How to choose client gallery software

TL;DR — Most gallery platforms look identical on a feature grid. The differences that matter show up months later: what your clients have to install, what happens when storage fills up, what a platform takes when a client pays you, and how hard it is to leave. Evaluate on those six questions, in that order, and the shortlist gets short fast.

Every client gallery platform will show you the same screenshot: a grid of photos on a laptop, a happy couple, a “download all” button. Feature lists are close to interchangeable. That is why choosing one on features tends to go wrong — the things you compare are the things that are the same everywhere.

What follows is the set of questions worth asking instead. It names no products deliberately: prices, tiers and limits change without notice, and a checklist you can apply yourself will outlast any roundup. Take it to whichever platforms you’re weighing, including this one.

Disclosure: ApertureBook makes client gallery software, so we are not a neutral party. We’ve written this as criteria rather than a pitch, and none of it names a product. Verify anything here against the platform’s own documentation before you commit.

What do your clients actually have to install?

This is the question with the widest gap between what’s advertised and what’s delivered, because “mobile app” means at least three different things.

None of these is wrong. A browser gallery is genuinely fine for a corporate client who wants a zip file. But if your delivery experience is part of what you sell — and for wedding and portrait work it usually is — the distinction matters, and it is easy to check: search the App Store and Google Play for the platform’s name. If there’s no listing, or the only listing is a photographer-facing admin app, then “app” means bookmark.

Ask the same question about your side. Some platforms ship an app for photographers to check bookings and nothing for clients; some do the reverse.

What happens when your storage fills up?

Every plan has a storage ceiling, and wedding photographers hit it faster than they expect. What differs is what the platform does when you get there, and this is rarely on the pricing page.

The three common policies:

• Hard stop. Uploads fail until you upgrade or delete something. Predictable, but it fails at the worst possible moment.
• Auto-expiry with deletion. Old galleries are removed after a set period to reclaim space.
• Auto-expiry that keeps the record. Photos are deleted, but the gallery, the client, and any linked invoice or contract survive.

The third is the one to look for, and the difference only becomes obvious years later — when a past client emails asking what they paid, or you need the signed contract for a dispute, and the entire record went out with the photos. Ask directly: when a gallery expires, what is deleted and what is kept?

What does it cost when a client pays you?

If the platform collects money from your clients on your behalf, there are usually two costs, and only one is on the pricing page.

1. The subscription.
2. A commission or platform fee on money your clients pay you through it — often on top of the card processing fee.

A percentage on client payments can quietly exceed the subscription. Run it against your actual annual revenue, not the monthly sticker price: a 3% fee on $60,000 of bookings is $1,800/year, which reframes what “cheap” means. Some platforms take 0% and charge more up front; that is often the better deal at volume and the worse one when you’re starting.

Ask for the number in writing, and check whether it changes by plan.

Where does the business side live?

Galleries are the visible part of the job. Invoices, contracts, e-signatures and client messages are the rest of it, and you can either run them in the same system or stitch together three subscriptions.

Two things to check, because “included” is doing a lot of work in most marketing copy:

• Which tier is it included in? Business features are frequently the upsell that justifies the top plan. If contracts only appear on a $40/month tier, that is the real price of the platform for you.
• Is it actually integrated, or just adjacent? An invoice that knows which gallery and which client it belongs to is a different product from an invoicing tab that happens to share a login.

If you already run a CRM you love, a gallery platform with a thin business layer is a feature, not a gap. Buying the same capability twice is its own cost.

How do clients get in?

Access friction is where delivery experiences quietly fail, because the failure happens after you’ve stopped paying attention.

The common models, roughly worst to best for the client: a password they must create and remember; an access code they must keep the email for; a magic link that expires; or something they already know, like their email address and the date of the shoot.

The test worth running: what happens six months later when your client wants to show the photos to their mother and can’t find the original email? If the answer is “they email you”, that is a support burden you’ve bought.

Can you get your work out?

Every platform is easy to join. Ask about leaving before you need to.

• Can you bulk export original, full-resolution files, or only the web-optimized versions the galleries serve?
• Do client records, invoices and contracts export in any usable format?
• If galleries live on a subdomain or custom domain, what happens to links you’ve already sent clients?

You may never leave. But the answers tell you how the company thinks about the relationship, which is useful information at signup.

Putting it together

Weight these by your actual practice, not by the feature grid:

Most of these can be answered in ten minutes from a platform’s own help documentation, which is a better source than any comparison article — including this one. Where a platform’s answer is hard to find, that is itself an answer.

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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.