Client Photo Delivery: WeTransfer vs Drive vs Gallery Platforms
Five ways to get finished photos to a client, what each actually costs you, and how to pick based on what you shoot rather than on which tool has the most features.
Client delivery is one of those decisions that gets made once, early, by accident — and then quietly taxes every job for years. Here's a straight comparison of the five common approaches, including where each genuinely wins.
What's the best way to deliver photos to clients?
It depends on volume and whether the work has a second life. Transfer services are fine for one-off handoffs to a client who'll never ask again. Hosted gallery platforms are worth their storage fees if you sell prints through them. For photographers who already back up to cloud storage and deliver regularly, presenting that existing folder as a gallery is the cheapest option in both time and money, because the delivery and the backup become the same thing.
The five options
| Method | Setup time per job | Cost model | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minutes | Free | A handful of frames, nothing more | |
| Transfer service | Upload time | Free tier, then per-seat | One-off handoff, no archive needed |
| Raw cloud folder link | Seconds | Your storage | Internal handoffs, other photographers, retouchers |
| Hosted gallery platform | Upload time | Scales with storage | You sell prints and want a built-in store |
| Gallery over your own folder | About a minute | Flat | Regular client delivery at any volume |
Transfer services
Where they win: zero learning curve, and the client needs nothing but a browser. For a single corporate handoff to someone you'll never hear from again, it's hard to beat.
Where they hurt: the expiry. Every expired link is a future support request, and the free tiers cap well below a wedding or a video master. You also upload the full set every single time — the slowest step in the job, repeated per delivery.
Raw cloud folder links
Where they win: free, instant, no size ceiling, and perfectly good for handoffs to people who think in files — retouchers, designers, second shooters.
Where they hurt: presentation. Clients see a file manager, your naming scheme, and no way to experience the set as photographs. It also invites them into your storage rather than giving them a bounded view of one job.
Hosted gallery platforms
Where they win: genuinely mature products. Built-in print stores, client mobile apps, studio management, sales automations. If a meaningful share of your revenue is print sales, the store alone can justify the whole bill.
Where they hurt: you upload everything twice and then rent the second copy forever, at a price that rises with how much you shoot. For photographers whose revenue is the shoot fee rather than prints, that's paying for a store you don't use. We've written up the specifics against Pixieset and Pic-Time if you want the detail.
A gallery over your existing folder
Where it wins: the upload step disappears, because the backup you already made is the gallery. Cost is flat rather than storage-scaled, links don't expire, and adding photos later updates the link the client already has. Clients get the full-screen, downloadable experience without an account.
Where it hurts: there's no print store — it's a delivery tool, not a commerce platform. It also assumes you keep an organized cloud folder per job, which most photographers do but not all. And the folder has to be shared as "anyone with the link" for the gallery to read it, which is worth understanding before you use it for sensitive work (a gallery password and an unguessable slug are the layers that sit on top).
How to actually choose
- Do you sell prints through your gallery? If yes, a hosted platform with a store probably pays for itself. If no, you're paying storage for a shop you never open.
- How many jobs a month? Past roughly four, the per-job upload time is a real line item, and flat pricing starts to matter.
- Does the work get requested again? Weddings, listings, and brand assets all do. Anything that expires will cost you a follow-up.
- Do you already back up to cloud storage? If so, half the work of delivery is already done and you're likely paying twice.
There's no universally right answer here — but there is a wrong one, which is paying to store a second copy of files you already keep, so you can hand a client a link that expires. If your workflow already ends in a Drive folder, start there: the use-case pages break the setup down by what you shoot.