Pixieset

Client gallery, store and studio management platform priced by storage volume

As of 30 August 2026, Pixieset has a free plan and paid plans start at $8/month. A delivery platform for photographers: private client galleries, a print store, a website builder and a light CRM. Softwr lists it under Photography. Pixieset is available on Web, iOS, Android.

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Overview

What Pixieset does

Pixieset is a hosted suite for the part of photography that happens after the edit. Client Gallery delivers proofing and download galleries with pin codes, favourites and watermarks. Store sells prints and digital files through print labs with photographer-set pricing. Studio Manager handles contracts, invoices, questionnaires and bookings. Website provides a portfolio site with galleries embedded. The company is based in Vancouver. The pricing unit is what buyers get wrong. Plans are sold by storage, not by number of clients, shoots or galleries, so the monthly figure is stable until an archive of full-resolution deliverables crosses a tier boundary and jumps. Underneath that sits the second number: the free plan takes a percentage commission on store sales, and paid plans remove it. For a photographer whose income is shooting fees with delivery attached, the storage figure is the whole cost. For one whose income is print and album sales, the commission rate decides the bill, and it is the number to compare against ShootProof and Pic-Time before choosing. Old galleries also count against storage forever unless they are archived off, so cost grows with years in business rather than with current workload. Buyers are wedding, portrait and family photographers running as sole traders or small studios who want delivery, sales and admin from one vendor. The trade-off is consolidation risk and control. Print fulfilment is limited to the labs Pixieset has integrated, the site builder is far simpler than a real website platform, and there is no customer-selectable hosting region, which rules the platform out for photographers under contractual data residency requirements.

What people use it for

Delivering a wedding gallery with a pin code, a print store attached and download limits set per collection
Selling prints without holding stock, using an integrated lab that ships directly to the client
Running contracts, invoices and booking enquiries alongside delivery instead of paying for a separate studio CRM
Giving a client a favourites list to choose album images without exchanging files by email or WeTransfer

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Pixieset.

Pricing is by storage, so cost tracks the size of your accumulated archive rather than current work, and a photographer five years in pays more than a new one shooting the same volume unless old galleries are archived off the platform.
The free plan takes a percentage commission on store sales, which means the photographers most likely to start free, those selling prints, are the ones the commission costs most, and the effective rate should be compared against ShootProof and Pic-Time before committing.
Print fulfilment is restricted to the labs Pixieset has integrated, so a studio with an existing lab relationship or specific paper stock cannot use its own supplier through the store.
There is no customer-selectable hosting region, so photographers working under contracts that require client images to stay in a specific jurisdiction cannot satisfy that requirement on Pixieset.
The website builder is a portfolio tool rather than a site platform, with limited page structure, no blogging depth and no real SEO control, so most studios that grow move the public site elsewhere and keep Pixieset for delivery.
Consolidating galleries, store, invoicing and site with one vendor means a pricing change, an outage or a policy change hits every part of the business at once, and exporting client and sales history out is a manual process.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Pixieset

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Pixiesetvs
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom: If you already pay for the Adobe photography plan and only need basic web sharing rather than a store and CRM
Pixiesetvs
Capture One
Capture One: If proofing during a shoot with the client present matters more than post-delivery galleries and print sales

Pricing

What Pixieset costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

3 GB of storage
Client galleries with download pins
Commission charged on store sales
Pixieset branding on galleries

Basic

$8 /mo

10 GB of storage
No commission on store sales
Custom logo and gallery colours
Billed annually

Plus

$16 /mo

100 GB of storage
Custom domain
Client proofing and favourite lists
Billed annually

Ultimate

On request

Highest storage tier for archives that outgrow Plus
All gallery, store and branding features
Billed annually

Capabilities

Features

Client galleries
Private, pin-protected galleries with favourites, comments, download controls and watermarking
Store
Print and digital sales through integrated labs with photographer-set price sheets and automatic fulfilment
Studio Manager
Contracts with e-signature, invoices, payment collection, questionnaires and a booking calendar
Website
Portfolio site builder with templates that pull directly from gallery collections
Download controls
Per-collection download sizes, pin codes and expiry so full-resolution files are released deliberately
Mobile app
Gallery viewing and upload monitoring from iOS and Android
Client proofing
Favourite lists a client can submit back for album selection or retouch orders
Analytics
Per-gallery view, download and sales activity

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is the free plan actually usable for a working photographer?

For delivery, yes, at 3 GB. For sales, it is expensive, because the commission on every store order continues indefinitely while a paid plan removes it.

What counts towards my storage?

Every file uploaded to a collection, including galleries delivered years ago. Archiving or deleting old collections is the only way to bring the number down.

Can clients download full resolution files?

Yes, if you enable it. Download size, pin protection and expiry are set per collection, so you can release web sizes immediately and full resolution after payment.

Can I use my own print lab?

No. Store fulfilment goes through the labs Pixieset has integrated, and self-fulfilment means handling orders outside the platform.

Keep looking

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Pixieset, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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