blog post as markdown | text/markdown | | GET /help/{slug}.md | getHelpGuideMarkdown | One help guide as markdown | text/markdown | | GET /openapi.json | getOpenApiSpec | OpenAPI 3.1 description of this API | application/openapi+json | | GET /.well-known/api-catalog | getApiCatalog | RFC 9727 API catalog | application/linkset+json | | GET /auth.md | getAuthMd | How agents authenticate (they don't) | text/markdown | The full OpenAPI 3.1 description, with parameter schemas and typed errors, is at [/openapi.json](https://lensdrop.app/openapi.json). ## Errors Every error is an RFC 9457 problem details object served as `application/problem+json`, with a real HTTP status (never a 200 wrapping an error, never an HTML page for an API path). Fields: `type` (documentation URL for the code), `title`, `status`, `code` (stable, machine-readable), `detail`, `hint` (what to do next), optional `instance` (the request path). `error` is a legacy alias of `detail`. Example: ```json { "type": "https://lensdrop.app/developers#not_found", "title": "Not found", "status": 404, "code": "not_found", "detail": "No markdown twin at /blog/no-such-post.md.", "hint": "Start from /llms.txt for the agent-readable site index, /openapi.json for the API description, or /sitemap.xml for every page.", "instance": "/blog/no-such-post.md", "error": "No markdown twin at /blog/no-such-post.md." } ``` Error codes: | Status | Code | Title | What to do | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 400 | bad_request | Bad request | Check the request body and parameters against the documented schema. | | 400 | unsupported_version | Unsupported API version | Send a supported value in the API-Version header, or omit the header to use the current version. | | 401 | unauthorized | Unauthorized | The credential is missing, malformed, or revoked. The public content API needs no credential; other surfaces are not open to third parties. | | 403 | forbidden | Forbidden | The credential is valid but does not cover this resource. | | 404 | not_found | Not found | Start from /llms.txt for the agent-readable site index, /openapi.json for the API description, or /sitemap.xml for every page. | | 405 | method_not_allowed | Method not allowed | The content API is read-only: use GET or HEAD. | | 406 | not_acceptable | Not acceptable | This resource is served as text/markdown or application/json. Adjust the Accept header. | | 409 | conflict | Conflict | The resource is in a state that does not allow this change. Re-read it and retry if appropriate. | | 413 | payload_too_large | Payload too large | Reduce the request size; uploads go directly to storage in parts, never through this API. | | 429 | rate_limited | Too many requests | Wait for the number of seconds in Retry-After, then retry. The RateLimit and RateLimit-Policy headers describe the quota. | | 500 | internal_error | Internal error | Retry with backoff. If it persists, contact support with the instance path. | | 502 | bad_gateway | Upstream error | A dependency failed. Retry with backoff. | | 503 | service_unavailable | Service unavailable | Retry after a short delay; honor Retry-After when present. | Unknown paths anywhere on the site return a real 404. Browsers get the HTML page, `/api/*` paths and JSON accepts get a problem document, and everything else (curl, agents) gets a markdown body with links to the discovery files above. ## Rate limits Anonymous access is limited per client IP to 120 requests per 60 seconds (sliding window), described by the IETF RateLimit header fields on every response. Exceeding it returns 429 `rate_limited` with `Retry-After`. Read `RateLimit` to self-throttle instead of retrying blindly. - API-Version: The API version that produced the response. Currently 1. Example: `1` - RateLimit-Policy: The quota policy (IETF RateLimit header fields): 120 requests per 60 seconds per client, sliding window. Example: `"content-api";q=120;w=60` - RateLimit: Live quota state: r is the requests remaining in the window, t the seconds until it resets. Present whenever the limiter ran. Example: `"content-api";r=119;t=60` - Retry-After: On a 429 only: seconds to wait before retrying. Example: `12` - Deprecation: Only on responses from a deprecated API version (RFC 9745): the date the deprecation was announced. Example: `@1767225600` - Sunset: Only on responses from a deprecated API version (RFC 8594): the date it stops being served. Example: `Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT` ## Versioning and deprecation The content API is versioned by the API-Version header. Every response states the version that produced it (currently 1). Requests may pin a version with the same header; omit it to get the current version. A pinned version this deployment no longer serves answers 400 with code unsupported_version and the supported list. URLs and response shapes within a version only change additively: new fields, new endpoints, new headers. Removing or renaming anything means a new version. When a version is deprecated, responses from it carry Deprecation (RFC 9745) and Sunset (RFC 8594) headers and a Link with rel="deprecation" pointing at the notice on this page, for at least 6 months before the sunset date. Deprecations are also listed in llms.txt. No version has been deprecated yet. ## Put a gallery on your website Any active gallery can be shown inside a page on the photographer's own site with one copy-paste iframe snippet, no code and no API. 1. Turn the embed on. Open the gallery, then Settings, then Website embed, and turn it on. A snippet appears. 2. Paste the snippet. Copy the snippet and paste it where the gallery should appear: a code or HTML block on Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress, an embed block on Notion, or any HTML page. 3. Set the height. Change the height value in the snippet to taste. The frame scrolls on its own inside the page. How it works: the snippet is a plain iframe pointing at a second, unguessable link separate from the share link, so it can be turned off or replaced without touching the link clients already have. Inside the frame the gallery behaves exactly like the share link: the PIN is asked for in the frame with the same attempt limits, and watermark, downloads, sections, Live Mode, and the six-month window all apply. Turning the embed off or generating a new embed link stops every page using the old snippet; the share link is unaffected. ## Questions ### Does Lensdrop have an API? No. Lensdrop has no API for galleries, uploads, downloads, or billing. The only public API is a read-only content API that serves the marketing pages as markdown for AI agents. To show a gallery on a website, use the embed snippet instead. ### Can I show a Lensdrop gallery on my own website? Yes. Every active gallery has a Website embed switch in its Settings. Turn it on, copy the iframe snippet, and paste it into any page that accepts HTML. Photos stay on Lensdrop. ### Does the PIN protect an embedded gallery? Yes. An embedded gallery with a PIN asks visitors for it inside the frame, exactly as the share link does, with the same attempt limits. Turn the PIN off in the gallery's settings if the gallery is meant to be open on that page. ### Which website builders work with the Lensdrop embed? Any builder that accepts an iframe: a code block on Squarespace, an HTML embed on Wix, a Custom HTML block on WordPress, an embed block on Notion, or a plain HTML page. No plugin is needed. ### Can clients download photos from an embedded gallery? Downloads inside the embed follow the gallery's own download switch. With the watermark on, clients get watermarked copies and no bulk ZIP. With the watermark off, they get clean originals and the ZIP, exactly as on the share link. ### What happens to an embedded gallery when it expires? Every Lensdrop gallery has a six-month active window that can be extended from the dashboard. After it ends, the embed shows a quiet 'not available' card instead of broken images. Turning the embed off or generating a new embed link does the same for the old snippet; the share link is unaffected. ### Can AI agents read Lensdrop's documentation? Yes. Every marketing page has a markdown twin at the same URL with .md appended, an llms.txt index lists them, and openapi.json describes the content API. Access is anonymous and rate limited. ## What is not public - Gallery uploads, downloads, and the client gallery viewer: no third-party API. Bytes move between browsers, storage, and an image worker through signed URLs, never through an app server that an integration could call. - Billing: photographers pay Lensdrop through Dodo Payments (merchant of record; INR in India, USD elsewhere). There is no API to create purchases and there are never client-to-photographer payments. - Connected devices: the desktop uploader and camera FTP use per-device credentials that the app issues and can revoke. They are not API keys for general use and are not documented here. ## Crawling and AI use robots.txt allows search engines and AI crawlers by name (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, and others) on the public pages and publishes Content Signals permitting search, AI input, and AI training. Galleries (/g/), the signed-in app, and /api are not crawlable. ## Contact hello@lensdrop.app --- # Picdrop alternative: pay per gallery instead of 18 euros a month Published 2026-09-02, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Picdrop is the tool a lot of European photographers reach for when a WeTransfer link stops being enough. It is fast, hosted in Germany, and its proofing tools are genuinely good. The reason people search for a Picdrop alternative is mostly the May 2026 price change: the 9.99 euro Lite plan is gone, and the cheapest paid plan is now 17.99 euros a month whether you shot that month or not. ## What Picdrop costs in 2026 Picdrop restructured its plans on May 12, 2026. The old ladder was Lite at 9.99 euros a month with 10GB and 20 galleries, Pro at 14.99 euros, and Business at 89.99 euros. Lite was retired and folded into Pro, and an Advanced tier was added between Pro and Business. The current ladder, as of September 2026, is a Free plan with 1GB and 3 galleries, Pro at 17.99 euros a month or 14.99 euros a month billed annually with 500GB, Advanced at 47.99 euros or 39.99 euros annually with 1TB and team seats, and Business at 119.99 euros or 99.99 euros annually with 3TB. All prices are net, so VAT is added on top. In US dollars, Pro is $18.99 monthly or $15.99 annually. Two things are worth knowing before you compare. The 14-day trial runs on Advanced features with no card required, and when it ends the account drops to Free rather than charging you. And Free is tight: 1GB is roughly one small shoot, and anything over the 3-gallery limit becomes inaccessible to clients until you upgrade. Verify the numbers on [picdrop.com](https://www.picdrop.com/web/pricing) before deciding, since the page changed once this year already. ## Why the price change stings Lite was the plan most solo photographers were actually on. It was cheap, and 10GB was enough if you cleared old galleries as you went. Moving those users to Pro nearly doubles the bill for the same workflow, and the 500GB that comes with Pro is not something a wedding or portrait photographer asked for. The extra storage is the reason for the price, and it is also the thing you do not need. The deeper issue is the shape of the bill. A monthly plan charges for time. Photography revenue arrives per shoot, bunched into a busy season. On Pro at 14.99 euros billed annually you pay about 180 euros a year plus VAT. That is fine if you deliver forty galleries. It is a poor deal if you deliver twelve, because you paid for the same shelf in the months it sat empty. [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) bills the other way round: one payment per gallery, sized to the shoot. 5GB (about 480 photos) for $6.99, 10GB (about 970 photos) for $9.99, 25GB (about 2,400 photos) for $14.99. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass, $249 a year or $24.99 a month, paid once and never renewed. Twelve 10GB galleries is $119.88 for the year, and a quiet month costs nothing. