ApertureBook vs ShootProof

TL;DR — ApertureBook is built around three things ShootProof does differently: your clients install a real native app from the App Store and Google Play rather than saving a web page to their home screen; they sign in once to see galleries, invoices, contracts and messages together; and a gallery can expire without taking the business record with it. If your product is digital delivery and the paperwork around it, keep reading.

Disclosure: We make ApertureBook, so read this as our case for our own product rather than a neutral review. Every claim about ShootProof below is checkable against their own published documentation, linked at the bottom, and was verified on 15 August 2026. Both products change; check the live pages before you decide.

The “mobile app” difference is the real one

Both platforms advertise a mobile app for clients. They are not the same kind of object, and this is the single biggest functional difference between the two products.

A ShootProof Mobile App is a web page your client saves to their home screen. Their support documentation is explicit about the mechanics: the client opens the link (in Safari on iPhone, Chrome on Android), taps the menu, and chooses Add to Home Screen. It is capped at 250 photos, it is positioned as a shareable marketing piece rather than a delivery mechanism, and clients cannot download the photo files from it — for downloads they go back to the regular gallery in a browser.

ApertureBook’s client app is a native app. Your client installs it from the App Store or Google Play the way they install everything else.

The consequences are not cosmetic:

That fourth row is the one your clients feel. A browser download gives them a ZIP archive in the Files app: not in their camera roll, not backed up to iCloud, not searchable, not shareable without an unzip-and-export dance most people never perform. They screenshot the gallery instead, and the photo they send their mother is a compressed screenshot of your work. A native app writes each photo into the camera roll and groups them into an album named after the gallery. We wrote about why that gap exists and what it costs you in more detail.

One client login, or one per gallery

ShootProof secures galleries the way most platforms do: per-gallery passwords, optional email capture to see who visited, private link-only galleries, and a separate registration step for pre-release. Each of those is a sensible control. Together they mean a client who books you twice has two links, possibly two passwords, and no single place where their photos, their invoice and their signed contract exist side by side.

ApertureBook has one door. A client signs in with their email address and the date of the shoot — no password to create, no access code to keep the email for, nothing to lose. Behind that login sits everything from the relationship: every gallery, every invoice (payable in-app), every contract to read and sign, any forms you’ve sent, and a message thread with you.

The test worth applying to either product: six months from now, your client wants to show the photos to their mother and cannot find the original email — what happens? Ours is “they open the app and it’s there.” Password-per-gallery answers “they email you,” and that support burden is a real cost you’re buying.

Expiry that keeps the record

Storage is the one cost that only ever grows, so every platform eventually makes you choose: keep paying for galleries you delivered years ago, or let them go and lose the trail with them.

ApertureBook refuses the choice. When a gallery expires we delete the photos to free your storage but keep the record. The gallery row, the client, the linked invoice and the signed contract all remain. The photos are gone — you have your originals, and we were never your backup — but three years later, when a past client asks what they paid or you need the signed contract for a dispute, the paperwork is still there. It costs nothing extra, because it isn’t an add-on. It’s how expiry works.

The business suite is on every plan

Invoicing, contracts with e-signatures, client forms, take-home reports and a public portfolio page are included on every ApertureBook plan, including the free one. They aren’t an upper tier, and they aren’t separate products bolted onto the gallery. Two-way client messaging is the one exception — that’s on the paid plans.

That matters most when you’re starting out, which is exactly when tooling budgets are thinnest. The free plan is sized for trying a real job end to end rather than for running a studio on, but nothing is feature-locked: you can write a contract, send an invoice and deliver a gallery on it before you pay anything. We also meter gigabytes rather than photo counts, so a wedding shooter delivering 800 frames from a single day never has to think about a photo ceiling. See current plans and limits.

What you get with ApertureBook

• A native client app your clients install, with push notifications, full-gallery downloads, and photos that land in the camera roll as a named album.
• One client login — email plus shoot date — spanning galleries, invoices, contracts, forms and messages, with no password to remember.
• Client forms and two-way messaging in the same app the photos live in, rather than routed through email. Forms are on every plan; messaging is on the paid plans.
• Expiry that keeps the record, at no extra cost.
• Take-home reports that show what you actually earned after fees, not gross bookings.
• A free plan with nothing feature-locked — 5 galleries and 1 GB, with invoicing, contracts and e-signatures included rather than held back for a paid tier.

Switching from ShootProof

You don’t have to move anything on day one, and you shouldn’t. Galleries you’ve already delivered can live out their expiry where they are while every new shoot goes into ApertureBook. The two don’t conflict, and nothing about your existing deliveries changes.

A practical order:

1. Start free. 5 galleries and 1 GB, with invoicing and contracts included, so you aren’t paying twice while you decide.
2. Put your next shoot through ApertureBook end to end — contract, invoice, gallery, delivery. One real job tells you more than any feature grid.
3. Watch what your clients actually do. Whether they install the app, whether the photos reach their camera roll, whether the invoice gets paid without a chase.
4. Move the rest when your storage renews. Upload from your own originals.

Two things to know going in. There is no bulk import from ShootProof — you upload from your originals, which is the only copy you should be trusting anyway. And your clients don’t create accounts: they sign in with their email address and the shoot date, so there’s nothing for you to provision and nothing for them to lose.

Is ApertureBook right for you?

Choose ApertureBook if:

• Delivery experience is part of what you sell.
• Your clients live on their phones and you want your photos in their camera roll, not zipped in a Files folder.
• You want galleries, invoices, contracts and messages behind one client login.
• You’d rather your gallery software also handled the paperwork than run three subscriptions.
• You’re starting out and need a free plan you can actually work on.

The question that separates these two products isn’t which feature grid is longer. It’s whether you want a gallery host, or the whole client relationship in one place.

Sources (checked 15 August 2026): What is a Mobile App? · How do my clients install a Mobile App? · Gallery access & privacy settings · ApertureBook pricing

ApertureBook delivers private client galleries on the web and through a native app your clients install from the App Store or Google Play, with invoicing, contracts and e-signatures included on every plan. See how it works, or start free.