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, online for 30 days. In the euro area the same numbers are in euros, VAT included: €6.99, €9.99 and €14.99. ## Picdrop vs Lensdrop side by side | | Picdrop | Lensdrop | | --- | --- | --- | | Pricing model | Monthly subscription, 17.99 to 119.99 euros net as of September 2026 | One time per gallery, $6.99, $9.99 or $14.99 by storage size | | Free tier | 1GB, 3 galleries | First gallery free, up to 2GB for 30 days | | Cheapest paid step | Pro at 14.99 euros a month on an annual plan, about 180 euros a year | One 5GB gallery at $6.99 | | What you buy | 500GB of storage whether you fill it or not | Storage for one specific shoot | | Idle cost | Full subscription price | Zero. No gallery, no charge | | Proofing | Comments, color markers, votes, scribbles, Lightroom and Capture One export | Watermarked previews and a downloads switch. No markup tools | | Camera to gallery | Live Push on Pro and above | FTP upload straight from the camera on every gallery | | Delivery status | Real-time notifications on client activity | Activity tab per gallery: people, downloads, a world map, and a first-open notification | | Client experience | Branded gallery, presentation mode, client uploads | One PIN-protected link, no client signup | | Hosting | Germany, GDPR compliant | Cloudflare R2 served from Cloudflare's edge, no client accounts holding personal data | | RAW and video | Supported, with video conversion hours per plan | RAW supported. MP4, MOV and M4V videos in the same gallery, never re-encoded, no conversion hours | > Competitor pricing summarized from Picdrop's public pricing page as of September 2026 and simplified for comparison. Verify on the linked page before deciding. ## Picdrop vs WeTransfer This is the comparison most people start with, because WeTransfer is where they are coming from. WeTransfer moves files. It does not preview them well, it does not let a client pick favorites, the free tier expires links in days, and there is no way to know whether the client opened anything. Picdrop fixes all of that, which is why photographers upgrade to it. The catch is that you pay for the fix every month. If what you needed from Picdrop was a gallery that looks professional, protects the files, and tells you when the client has seen it, a pay-per-gallery tool gets you there without the subscription. If what you needed was the proofing round with markers and comments, Picdrop earns its price. We cover the WeTransfer side in more detail in [WeTransfer and Google Drive for client photos](https://lensdrop.app/blog/wetransfer-google-drive-for-photographers). ## When Picdrop is still the right choice If your work involves a client sitting in on the edit, Picdrop is hard to replace. Collaboration mode with color markers, scribbles, and comments is a real working tool for commercial, food, and advertising photographers who need an art director's feedback on 400 frames by tomorrow. Live Push during a tethered shoot, RAW support, and export of selections straight into Lightroom or Capture One all belong to that same workflow. Teams also do well on Advanced, where four seats and a terabyte at 39.99 euros a month is reasonable per person. German hosting matters to some clients too. If a contract requires data to stay in the EU, that is a hard requirement and Picdrop meets it cleanly. Lensdrop does not compete on any of that. It has no markup tools, no team seats, and no video conversion: a film goes in the gallery exactly as exported and plays as it is. It uploads a finished shoot, protects it with a PIN, shows watermarked previews if you want them, and hands over clean originals in bulk. If your galleries are the last step of a job rather than the middle of one, that is the whole requirement. ## Trying the other model - Deliver one real shoot on the free tier before changing anything. The free gallery holds 2GB for 30 days, which is enough to try a real delivery. - Count last year's galleries and divide what you paid Picdrop by that number. If it is above $7 a gallery, per-gallery pricing is cheaper for you. - Keep Picdrop for the jobs that need proofing and move final delivery elsewhere. Nothing requires one tool for both. - If you are still on the old Lite price, check your billing settings for the date it changes. Picdrop shows the next plan and price there before it applies. Full tier list on [pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing). To see how the whole category prices, read [client gallery pricing compared](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-pricing-comparison), or the [Pixieset comparison](https://lensdrop.app/blog/pixieset-alternative) if that is the other tool on your shortlist. ## Sources - [Picdrop pricing](https://www.picdrop.com/web/pricing) - [An update to picdrop plans and pricing (May 2026)](https://www.picdrop.com/web/articles/an-update-to-picdrop-plans-and-pricing) - [Picdrop trial and contract FAQ](https://www.picdrop.com/web/faq/trial-month-contract) - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # Send photos straight from your camera to a client gallery, no laptop Published 2026-09-01 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Most pro cameras made in the last few years ship with a full FTP client, the same Wi-Fi transfer feature press agencies have used courtside for a decade. Point it at a client gallery and every frame you shoot lands online seconds later, with no laptop, no tether cable, and no card reader in sight. Here is how it works and how to set it up. ## The transfer feature already in your camera Camera makers built FTP transfer for wire services: an Associated Press shooter on a sideline sends JPEGs to an editor mid-game, straight from the body over Wi-Fi. That feature never left the menus, and it is no longer confined to flagship bodies. Sony ships it across the A7, A9 and A1 lines, Canon on the R and 1D series, Nikon on the Z8, Z9 and the D-series with a wireless transmitter, and Fujifilm on the X-H and GFX lines. If your camera has a Network or Connectivity menu with an entry like FTP Transfer, you already own everything this guide needs. What most photographers lack is somewhere useful to point it. An FTP server on a VPS is a weekend of sysadmin work, and it still leaves the photos in a folder, not in front of a client. The missing piece is a gallery that speaks FTP on one end and serves a private client link on the other. ## Why bother, when the laptop workflow works | | Laptop and tether | Camera FTP | | --- | --- | --- | | Kit on site | Laptop, cable or card runs, a table to put it all on | The camera and a Wi-Fi network | | Who carries it | You, plus power for it | Nothing extra in the bag | | Where you can shoot | Within cable reach or card-run distance of the table | Anywhere the Wi-Fi reaches | | Time to first photo online | Whenever you next visit the laptop | Seconds after the shutter | The laptop still earns its place when you cull before anything goes out, and a folder-watch uploader like the [Lensdrop desktop app](https://lensdrop.app/download) covers that. Camera FTP is for the jobs where speed is the product: a conference feed the social team posts from during the keynote, a wedding reception wall filling up while guests dance, a red carpet where the first frame online wins. ## Set it up with Lensdrop in five minutes Every [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) gallery can issue its own camera credentials. Open the gallery, choose Send from a device, then Camera, and you get four values: a server address, a port, a username, and a one-time password. They work like a password for that one gallery, and you can revoke them from your account at any time. - **On the camera:** open Network, then FTP Transfer, and create a new server profile with those four values. - **Turn on passive mode (PASV).** Venue networks and hotspots almost never allow the active-mode connection back to the camera. - **Enable explicit TLS (FTPS) if your body supports it**, so your password is encrypted in transit. Lensdrop accepts both. - **Shoot RAW plus JPEG, transfer JPEG only.** RAW files are ten times the size and no client wall needs them. Your RAWs stay on the card for the real edit later. That is the whole setup. From then on the camera sends each frame as you shoot, or in batches you mark for transfer, depending on the body. Turn on live mode in the gallery and the photos appear for viewers the moment they land, with a QR code you can put on a screen at the venue. ## Network reality: what to use at a venue - **Your phone's hotspot is the reliable default.** Venue Wi-Fi often has captive portals a camera cannot click through. A hotspot in your pocket follows you around the room. - **Prefer 2.4GHz when you roam.** It is slower than 5GHz but holds a connection through walls and across a ballroom far better, and a 4MB JPEG does not need the bandwidth. - **Budget battery.** Wi-Fi transfer costs roughly an extra battery over a long event. Bring one more than usual, or a USB power bank if the body charges in use. ## When it does not connect | Symptom | Usual cause and fix | | --- | --- | | Login failed or error 530 | Wrong username or password. Re-check both, they are case sensitive, and remember the password is shown once when the credentials are created. | | Connects, then stalls on transfer | Passive mode is off. Turn on PASV in the camera's FTP profile. | | Connection refused before login | Wrong port, or the network blocks FTP. Check the port matches the gallery's connection details, then try your phone's hotspot instead of the venue network. | | TLS or certificate errors | Match the security setting on both ends: if the camera profile says FTPS or explicit TLS, keep it on, otherwise set the profile to plain FTP and let the credentials do the gatekeeping. | > Camera menus name these settings differently: Sony calls the whole feature FTP Transfer Function, Canon files it under Network options, Nikon under Connect to FTP server. The four values and the passive-mode rule are the same everywhere. ## What this replaces Photographers have improvised this workflow for years: a laptop running tethering software feeding a watched folder, a hotspot feeding the laptop, an assistant carrying cards across the room. Each hop is a thing that can fail during the one hour that matters. Camera FTP collapses the chain to one hop, from the body to the gallery. It also changes what you can sell. Same-night delivery stops being a rush job you charge extra anxiety for and becomes a switch you flip: shoot the event, and the [event gallery](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/event-photography) is populated before the teardown starts. With Lensdrop the gallery itself is the usual pay-per-gallery price, camera connection included, no subscription anywhere. The full price list is on the [pricing page](https://lensdrop.app/pricing). --- # How to know when a client opens their photo gallery Published 2026-08-30 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). You send the gallery, and then nothing. No reply, no thank you, no idea whether the link was opened or lost in a WhatsApp scroll. This guide covers the delivery signals that matter, why most view counters lie, and what to do with a gallery nobody has opened. ## The silence after you hit send Delivery does not end when you send the link. It ends when the client sees their photos. Between those two moments most photographers are guessing: did the email land in spam, did the WhatsApp message drown, did they open it on the train and forget? Chasing a client with "did you get it?" feels needy, so most people just wait and wonder. The fix is not more follow-up messages. It is delivery status: the same read receipt logic every messaging app has, applied to the thing photographers actually deliver. ## The four signals that matter | Signal | What it tells you | | --- | --- | | Opened yet, or not | Whether the link arrived at all. A gallery unopened three days after sending usually means the message never reached them, not that they hated the photos. | | How many people | Whether the gallery spread. A wedding gallery opened by one person was delivered; opened by fourteen, it is being passed around the family, which is what you want. | | Downloads | Whether the photos are actually in the client's hands. Opened but never downloaded is a nudge waiting to happen before the gallery expires. | | Where in the world | For destination weddings and families spread across countries, the map is proof the delivery reached everyone, not just the couple. | ## Views are not people Most tools that show gallery analytics show page views, and page views run high. A phone browser reloads the page every time the client returns to a backgrounded tab. A refresh is a view. The same guest checking twice from the sofa is two views. Numbers built that way can overcount real visitors by two to three times, and a photographer who quotes them to a client is quoting a fiction. When you compare tools, ask what the counter counts. **People and visits are different numbers**, and a trustworthy activity report shows them separately: how many distinct people opened the gallery, and how many sittings that took. If a tool cannot tell you the difference, treat its analytics as decoration. > Privacy matters here too. Your clients never signed up for the tool you deliver with. Aggregate counts and country-level location are reasonable; per-person browsing timelines are surveillance, and platforms offering them put your client relationships at risk. ## What to do with a gallery nobody has opened - **Within 2 days:** nothing. People are busy; a weekend shoot opened on Tuesday is normal. - **After 3 days:** resend through a different channel. If the link went by email, send it on WhatsApp. Deliverability, not disinterest, is the usual culprit. - **After a week:** call. Say the gallery expires eventually and you want them to have their photos. This reads as care, not as chasing. - **Opened but not downloaded as expiry nears:** send one reminder that the download window is closing. This is the single most effective message in the whole delivery cycle. ## How Lensdrop shows delivery status Every [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) gallery has an Activity tab that answers the four questions directly: opened by how many people, when it was first and last opened, how many people downloaded, and a world map of the countries it was viewed from. Counts are deduplicated people, not page loads, and the numbers can be filtered to today, the past week, or the gallery's lifetime. The moment a client first opens a gallery, a quiet notification lands in your inbox: delivery confirmed, stop wondering. Galleries that have not been opened say so plainly on the dashboard, so the resend playbook above runs itself. All of it is included in every gallery, free tier included, priced the way the rest of [Lensdrop's pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) works: pay per gallery, no subscription. --- # ShootProof alternative: pay per gallery instead of $11 to $60 a month Published 2026-08-30, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). ShootProof is one of the few gallery tools that never took a cut of your sales, and photographers who leave rarely leave because of the product. They leave because the plan bills every month, including the months between seasons, and because the ladder is priced on how many photos you are keeping rather than how many you just delivered. ## What ShootProof costs in 2026 ShootProof's ladder, as listed in August 2026: a Free plan holding 100 photos within 5GB, then 1,500 photos and 75GB at $10.99 a month billed annually or $12.99 monthly, 5,000 photos and 250GB at $19.99 or $21.99, 25,000 photos and 1,250GB at $26.67 or $31.99, and an Unlimited plan at $50 or $60. Every paid tier sells commission free. Check [shootproof.com](https://www.shootproof.com/pricing) before you decide, because plans move. The commission-free part is genuinely good and worth saying plainly: ShootProof does not take a percentage of your print or digital sales on a paid plan. If selling through the gallery is central to how you work, that alone can justify the subscription. ## The photo count is the real ceiling Most gallery tools meter storage. ShootProof meters photos as well, and for high-volume work the photo count binds long before the gigabytes do. A single wedding at 800 delivered frames, or one school sports day across a dozen teams, and the 1,500 plan is a third gone from one job. That matters because the count is cumulative across everything you are still hosting. Delivered galleries you have not deleted keep occupying the plan, so the tier you need is set by your whole back catalogue rather than by the shoot in front of you. The usual workaround is deleting old galleries to make room, which is a strange thing to be doing with work a client might still ask for. ## The subscription mismatch A monthly plan bills for time. Photography revenue arrives in shoots. Sports and school photographers feel this most sharply, because the season has an off-season and the plan does not. Say you deliver twenty galleries a year, most of them inside two busy months. On the 5,000 plan at $19.99 billed annually you pay $239.88 for the year whether you shot in February or not. [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) charges once per gallery, sized to the shoot: 5GB (about 480 photos) for $6.99, 10GB (about 970 photos) for $9.99, 25GB (about 2,400 photos) for $14.99. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass, $249 a year or $24.99 a month, paid once and never renewed. Twenty 10GB galleries is $199.80, with nothing owed in the quiet months and no photo count accumulating against you. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, online for 30 days. ## Side by side | | ShootProof | Lensdrop | | --- | --- | --- | | Pricing model | Monthly subscription, $10.99 to $60 as of August 2026 | One time per gallery, $6.99, $9.99 or $14.99 by storage size | | What is metered | Photos AND storage, cumulative across your account | Storage, per gallery, for that gallery only | | Free tier | 100 photos within 5GB | First gallery free, up to 2GB for 30 days | | Delivery status | Download notifications; visitor reporting varies by plan | Activity tab on every gallery: people (not page loads), downloads, a world map, and a first-open notification | | Idle cost | Full subscription price | Zero. No gallery, no charge | | Commission on your sales | 0% on paid plans | 0%, and no store at all | | Client accounts | Not required | Not required. One PIN protected link | ## When ShootProof is still the right answer If your galleries are a shopfront, stay. ShootProof sells prints, albums and digitals with a real lab network behind it, handles sales tax, and takes no commission for doing it. Lensdrop deliberately has none of that: it is a delivery tool, it never touches your clients' money, and if print sales are part of your business model it will not replace that half of the job. Contracts, invoicing and studio management are the same story. ShootProof carries them. Lensdrop does one thing, which is getting the photographs to the people who paid for them, quickly and without a signup. The switch makes sense when you are paying every month for a shelf sized to your busiest week, when the photo count is deciding your tier, and when your clients want the files rather than a print store. ## Sources - [ShootProof pricing](https://www.shootproof.com/pricing) - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # CloudSpot alternative: pay per gallery, with no commission on the free tier Published 2026-08-30, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). CloudSpot's gallery is fast, its AI culling is good, and the entry plan is genuinely cheap. The thing worth reading closely is what the cheap plans cost you on the other side: the two lowest tiers take 15% of your print sales, and the introductory price is for three months. ## What CloudSpot costs in 2026 As listed in August 2026: Free gives 5GB across 3 galleries and takes 15% of print sales. Entry is $3 a month for the first three months and $7 after, for 15GB and 15 galleries, still at 15% commission. Lite is $17 a month after the same intro, for 100GB, unlimited galleries and no commission. The full suite plans are Pro at $34 and Unlimited at $50, both commission free with a 2.5% processing fee. Verify on [cloudspot.io](https://www.cloudspot.io/pricing), since plans change. Two details deserve attention. The $3 price everyone quotes is an introductory rate for three months, not the plan price. And commission free starts at Lite, which is $17 a month: on Free and Entry, CloudSpot takes 15% of what you sell. ## Where the two models differ CloudSpot sells a suite. Galleries, culling, a store, invoicing and contracts, priced as a monthly platform. If you want all of it in one place, that bundle is the point and it is fairly priced against buying the parts separately. [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) sells one thing: getting photographs to the client. You pay once per gallery, sized to the shoot, at 5GB (about 480 photos) for $6.99, 10GB (about 970 photos) for $9.99 or 25GB (about 2,400 photos) for $14.99. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass, $249 a year or $24.99 a month, paid once and never renewed. There is no store, so there is nothing to take a commission from, at any tier including the free one. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB for 30 days, and it carries the same 0% as the paid ones. The gallery count is the other structural difference. CloudSpot's cheaper plans cap how many galleries you may have open at once, so an active season can push you up a tier for reasons that have nothing to do with how much you are storing. Lensdrop has no gallery limit: each one is bought and priced on its own. ## Side by side | | CloudSpot | Lensdrop | | --- | --- | --- | | Pricing model | Monthly subscription, $7 to $50 after intro, as of August 2026 | One time per gallery, $6.99, $9.99 or $14.99 by storage size | | Commission on print sales | 15% on Free and Entry, 0% from Lite ($17/mo) up | 0% everywhere. No store, so nothing to take | | Free tier | 5GB across 3 galleries, 15% commission | First gallery free, up to 2GB for 30 days, 0% commission | | Gallery count | Capped below Lite (3 on Free, 15 on Entry) | No limit. Each gallery is bought on its own | | Delivery status | Client activity notifications for opens, favorites, and downloads | Activity tab on every gallery: people (not page loads), downloads, a world map, and a first-open notification | | Idle cost | Full subscription price | Zero. No gallery, no charge | | Payments and invoicing | Available in the US only | Not offered. Lensdrop never touches client money | ## When CloudSpot is still the right answer If you want culling, delivery, a store, contracts and invoicing under one login and one bill, CloudSpot does that and Lensdrop does not. Lensdrop has AI culling and highlight reels, but it has no store, no contracts and no invoicing, and it will not grow into them: it is a delivery tool by design, and it never handles your clients' money. The switch makes sense when the store is not how you earn, when 15% on the plan you are actually on is a real number, and when you would rather pay for the galleries you deliver than for the months in between. ## Sources - [CloudSpot pricing](https://www.cloudspot.io/pricing) - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # Client gallery software for US photographers, priced per gallery Published 2026-08-30, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Almost every gallery tool sold to US photographers is a monthly plan, and the plan is sized to the busiest week of your year. If you shoot seasonally, which most people do, you spend a good part of the year paying for a shelf you are not using. ## What you actually pay Lensdrop is priced per gallery, in US dollars, as a one time purchase, tax included: 5GB (about 480 photos) for $6.99, 10GB (about 970 photos) for $9.99, 25GB (about 2,400 photos) for $14.99. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass, $249 a year or $24.99 a month, paid once and never renewed. You choose nothing up front. Upload the shoot, and the price is set by what the finished gallery actually weighs when you share it. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, and stays online for 30 days. It behaves exactly like a paid one: same viewer, same downloads, same 0% commission. Paid galleries stay live for six months. You can extend one by six more months at its own price. Payment is by card, and Apple Pay and Google Pay where your browser offers them. Lensdrop's payment provider is the merchant of record, so US sales tax is handled on their side and you get a receipt without setting anything up. ## The arithmetic against a monthly plan The honest comparison depends entirely on how many galleries you deliver, so here is the crossover rather than a sales pitch. | Galleries a year | At $9.99 each | A $20/mo plan | A $34/mo plan | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 10 | $99.90 | $240 | $408 | | 20 | $199.80 | $240 | $408 | | 25 | $249.75 | $240 | $408 | | 41 | $409.59 | $240 | $408 | Read it plainly: up to roughly 24 galleries a year, per gallery wins against a $20 plan, and it stays ahead of a $34 suite until around 40. Above that, paying per gallery stops being the cheap option, and no amount of framing changes that. Volume shooters delivering weekly are better served by a flat plan. Lensdrop's Studio Pass is $249 for a year of unlimited galleries and 1TB of uploads, paid once and never renewed. > Storage caps are the part people forget. A monthly plan is sized to everything you are still hosting, so last season's galleries keep pushing you up a tier. Per gallery pricing has no cumulative ceiling: an old gallery costs nothing once it is delivered. ## What US photographers ask about most ### Do my clients need an account? No. You send one link and a PIN. They open it on a phone and download, with nothing to install and no signup. That single detail removes most of the support messages a delivery causes. ### Can I sell prints through it? No, and that is deliberate. Lensdrop is a delivery tool, not a storefront. It never touches your clients' money and takes 0% of anything you sell elsewhere. If your galleries are a shopfront, [ShootProof](https://lensdrop.app/blog/shootproof-alternative) or [Pic-Time](https://lensdrop.app/blog/pic-time-alternative) will serve you better and this comparison says so. ### Is it built for high volume? Yes. Uploads are resumable and go straight to storage from your browser, and the viewer stays fast on galleries in the thousands. Sports and school work is the heaviest case and has [its own page](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/sports-school-photography). ### What happens to a gallery after six months? It is archived rather than deleted, with warnings by email before that happens, and you can extend it. Nothing disappears without telling you first. ## Who this suits - Wedding and portrait photographers delivering a few dozen galleries a year, who resent paying in January for a June wedding. - High school sports and school photographers, where one Friday night produces thousands of frames and a plan's photo count is the real ceiling. - Second shooters and part-time photographers whose season is short and whose subscription would idle most of the year. - Anyone whose clients want the files, not a print store. If that is you, [the pricing page](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) has the full ladder, and the free gallery is enough to deliver a real job before you decide. ## Sources - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # Client gallery software for photographers in Singapore Published 2026-08-30, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Singapore's shooting calendar is dense and varied: weddings across several ceremonies, corporate and conference work, family sessions at Gardens by the Bay, school and enrichment days. What most of it shares is a client who wants the files quickly, on a phone, without being asked to make an account. ## Priced in US dollars, shown and charged in Singapore dollars Lensdrop sets its prices in US dollars outside India and the euro area, tax included. Each gallery is a one time purchase: 5GB (about 480 photos) for $6.99, 10GB (about 970 photos) for $9.99, 25GB (about 2,400 photos) for $14.99. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass, $249 a year or $24.99 a month, paid once and never renewed. In Singapore the site and the checkout show those prices in Singapore dollars at the day's rate (a 5GB gallery is about S$9.30), and that is the amount your card is charged, so your bank does not convert anything. The figure moves a little with the exchange rate, and some banks still add a small fee for an overseas merchant. In exchange there is no subscription and no minimum. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, online for 30 days. Lensdrop's payment provider is the merchant of record, so the receipt and any tax handling sit with them. ## Why per gallery fits the work here A Singapore wedding is often delivered as several galleries rather than one: the gate games, the tea ceremony, the solemnisation, the banquet, sometimes on different days and for different sides of the family. On a monthly plan that is one bill regardless. On per gallery pricing you buy exactly the ones you deliver, and a small ceremony gallery costs $6.99 rather than a share of a $20 plan. Corporate and conference work has the opposite shape: a burst of galleries in event season and quiet stretches between. A subscription bills through the quiet ones. Per gallery does not. Multi-day and multi-family deliveries are also where the PIN matters. Each gallery carries its own link and PIN, so the groom's side does not get the bride's side's files by default, and nobody has to make an account to see their own. ## What clients see - One link and a PIN, opened on a phone, with no app and no signup. - Full resolution downloads, one photo at a time or the whole gallery as a zip. - A viewer built mobile first, which matters when most of your clients open the link on the MRT. - Watermarked previews if you want them, as a switch independent of whether downloads are on. > Lensdrop never sells to your clients and takes 0% of anything you sell elsewhere. It has no store, so there is nothing for it to take a cut of. ## Questions Singapore photographers ask ### Can I pay with PayNow or a local method? Not currently. Payment is by card, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay where the browser offers them. UPI exists only for India, and there is no PayNow or GrabPay option today. ### Will the gallery be fast for clients here? Photos are served from a global edge network, so they are delivered from a nearby location rather than from a single origin. Uploads go straight from your browser to storage and resume if your connection drops. ### How long do galleries stay up? Six months, extendable, with email warnings before anything is archived. Archived galleries are recoverable rather than immediately deleted. ## Worth comparing honestly If you deliver more than roughly three galleries a week all year round, paying per gallery stops being the cheap option. At that volume, look at Lensdrop's Studio Pass: $249 a year for unlimited galleries and 1TB of uploads, paid once and never renewed. Per gallery pricing wins for seasonal and mid-volume work, which is most wedding, portrait and corporate photographers. [The pricing page](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) has the full ladder, and the free gallery is enough to run a real delivery before deciding. ## Sources - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # Client gallery software for photographers in the UAE Published 2026-08-30, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Photography in the UAE runs on events: weddings across several nights, corporate and expo work, school and nursery days, family shoots in the cooler months. The deliveries are large, the guests are often in several countries, and nobody wants to be asked to create an account to see their own photographs. ## Priced in US dollars, charged in dirhams Lensdrop sets its prices in US dollars outside India and the euro area, tax included. Each gallery is bought once: 5GB (about 480 photos) for $6.99, 10GB (about 970 photos) for $9.99, 25GB (about 2,400 photos) for $14.99. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass, $249 a year or $24.99 a month, paid once and never renewed. In the UAE the site and the checkout show those prices in dirhams at the day's rate (a 5GB gallery is about AED 26), and that is what your card is charged, so your bank does not convert anything. The figure moves a little with the exchange rate, and some banks still add a small fee for an overseas merchant. There is no subscription and no minimum spend. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, online for 30 days. The payment provider is the merchant of record, so the invoice and any tax treatment sit with them rather than with you. ## Why per gallery fits event work A UAE wedding is frequently several deliveries: the mehndi, the nikah, the reception, sometimes a separate ladies' gallery, often on different nights. Each of those is a natural gallery with its own guest list, and each carries its own link and PIN. On a monthly plan they are one undifferentiated bill. On per gallery pricing you buy the ones you actually deliver, and a short ceremony costs $6.99. The separate PIN matters more here than in most markets. Where a client asks that one gallery reaches only the family and another reaches everyone, separate galleries with separate PINs is the mechanism, not a settings page. Expo, conference and corporate work has the seasonal shape a subscription punishes: heavy through the season, quiet through the summer. Per gallery pricing charges nothing in the quiet months. ## Guests abroad, opening on phones - One link and a PIN. No app, no account, no email required from the guest. - Photos served from a global edge network, so relatives in London, Kochi or Manila load them from somewhere near them. - Full resolution downloads, single photos or the whole gallery as a zip. - A mobile first viewer, because that is where these links actually get opened. > Lensdrop never sells to your clients and takes 0% of anything you sell elsewhere. There is no store, so there is nothing to take a commission from. ## Questions UAE photographers ask ### Can I pay in AED, or with a local method? You pay in AED: prices are shown and charged in dirhams. The method is a card, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay where your browser offers them. UPI exists only for India. ### Can I keep some galleries private to close family? Yes, and the clean way is one gallery per audience, each with its own PIN. Watermarked previews and client downloads are separate switches, so a gallery can be viewable without being downloadable. ### Will it cope with a three night wedding? Yes. Uploads are resumable and go straight from your browser to storage, and galleries in the thousands stay fast to browse. If you shoot tethered or want photos going out during the event itself, there is a live mode that publishes as you shoot. ## When a subscription is the better buy If you deliver more than roughly three galleries a week year round, paying per gallery stops being the cheap option, and that is the honest answer. At that volume, look at Lensdrop's Studio Pass: $249 a year for unlimited galleries and 1TB of uploads, paid once and never renewed. Per gallery pricing suits seasonal and mid-volume work, which covers most wedding, event and portrait photographers here. [The pricing page](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) has the ladder, and the free gallery is enough to deliver a real job first. ## Sources - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # Client gallery software in India: what photo delivery really costs in 2026 Published 2026-07-31, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Almost every client gallery guide you will find is written for a photographer in the United States paying in dollars. This one is written for the shoot you are delivering in Chennai, Kochi or Indore next week, priced in rupees, including the options that only exist here. ## The four ways Indian photographers deliver a shoot Talk to enough working photographers here and delivery falls into four buckets, in roughly this order of popularity. - **Pen drive or portable hard disk.** Still the default for weddings. The client gets a physical object, you get a courier trip and no record of whether anything was ever opened. - **Google Drive, WeTransfer or WhatsApp.** Free and familiar. Drive fills up, WeTransfer links expire in days, and WhatsApp compresses a 40MB raw export into a 200KB memory. - **An India-built platform.** Pixpa for websites plus galleries, Kamero and TurtlePic for AI face-recognition event sharing. Built here, priced here, aimed at slightly different jobs. - **A US gallery suite.** Pixieset, Pic-Time, ShootProof, SmugMug. Excellent products, billed in dollars, on a monthly plan whether you shoot in December or in April. Each one solves a real problem and creates a different one. The rest of this post prices them honestly. ## Why the dollar suites cost more than the sticker price A $10 per month plan does not cost ₹850 a month. It costs the conversion, plus what your bank adds. Indian credit and debit cards typically carry a foreign transaction markup of around 2% to 3.5% on international charges, and cross-border card payments also attract Tax Collected at Source under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme rules in some cases. Before you have delivered a single gallery you are paying a premium that a photographer in Ohio simply does not pay. Then there is the shape of the bill. A subscription charges for time. Indian wedding work does not arrive in time, it arrives in seasons: a brutal November to February stretch, then months where the camera barely comes out. An annual plan bought for peak season keeps billing through the quiet half of the year. At an entry gallery plan of roughly $8 to $10 per month as of July 2026, that is on the order of ₹9,000 to ₹11,000 a year at prevailing rates, paid evenly across months that were not evenly busy. > Card markups, TCS treatment and exchange rates change and depend on your bank and card. Check your own statement before assuming a number. The point is directional: an international subscription costs an Indian photographer more than its sticker price. ## What the India-built options cost **Pixpa** is the most established Indian name here, and unusually it shows rupee pricing to Indian visitors. As of July 2026 its all-in-one plans list at ₹200 per month for Basic with 3GB storage, ₹300 for Creator with 5GB, ₹400 for Professional with 25GB and ₹600 for Advanced with 100GB, billed yearly, at a promotional 50% off the standard rates. Client galleries are part of a bigger product: a portfolio website builder with a store attached, zero commission on sales. If you want your website and your galleries under one login and you are happy paying every month, it is a genuinely good deal in rupees. **Kamero** and **TurtlePic** are a different category. Both are AI face-recognition sharing platforms built for large events: guests scan a QR code, take a selfie, and get their own photos. For a 2,000 guest wedding or a corporate conference that is a real superpower, and neither has a global equivalent that understands Indian event scale as well. Both price per event rather than per month. Neither publishes a full price list on its own site: Kamero's pricing page says plan details appear when you create an event and points volume buyers at a sales conversation. Third-party listings put Kamero in the ₹500 to ₹2,000 per event range and TurtlePic's entry per-event plans around $11, but treat those as hearsay and confirm in the product. That is worth saying plainly: if a platform will not show you the price before you sign up, that is information. Compare it against a ladder you can read on a public page before you decide. ## Side by side, in rupees | | Charging model | Entry cost | What it is really for | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Pen drive | One-off hardware | ₹400 to ₹1,500 per drive plus courier | A physical handover the family can keep | | Google Drive | Monthly storage plan | ₹130 per month for 100GB as of July 2026 | Storage, not client delivery | | Pixpa | Monthly subscription in INR | ₹200 per month billed yearly, 3GB | Website plus galleries plus store in one | | Kamero / TurtlePic | Per event, price shown in product | Not published publicly | Face recognition at large events | | Pixieset / Pic-Time | Monthly subscription in USD | About $8 to $10 per month plus card markup | Full suite: galleries, store, proofing | | Lensdrop | One-time per gallery in INR | ₹699 for 5GB, ₹999 for 10GB, ₹1,499 for 25GB, GST included | Delivery only, nothing else | > Competitor pricing summarized from public pricing pages as of July 2026 and simplified for comparison. Plans change: verify on the linked pages before deciding. ## Where pay-per-gallery fits [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) is deliberately the narrowest option on that list. It delivers photos. There is no website builder, no CRM, no print store, and no face recognition. You upload a shoot, share one PIN-protected link, and the client views watermarked previews or downloads clean originals. You pay once per gallery, when you share it, sized to what you stored: 5GB (about 480 photos) at ₹699, 10GB (about 970 photos) at ₹999, 25GB (about 2,400 photos) at ₹1,499, GST included. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass: ₹24,900 a year or ₹2,499 a month, paid once and never renewed. These are the same prices Lensdrop charges everywhere, set in rupees rather than converted. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, online for 30 days, no card needed. UPI and Indian cards both work, and the charge lands in rupees with no forex markup and no international transaction on your statement. The arithmetic that matters: eight paid 10GB deliveries in a year is ₹7,992 total, GST included. A quiet February costs nothing at all, because there is no plan running in the background. If you deliver forty galleries a year, a flat plan may well beat that. Lensdrop's own is the Studio Pass: ₹24,900 a year for unlimited galleries and 1TB of uploads. Do that sum for yourself on [the India pricing page](https://lensdrop.app/india). ## How to choose without overthinking it - **You shoot huge events and guests need to find themselves.** Use Kamero or TurtlePic. Face recognition at that scale is the whole product and nothing here replaces it. - **You need a portfolio website too and you want one bill.** Pixpa, in rupees, is hard to argue with. - **You sell prints and albums through your gallery.** Stay with a suite that has a store. Lensdrop takes 0% commission because there is no store to take it from. - **You deliver a handful of shoots a month and delivery is the only part you use.** Pay per gallery and stop renting the other 80%. - **You are still on pen drives.** Try one gallery link on the next delivery before you change anything. The free gallery is enough to test it on a real client. If most of your work is weddings, the walkthrough in [photo delivery for wedding photographers](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/wedding-photography) covers the specifics. For the pen drive question in particular, see [how to send wedding photos to clients in India](https://lensdrop.app/blog/send-wedding-photos-to-clients-india). ## Sources - [Pixpa pricing](https://www.pixpa.com/pricing) - [Kamero pricing](https://kamero.ai/pricing) - [TurtlePic](https://turtlepic.com/) - [Pixieset pricing](https://pixieset.com/pricing/) - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # Pixieset in India: what the dollar subscription really costs you Published 2026-07-31, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Pixieset is one of the best client gallery products in the world. It is also priced for a photographer who earns in dollars. If you are shooting weddings in India and paying that bill on an Indian card, here is what you are actually paying, and what the alternative looks like in rupees. ## The bill is not the sticker price Pixieset's Client Gallery plans run from a free tier capped at 3GB up to roughly $40 per month, with the paid ladder starting around $10 per month for 10GB as of July 2026. Check [pixieset.com/pricing](https://pixieset.com/pricing/) for the current numbers, because they move. For an Indian photographer, three things get added on top of that number before the money leaves your account: - **The exchange rate**, which you do not control and which quietly moves your monthly cost by a few percent a year. - **Your card's foreign transaction markup**, commonly around 2% to 3.5% on international charges depending on the bank and card. - **The friction**, which is not a fee but costs you anyway: international payments declined by Indian cards, no UPI option, and no GST invoice you can hand your accountant. > Markups and tax treatment vary by bank, card and how the charge is routed. Read one of your own statements rather than trusting a number in a blog post, including this one. ## The seasonality problem, in Indian terms Indian wedding work is not spread evenly across the year. The muhurtham calendar bunches it: a punishing run through the winter season, then months where you are editing, upgrading gear and waiting. A subscription does not know that. It bills the same in December and in June. Run the year out. An entry Client Gallery plan at roughly $10 a month is about $120 a year, which lands somewhere near ₹11,000 before card markup at July 2026 rates. If you delivered twelve galleries, that is fine. If you delivered five, you paid full price for seven months of nothing, in a currency that was not yours. And the free tier does not rescue you: 3GB is roughly one small shoot. A single wedding delivery clears it. It works as a trial, not as a working tier. ## What pay-per-gallery costs instead [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) charges once per gallery, when you share it, sized to what you stored. Prices are set in rupees with GST included, so the number you see is the number you pay: 5GB (about 480 photos) at ₹699, 10GB (about 970 photos) at ₹999, 25GB (about 2,400 photos) at ₹1,499. Each stays online for six months. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass: ₹24,900 a year or ₹2,499 a month, paid once, and it never renews. These are the same prices Lensdrop charges everywhere. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, online for 30 days, no card needed. UPI and Indian debit and credit cards both work, the charge is domestic, and there is no forex markup on it. A quiet month costs nothing, because there is no plan running when you are not delivering. | | Pixieset Client Gallery | Lensdrop | | --- | --- | --- | | Charged in | US dollars | Rupees, GST included, nothing added at checkout | | Payment methods | International card | UPI, Indian cards | | Pricing model | Monthly subscription, about $10 to $40 as of July 2026 | One time per gallery: ₹699, ₹999 or ₹1,499 by storage size | | Free tier | 3GB storage | First gallery free, up to 2GB for 30 days | | Delivery status | Visit and download stats, depth varies by plan | Activity tab on every gallery: people (not page loads), downloads, a world map, and a first-open notification | | Cost of a quiet month | Full subscription price | Zero. No gallery, no charge | | Print store | Built in, 15% commission on the free plan | None. Delivery only, and it never touches client money | Ten 10GB deliveries in a year comes to ₹9,990 total, GST included. That is under an entry subscription once card markup is counted, and you only spent it on months you actually worked. ## When Pixieset is still the better call This should be an easy comparison to trust, so here is the other side. Pixieset is a suite: client galleries, a website builder, a studio manager with contracts and invoicing, and an integrated print store. If you sell prints and albums through your galleries, that store earns its subscription back. If you deliver thirty or forty galleries a year, an unlimited-storage plan gets cheap per gallery and beats paying per delivery. Lensdrop does none of that on purpose. It is a delivery tool. Upload a shoot, share one PIN-protected link, the client views watermarked previews or downloads clean originals, and that is the entire product. If delivery is the only part of a suite you were using, you were renting the other 80%. ## Switching without breaking anything - Start with the free gallery. Deliver a real shoot on it before you change a single thing about your workflow. - Keep Pixieset running through the current delivery windows. There is no migration and no rush. - Send the next gallery on Lensdrop and watch how the client reacts to a PIN link with no signup. That is the part clients notice. - Cancel the subscription when the last old gallery closes, not before. Full tier list in rupees, plus the UPI details, on [the India page](https://lensdrop.app/india). For the wider India picture, including Pixpa, Kamero and TurtlePic, read [client gallery software in India](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-software-india). For the global version of this comparison, see [the Pixieset alternative post](https://lensdrop.app/blog/pixieset-alternative). ## Sources - [Pixieset pricing](https://pixieset.com/pricing/) - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # Client gallery pricing compared: Pixieset, Pic-Time, ShootProof, SmugMug Published 2026-07-31, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Every client gallery platform meters something different: storage, photo count, or nothing at all. That is why the plan pages are so hard to compare. Here is the whole category on one page, with the metering made explicit and a source link for every number. ## The thing plan pages hide: what is being metered Before comparing prices, work out what each platform charges you for. It is the single biggest driver of your real bill, and it is never on the pricing page in plain language. - **Metered on storage:** Pixieset, Pic-Time, Pixpa. Your plan is sized to the biggest pile of photos you will ever have live at once, and it stays that size all year. - **Metered on photo count:** ShootProof. You are counting files, so a photographer shooting 40MB raw exports and one shooting 6MB JPEGs pay the same, which cuts in your favour if your files are large. - **Not metered, priced on features:** SmugMug. Unlimited uploads across all tiers, with the tiers gating commerce and site features instead. - **Metered per delivery:** Lensdrop. You buy storage for one shoot, once, and nothing runs between shoots. Storage metering is the one that bites hardest, because galleries accumulate. You are not paying for this month's shoot, you are paying for every shoot still sitting live from the last two years. ## The numbers, as of July 2026 | Platform | Free tier | Entry paid | Top tier | Meters | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Pixieset | 3GB | About $10/mo for 10GB | About $40/mo | Storage | | Pic-Time | 10GB, drops to 3GB after 6 months | $8/mo, or $7 annually, 20GB | $50/mo, or $42 annually, unlimited | Storage | | ShootProof | 100 photos | About $10/mo for 1,500 photos | About $50/mo unlimited | Photo count | | SmugMug | Trial only | $29/mo, or $20 annually | $52/mo, or $37 annually | Nothing, unlimited uploads | | Lensdrop | First gallery free, up to 2GB for 30 days | $6.99 per 5GB gallery | Studio Pass, $249 a year prepaid, unlimited galleries | Per delivery, one time | > Summarized from public pricing pages as of July 2026 and simplified for comparison. Monthly and annual rates differ on every platform here, several run permanent promotions, and commerce features are often priced separately. Verify on the linked sources before deciding. ## What each one is actually good at **Pixieset** is the safest all-rounder, and the closest thing this category has to a default. Galleries, website builder, studio manager and store under one login. The catch is a 3GB free plan that works as a trial, with a 15% store commission on it. **Pic-Time** has the best-looking galleries and by some distance the best print store, with automated sales campaigns that reliably convert for photographers who lean into selling. It is the choice if galleries are a revenue channel rather than a handover step. See the [Pic-Time comparison](https://lensdrop.app/blog/pic-time-alternative) for the detail. **ShootProof** bundles real studio business tooling: contracts, invoicing, 0% commission on print sales across paid plans. Photo-count metering suits photographers with big files and modest volume, and punishes anyone delivering thousands of frames per event. **SmugMug** is a hosting and portfolio product first, with unlimited uploads and a real website behind it. It is the most expensive entry point here, and client delivery is a feature of the site rather than the point of it. **Lensdrop** is the narrowest by design: one PIN-protected link, watermarked previews, clean bulk downloads, nothing else. No store, no website, no CRM, 0% commission because it never touches client money. See [pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing). ## Doing the sum for your own year The comparison that matters is not tier against tier, it is total against total. Take last year: how many galleries did you deliver, and what did delivery cost you in total? - **Under 12 galleries a year:** per-gallery pricing almost always wins. Twelve 10GB galleries is $84 against $120 to $250 for a mid subscription. - **12 to 30 galleries a year:** it is close, and the answer depends on file sizes and whether you sell prints. Do the arithmetic properly rather than guessing. - **Over 30 galleries a year, or you sell prints:** a flat plan usually wins on delivery cost. Lensdrop's Studio Pass is $249 a year, paid once and never renewed. If you sell prints, a subscription's store may pay for the whole thing by itself. - **Wildly seasonal work:** per-gallery pricing wins by more than the raw numbers suggest, because the quiet months genuinely cost nothing. One more variable that never shows up on a plan page: what happens to old galleries. On a storage-metered subscription they quietly push you up a tier until you delete them. Price that in. ## If you are in India Everything above is priced in dollars, which is not the whole story for an Indian photographer. Add the exchange rate, a foreign transaction markup of roughly 2% to 3.5% on most Indian cards, and no UPI option. There is also a set of India-built platforms this comparison does not cover: Pixpa, Kamero and TurtlePic. The rupee-first version of this comparison is [client gallery software in India](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-software-india), and the Pixieset-specific one is [Pixieset in India](https://lensdrop.app/blog/pixieset-alternative-india). ## Sources - [Pixieset pricing](https://pixieset.com/pricing/) - [Pic-Time pricing](https://www.pic-time.com/pricing/client-delivery-suite) - [ShootProof plans](https://www.shootproof.com/plans/) - [SmugMug plans](https://www.smugmug.com/plans) - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # Pic-Time alternative: pay per gallery instead of $8 to $50 a month Published 2026-07-31, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Pic-Time (often written Pictime or Pic Time) makes one of the most beautiful client galleries on the market, with an art store attached that genuinely sells prints. Most photographers who go looking for an alternative are not unhappy with the galleries. They are unhappy with paying for them in the months they did not shoot. ## What Pic-Time costs in 2026 Pic-Time's Client Delivery Suite ladder, as of July 2026: a Free plan with 10GB of photo storage that drops to 3GB after six months, Beginner at $8 per month or $7 billed annually with 20GB, Professional at $25 per month or $21 annually with 100GB, and Advanced at $50 per month or $42 annually with unlimited storage. Additional brands are $6 per month on Professional and Advanced. Verify on [pic-time.com](https://www.pic-time.com/pricing/client-delivery-suite) before deciding, since plans change. Two details are easy to miss. The free plan's storage halves after six months, which means the free tier is a trial with a countdown rather than a working tier. And commission applies to payments Pic-Time collects on your behalf: it is waived for self-collected payments on Professional and Advanced, so the store's real cost depends on which plan you are on and how you take money. ## The subscription mismatch A monthly plan bills for time. Photography revenue arrives in shoots. Those two shapes do not line up, and the gap is where the frustration comes from. Say you deliver eighteen galleries a year, weighted heavily toward one busy season. On Beginner at $7 billed annually you pay $84 for the year, which is genuinely cheap, until you hit the 20GB ceiling somewhere around your third wedding and get moved to Professional at $21 a month, or $252 a year. Now the quiet months cost $21 each. Storage tiers are the mechanism: you are not buying galleries, you are renting a shelf that has to be big enough for your busiest week, all year long. [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) inverts that. You pay once per gallery, sized to the shoot: 5GB (about 480 photos) for $6.99, 10GB (about 970 photos) for $9.99, 25GB (about 2,400 photos) for $14.99. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass, $249 a year or $24.99 a month, paid once and never renewed. Eighteen 10GB galleries is $179.82 for the year, with no ceiling to hit and no month where you paid for an empty shelf. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, online for 30 days. ## Side by side | | Pic-Time | Lensdrop | | --- | --- | --- | | Pricing model | Monthly subscription, $8 to $50 as of July 2026 | One time per gallery, $6.99, $9.99 or $14.99 by storage size | | Free tier | 10GB, reduced to 3GB after 6 months | First gallery free, up to 2GB for 30 days | | What you buy | A storage shelf sized for your busiest month | Storage for one specific shoot | | Delivery status | Visitor tracking tied to its marketing automations | Activity tab on every gallery: people (not page loads), downloads, a world map, and a first-open notification | | Idle cost | Full subscription price | Zero. No gallery, no charge | | Print and art store | Built in and well regarded, commission on collected payments | None. Delivery only, never touches client money | | Client experience | Branded gallery site, optional client accounts | One PIN-protected link, no client signup | | Proofing | Album proofing and selection tools | Watermarked previews and clean downloads as independent switches | > Competitor pricing summarized from public pricing pages as of July 2026 and simplified for comparison. Verify on the linked pages before deciding. ## When Pic-Time is still the right choice If you sell prints, Pic-Time is hard to beat. The art store is the best-designed one in this category, the automated sales campaigns genuinely produce revenue for photographers who use them, and album proofing with client selections is a real workflow, not a checkbox. High-volume studios also do well on Advanced, where unlimited storage at $42 a month works out cheap per delivery. Lensdrop does not compete on any of that. There is no store, no sales automation, no CRM. It uploads a shoot, protects it with a PIN, shows watermarked previews, and hands over clean originals in bulk. If your galleries are a delivery step and not a sales channel, that is the whole job. ## Trying the other model - Deliver one real shoot on the free tier before changing anything. The free gallery holds 2GB for 30 days, which is enough to try a real delivery. - Compare against your own numbers, not the plan page: galleries delivered last year divided by what you paid. - Keep the store where it is if you sell prints. Nothing stops you delivering on one platform and selling on another. - Let existing Pic-Time galleries run their course, then cancel at renewal. Full tier list on [pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing). To see how the whole category prices, read [client gallery pricing compared](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-pricing-comparison), or the [Pixieset comparison](https://lensdrop.app/blog/pixieset-alternative) if that is the plan you are on. ## Sources - [Pic-Time Client Delivery Suite pricing](https://www.pic-time.com/pricing/client-delivery-suite) - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # How to send wedding photos to clients in India: pen drive, Drive link, or gallery Published 2026-07-31, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). You have 2,300 edited photos and a couple who wants them now, plus two sets of parents who want them on their phones. Every delivery method here works. They just fail in different ways, and the failure usually lands on you. ## The pen drive, and why it survives Handing over a pen drive or a portable hard disk is still the default for Indian wedding delivery, and there are honest reasons for that. The client gets a physical object. It feels like a finished product, it photographs well in a delivery box, and older family members understand it immediately. Some photographers price the drive into the package and hand it over at a small ceremony. The problems are all downstream. A 64GB drive costs you ₹400 to ₹1,500, and you buy one per client forever. The courier is another trip and another thing to chase. When the drive fails in eighteen months, and some of them do, the client calls you, not the manufacturer, and expects you to still have the files. You have no idea whether anyone ever opened it. And when the bride's sister in Dubai wants the photos, someone has to copy 40GB and upload it anyway, which is the exact problem you were avoiding. > If your clients want a drive, keep giving them one. The strongest setup is usually both: a drive for the shelf and a link for everyone who is not in the room. ## Google Drive, WeTransfer and WhatsApp The free-tools route is where most photographers go next, and it works right up until it does not. - **Google Drive** is storage, not delivery. Sharing permissions confuse clients, the mobile app makes bulk download genuinely hard for a non-technical parent, and your 15GB free quota is gone after two weddings. Paid storage starts around ₹130 per month for 100GB as of July 2026, and it keeps billing forever because the old galleries never leave. - **WeTransfer** links expire, usually within a week on the free tier. A client who opens the email on their honeymoon comes back to a dead link and messages you at 11pm. - **WhatsApp** destroys the photos. It recompresses everything, so a carefully graded 25MB export arrives as a few hundred kilobytes. It is fine for a teaser. It is not delivery, and clients who only ever saw the WhatsApp version think that is what your work looks like. - **A shared folder of raw JPEGs** also skips the part where you control what the client sees first. There is no proofing step, no watermark, no order. The deeper cost is professional, not technical. A Drive folder link looks exactly like every other Drive folder link the client has ever received. Nothing about it says a professional delivered this. ## The gallery link A client gallery fixes the specific things the other two get wrong: it opens on any phone with no signup, it survives being forwarded to twelve relatives, it downloads in bulk in one tap, and it looks like your studio rather than like a file server. The catch has always been the price. Most gallery platforms are American, billed in dollars on a monthly subscription, which is a strange thing to pay through the six months a year you are not shooting weddings. That is the gap [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) was built for: you pay once per gallery, in rupees, when you share it. 5GB (about 480 photos) is ₹699, 10GB (about 970 photos) is ₹999 and 25GB (about 2,400 photos) is ₹1,499, GST included. A wedding bigger than 25GB goes on the Studio Pass: ₹2,499 for a month with 85GB of uploads, or ₹24,900 for a year. It is paid once and never renews. Your first gallery is free, up to 2GB, online for 30 days. Payment is UPI or an Indian card. The delivery itself: drag the folder in, uploads resume if your connection drops mid-wedding, share one link with a 6-digit PIN. Clients view watermarked previews while the couple is still choosing, then you flip downloads on and they pull clean full-resolution originals, one photo or the whole set. ## Side by side | | Cost to you | What breaks | | --- | --- | --- | | Pen drive | ₹400 to ₹1,500 per client, plus courier | Drive failures, no remote access, no delivery record | | Google Drive | From about ₹130 per month, forever | Permissions, painful mobile bulk download, quota creep | | WeTransfer | Free tier, or a monthly plan | Links expire, no proofing, no branding | | WhatsApp | Free | Compression destroys the files you spent nights editing | | Gallery link | ₹699, ₹999 or ₹1,499 once per gallery on Lensdrop, GST included. Weddings bigger than 25GB on the Studio Pass | Nothing, until the 6 month window closes and you extend or archive | ## A delivery checklist that avoids the usual mess - **Deliver a teaser within 48 hours.** Ten to fifteen frames while the wedding is still the only thing anyone is talking about. This is the one job WhatsApp is good at. - **Proof before you deliver.** Send the full set watermarked with downloads off so the couple can shortlist album photos without every cousin grabbing 40GB first. - **Set a PIN and tell the couple to share it, not to forward screenshots.** One link, one PIN, the whole family. - **Turn downloads on once the album is locked.** Then the clean originals go out in a single bulk download. - **Say the expiry date out loud, twice.** Paid galleries stay live for six months on Lensdrop, and you can extend by six more months. Tell them in the handover message and again a month before it closes. - **Keep your own backup regardless.** No delivery platform is your archive, this one included. More on the wedding workflow in [photo delivery for wedding photographers](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases/wedding-photography). Rupee prices and the UPI details are on [the India page](https://lensdrop.app/india), and the platform-by-platform comparison is in [client gallery software in India](https://lensdrop.app/blog/client-gallery-software-india). ## Sources - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) - [Google One storage plans](https://one.google.com/about/plans) --- # Client galleries without a subscription: the 2026 cost breakdown Published 2026-07-28, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Every mainstream client gallery platform wants a monthly plan. This post lays out what those plans cost in 2026, where the free tiers actually end, and what the same year of deliveries costs when you pay per gallery instead. ## The subscription landscape in 2026 Here is where the major client gallery platforms start, based on their public pricing pages as of July 2026. Annual billing is usually cheaper; the table shows the cheapest paid entry point on each platform and what the free tier really holds. | Platform | Cheapest paid plan | Free tier | Commission notes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Pic-Time | $7/mo billed annually (20GB) | 10GB, reduced to 3GB after 6 months | 15% on store sales on Free and Beginner plans | | CloudSpot | $7/mo (15GB, 15 galleries) | 5GB, 3 galleries | 15% on store sales below the Pro plan | | Pixieset | About $10/mo (10GB) | 3GB | 15% on store sales on the free plan | | ShootProof | $10.99/mo billed annually (1,500 photos) | 100 photos | 0% commission on all plans | | Zenfolio | $9/mo (15GB) | None, trial only | Commission policy varies by plan, check their docs | | SmugMug | $20/mo billed annually (unlimited) | None, trial only | Keeps 15% of print markup | | Lensdrop | $6.99 to $14.99 one time, per gallery | First gallery free, up to 2GB for 30 days | No store exists, so no commission is possible | > All figures from public pricing pages as of July 2026, simplified for comparison. Several platforms run rotating promotions, and plans change. Verify current pricing on the linked sources before deciding. ## The free tiers are smaller than they look Free plans are how these platforms get you in the door, and the limits are worth reading closely. ShootProof's free tier holds 100 photos, which one event exceeds. Pixieset's holds 3GB. Pic-Time gives you 10GB, then quietly reduces it to 3GB after six months, so free galleries shrink under you. CloudSpot caps you at three galleries and 5GB. SmugMug and Zenfolio have no perpetual free plan at all. Lensdrop's free tier is small too: your first gallery, up to 2GB, or around 190 photos, online for 30 days. It is there to try one real delivery end to end, with the same PIN protection, watermarking, and bulk download as paid galleries, and no commission. ## A year of deliveries, priced both ways Say you deliver ten shoots a year, a typical load for a part-time or seasonal photographer. On a subscription, the cheapest realistic options run about $84 per year (Pic-Time or CloudSpot entry plans, billed annually) up to $240 per year on SmugMug, whether you deliver in every month or just a few. Storage limits on entry plans can also force an upgrade mid-year once a few weddings pile up. The same ten shoots on Lensdrop, at the 10GB size, cost $99.90 total. That is a little more than the cheapest entry plans, which cannot hold ten 10GB shoots at once, and well under the rest. A slow year with four shoots costs $39.96. There is no month where you pay for software you did not use, and no annual commitment to forecast against. The honest counterpoint: at high volume the math can flip. If you deliver fifty or more galleries a year, a flat plan gets cheap per gallery, and a suite plan that bundles your website and store can be worth it. Lensdrop's own answer there is the Studio Pass: $249 a year for unlimited galleries and 1TB of uploads, paid once and never renewed. Pay-per-gallery wins for low and variable volume, which is exactly where a fixed monthly fee stings the most. ## Commission-free by design, not by discount Several platforms advertise 0% commission as a paid-plan perk while charging 15% on free plans. Lensdrop's answer is structural: there is no storefront at all. Clients never see a price, a cart, or a pay button. If you sell prints or albums, you do that on your own terms, through whatever store or invoice you already use, and your delivery tool has no claim on any of it. That also keeps the client experience clean. A delivery link should feel like a gift, not a checkout page. Clients open one PIN-protected link, view the gallery, and download. No account creation, no upsell banners next to the wedding photos. ## What you give up without a subscription Fairness requires the other column. Subscriptions bundle things Lensdrop does not do: website builders, contracts and invoicing, integrated print stores with lab fulfillment, and permanent archival storage. Lensdrop galleries have a 6-month active window, extendable when a delivery needs to live longer, because delivery is a handoff rather than an archive. If those bundled tools are load-bearing for your business, a suite is a fine buy. If delivery is the only part you use, you can stop renting the rest of the suite to get it. Start with the [free tier](https://lensdrop.app/), check the [pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing), and price your own year both ways. ## Sources - [Pic-Time pricing](https://www.pic-time.com/pricing) - [ShootProof pricing](https://www.shootproof.com/pricing) - [CloudSpot pricing](https://www.cloudspot.io/pricing) - [SmugMug plans](https://www.smugmug.com/plans/) - [Zenfolio pricing](https://zenfolio.com/pricing/) - [Pixieset pricing](https://pixieset.com/pricing/) --- # Pixieset alternative: pay per gallery instead of a monthly plan Published 2026-07-28, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Pixieset is a capable all-in-one suite, but most photographers who go looking for an alternative are not leaving because of features. They are leaving because of the subscription. Here is an honest comparison with a pay-per-gallery approach. ## What Pixieset actually costs Pixieset's Client Gallery plans run from a free tier up to roughly $40 per month, with the free plan capped at 3GB of storage. As of July 2026, the paid ladder starts at about $10 per month for 10GB. Pixieset also sells its Website, Studio Manager, and Store products as separate or bundled subscriptions, so the real monthly bill depends on how much of the suite you adopt. Always check [pixieset.com/pricing](https://pixieset.com/pricing/) for current numbers. Two limits matter most in practice. First, 3GB free is roughly one small shoot: a single wedding delivery blows past it, so the free plan works as a trial rather than a working tier. Second, store sales on the free plan carry a 15% commission, which photographers in community forums regularly name as the moment they started shopping around. ## The subscription problem for working photographers A subscription bills you for time, but photography work arrives in shoots. If you deliver thirty galleries in wedding season and two in February, a monthly plan charges you the same in both months. Over a year, an entry Pixieset Client Gallery plan is about $120 at monthly billing rates as of July 2026, whether you delivered five galleries or fifty. Pay-per-gallery flips that around. With [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) you pay once when you share a gallery, sized to what you actually stored: 5GB (about 480 photos) for $6.99, 10GB (about 970 photos) for $9.99, 25GB (about 2,400 photos) for $14.99. Shoots bigger than 25GB go on the Studio Pass, $249 a year or $24.99 a month, paid once and never renewed. A quiet month costs you nothing. Ten 10GB galleries in a year come to $99.90 total, less than a year of that entry Pixieset plan. ## Side by side | | Pixieset Client Gallery | Lensdrop | | --- | --- | --- | | Pricing model | Monthly subscription, roughly $10 to $40/mo as of July 2026 | One-time per gallery: $6.99, $9.99 or $14.99 by storage size | | Free tier | 3GB storage | First gallery free, up to 2GB for 30 days | | Store and print sales | Built in, 15% commission on the free plan | None. Lensdrop is delivery only and never touches client money | | Client experience | Gallery site, client accounts optional | One PIN-protected link, no client signups | | Proofing | Watermark options by plan | Watermarked previews and clean downloads as independent switches | | Delivery status | Visit and download stats, depth varies by plan | Activity tab on every gallery: people (not page loads), downloads, a world map, and a first-open notification | | Idle cost | Full subscription price | Zero. No gallery, no charge | > Competitor pricing summarized from public pricing pages as of July 2026 and simplified for comparison. Plans and prices change: verify on the linked pages before deciding. ## When Pixieset is still the right choice An honest comparison cuts both ways. Pixieset is a genuine suite: a website builder, a studio manager with contracts and invoicing, and an integrated print store. If you sell prints through your galleries or want your website, CRM, and delivery under one login, a suite subscription can earn its keep, especially at high volume where unlimited-storage plans get cheap per gallery. Lensdrop deliberately does none of that. It is a delivery tool. You upload a shoot, share one PIN-protected link, clients view watermarked previews or download clean originals, and that is the whole product. If delivery is the only part of a suite you actually use, you are the photographer pay-per-gallery was designed for. ## What switching looks like - Start free: your first gallery is free, up to 2GB for 30 days, no card required. Try a real delivery before changing anything. - Deliver the next shoot on Lensdrop: create a gallery, drag the photos in, send the link. Resumable uploads handle full weddings. - Let existing Pixieset galleries run out their course, then cancel when the last delivery window closes. - Keep your store elsewhere if you sell prints. Lensdrop takes no commission because there is no store to take it from. See [pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) for the full tier list in USD and INR, or read [how photographers use Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/use-cases) for niche-specific walkthroughs. ## Sources - [Pixieset pricing](https://pixieset.com/pricing/) - [Lensdrop pricing](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) --- # How to deliver photos to clients: a practical guide Published 2026-07-28, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Delivery is the last thing a client remembers about working with you, and the first thing they judge before leaving a review. This guide covers the delivery methods photographers actually use, where each breaks down, and a checklist that makes any of them feel professional. ## The four ways photographers deliver today | Method | Good at | Falls down when | | --- | --- | --- | | Email attachments | A handful of small files, zero setup | Anything over a few photos; servers reject large attachments and compress quality | | Cloud drives (Google Drive, Dropbox) | Free-ish, familiar to everyone | Proofing, watermarks, and presentation; folders of files feel like homework, not a reveal | | File transfer links (WeTransfer and similar) | One-off sends, no account for the recipient | Links expire in days, there is no gallery view, and re-sending becomes your job | | Client gallery platforms | Presentation, proofing, downloads, access control | Most charge a monthly subscription whether you shot that month or not | None of these is wrong for every job. A single headshot can ride an email. But once a delivery involves hundreds of files, proofing rounds, or more than one recipient, the first three options start costing you time that a gallery handles for you. ## Proof first, deliver second The most common delivery mistake is handing over everything at once. A proofing pass, where clients browse watermarked previews and make selections before finals are released, protects you twice: unfinished edits never circulate, and unpaid invoices keep leverage. When the balance clears or the picks are final, you flip the gallery to clean downloads. Look for a tool where the watermark and the download switch are independent. In [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/), watermarking controls how photos look and what a saved file contains, while a separate downloads switch controls whether clients can save at all. That covers the in-between states: watermarked proofs with downloads open for sharing picks, or clean view-only galleries for a pre-reveal tease. ## Access control that clients will actually tolerate Forcing a client to create an account before seeing their own photos is the fastest route to a support email. The sweet spot is one unguessable link plus a short PIN: enough to keep galleries private and off search engines, light enough that a grandparent opens it on the first try. Per-person accounts only earn their friction on long-running commercial projects. - Use one link per gallery, not per person; you will re-send it less. - Set a PIN when the subject matter is sensitive or the client list is wide. - Never post the link and the PIN in the same public place. - Check the link on a phone before sending; that is where most clients open it. ## Deliver originals, not approximations Clients paid for full-resolution files, and delivery should hand over exactly what you exported: original bytes, not a platform's re-compressed version. Bulk download matters just as much. If saving 800 photos means 800 taps, the gallery has failed; a single zip of the whole gallery, or of a selection, is the baseline. This is also where consumer drives disappoint quietly. Shared folders often preview compressed versions, and recipients grab screen-resolution copies without realizing it. A delivery tool should make the full-resolution path the obvious one. ## Set an expiry, and say it out loud Galleries that live forever become your unpaid archive service, and photographers increasingly charge reactivation fees for expired galleries precisely because clients treat delivery links as backup. The cleaner pattern is an explicit window: tell clients the gallery is live for six months, remind them near the end, and extend it deliberately when a project warrants it. A defined window sets expectations, prompts clients to actually download their files, and keeps your storage costs tied to active work instead of every job you have ever shot. ## The delivery checklist - Cull and edit before anything goes up; the gallery is the reveal, not the contact sheet. - Upload the full shoot with a tool that resumes interrupted uploads. - Share one PIN-protected link with a one-line note on what happens next. - Run proofing with watermarked previews if selections or payment are pending. - Flip to clean, full-resolution downloads with bulk zip when it is time to deliver. - State the gallery's active window and remind before it closes. If you want this flow without adopting a subscription suite, Lensdrop does exactly this and nothing else: [one free gallery](https://lensdrop.app/) to start, then [pay per gallery](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) from $6.99 when you need more. --- # WeTransfer and Google Drive for client photos: where they fall short Published 2026-07-28, updated 2026-10-06 on the [Lensdrop blog](https://lensdrop.app/blog). Plenty of working photographers deliver over WeTransfer or a Google Drive folder, and for moving bytes from one computer to another, both are fine. The problems start because client delivery is not a file transfer. It is a reveal, a proofing round, and a handoff, and generic tools were not built for any of that. ## What transfer tools were built for WeTransfer solves one problem elegantly: send a big file to someone, once, with no account on their end. Google Drive solves a different one: keep files synced and shared inside an ongoing collaboration. Client photo delivery borrows a little from both and fits neither, which is why the friction shows up in the same places for almost every photographer who tries. ## Five places generic tools break down ### 1. Links that quietly die Free transfer links expire on their own schedule, measured in days. When the client finally sits down to download three weeks later, the link is dead and re-uploading the shoot becomes your evening. Drive links live longer but depend on your storage quota and stay live indefinitely by default, which is the opposite problem: your delivery folder becomes a permanent archive you never planned to host. ### 2. No proofing, no watermarks Neither tool has a concept of a watermarked preview. The moment you share the folder, every file in it is deliverable, full stop. Selection rounds happen over screenshots and spreadsheet lists, and unfinished edits are one forward away from circulating. A gallery tool keeps proofs watermarked and releases clean files only when you flip the switch. ### 3. Presentation that undersells the work A wedding arrives as a grid of filenames in someone else's interface, next to their tax documents. There is no cover image, no sequencing, no sense of occasion. The first ten seconds of a delivery are part of the product, and a file manager cannot deliver them. ### 4. Access control by prayer Drive sharing is famously easy to get wrong in both directions: too tight and the client hits a permission wall on their family account, too loose and anyone with the link, forwarded anywhere, has the originals. Transfer links have no gate at all. A gallery link with a shared PIN is the middle ground that both tools are missing. ### 5. Downloads that are not the originals Preview screens in drive tools often serve compressed renditions, and clients regularly save those instead of the full-resolution files, then print them. A delivery tool has one job here: make the full-quality download the default path, including a single zip of everything. ## What delivery-grade looks like | | Transfer links | Cloud drive folders | Lensdrop | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Link lifetime | Days on free tiers | Indefinite by default | 6 months, extendable on purpose | | Delivery status | Download receipt emails per transfer | None. A folder never says who opened it | Activity tab: people, downloads, a world map, first-open notification | | Proofing | None | None | Watermarked previews, independent download switch | | Client requirements | None | Often a Google account for permissioned folders | None, one link plus optional PIN | | Bulk download | Yes, once, while the link lives | Zip of folder, quality depends on path taken | Full-resolution zip of gallery or selection | | Presentation | File list | File grid | Cover, layout, and sequencing built for photography | > Transfer-tool behavior varies by product and plan and changes often; the table describes the typical free-tier experience as of July 2026 in general terms. ## Keep the transfer tools for what they are good at This is not a case for abandoning WeTransfer or Drive. Sending a vendor a logo pack, moving RAW files to a retoucher, archiving to your own cloud: perfect. Those are file transfers between professionals. Client delivery is the one job where the recipient is a paying customer judging the experience, and it deserves a tool shaped for it. If you are weighing WeTransfer against a European gallery tool, the [Picdrop comparison](https://lensdrop.app/blog/picdrop-alternative) covers that pairing directly. The usual objection is cost: transfer tools feel free and gallery platforms want a subscription. Pay-per-gallery removes that trade-off. A [Lensdrop](https://lensdrop.app/) gallery costs $6.99, $9.99 or $14.99 once, sized to the shoot, with [one free 2GB gallery](https://lensdrop.app/pricing) to start. You keep the zero-idle-cost economics of a transfer link and gain the proofing, PIN, and presentation a delivery deserves.