Pixieset vs ShootProof in 2026: Which Is Better?

Two photographers deliver the same wedding. One uses Pixieset, one uses ShootProof. Both galleries look professional, both couples order about $400 of prints, and both photographers feel like they made a sensible choice.

At the end of the year one of them has paid roughly $720 in commission and the other has paid $0.

That is the whole of this comparison in one paragraph, and it is also why the comparison is not as simple as it looks. The $0 platform charges more for storage. The 15% platform gives you a website, a CRM, and galleries your clients have seen before.

A client gallery platform is software that hosts, proofs, and delivers the finished photos you hand to a paying client, usually with a print store attached. Pixieset and ShootProof are the two most common answers to that job, and they are built on opposite economics.

Full disclosure: we make Framekit, a competing product that delivers client galleries from a website you own, so we have a stake in the third option we mention. We have kept it out of the head-to-head sections and put it in one clearly labelled place near the end. Where both of these tools beat us outright: they sell physical prints through professional labs and we do not, and both have years of proofing-workflow depth that a newer product has not accumulated.

How We Compared Pixieset and ShootProof

We ran the same job through both platforms rather than reading feature lists: build one 1,000-image wedding gallery, brand it, protect it, share it, list a print product, and then price what a year of that costs.

What we handled hands-on. Building and branding a gallery on each, the client-facing delivery flow, favorites and download behaviour, and how quickly a gallery goes from upload to a shareable link.

What we verified from primary sources, not testing. Every commission rate, plan price, storage cap, and photo cap, checked in July 2026 against Pixieset's pricing page and ShootProof's pricing page.

Prices move; re-check before you commit.

What we report as community sentiment, not our result. Recurring themes in public reviews on Capterra and in photographer forums, which we label as sentiment every time rather than presenting as findings.

The carried example. A portrait and wedding photographer delivering 24 client galleries a year, roughly 800 to 1,200 edited JPEGs each, and selling about $4,800 a year in prints and albums.

Every dollar figure in this guide is calculated on that same business so the numbers stay comparable.

The Short Version: Where Each One Wins

Pixieset and ShootProof are not competing on the same axis, which is why so many comparisons end in a shrug. Pixieset is a client-experience product that added a store. ShootProof is a sales product that added galleries.

Payment processing of roughly 2.9% plus $0.30 applies on top of either platform wherever you connect a processor, per Stripe's published pricing. Neither platform absorbs it.

In one lineif your income is prints, ShootProof's zero commission is the deciding number; if your income is bookings and the gallery is a brand touchpoint, Pixieset's polish and bundled tools are worth more than the commission you will pay to remove.

1. Commission: ShootProof Wins Outright

ShootProof charges 0% commission on every plan, including its cheapest one, and that is the single clearest difference between these two products. Pixieset charges 15% on its free plan and 0% once you are on a paid plan.

On the carried example of $4,800 a year in print and album sales, the arithmetic is short. Pixieset free keeps about $720 of it. Pixieset Basic at roughly $10 a month keeps $120 a year in subscription and none of your sales.

ShootProof's entry plan keeps $120 a year in subscription and none of your sales.

So the honest version is not "ShootProof is cheaper than Pixieset". It is "ShootProof is cheaper than Pixieset's free plan, and roughly level with Pixieset's paid plan". The 15% only bites if you stay free while selling.

The break-even you should actually calculatePixieset's free plan stops being the cheap option at about $800 a year in print sales, because 15% of $800 is the $120 that Basic costs. Sell more than about $67 of prints a month and the free plan is the expensive one.

The gotcha nobody flags on day onecommission is charged on the full order value including your markup, not on your profit. A $300 album order with $120 of lab cost is $45 of commission on a $180 margin, which is a 25% cut of what you actually earned.

Read every commission figure in this category as a percentage of revenue, not of profit, or you will under-price your albums.

In one lineShootProof's 0% is a genuine structural advantage on the free and entry tiers, and a tie once Pixieset is paid for.

2. What the Plan Meters: Gigabytes vs Photo Count

The most useful thing we learned running both is that they cap you on completely different axes, and the axis decides which one gets expensive for your shooting style.

Pixieset meters storage. Its free plan gives 3GB and the Basic tier gives 10GB. If you deliver full-resolution files, 1,000 JPEGs at 4MB to 8MB each is roughly 4GB to 8GB, so a single wedding can fill a whole entry plan.

ShootProof meters photos. Its plans run from about $10 a month for 1,500 photos to about $35 a month for 25,000 photos, with an unlimited tier around $50. File size does not matter, so a photographer delivering enormous 60-megapixel files is not punished for it.

Now put the carried example through both. Twenty-four galleries at 1,000 photos each is 24,000 photos a year. On ShootProof that is the 25,000-photo tier at about $35 a month, or $420 a year.

On Pixieset, 24,000 files at 5MB is roughly 120GB, which is well past the entry tier and into the upper plans.

Storage estimates assume roughly 5MB per delivered JPEG, and both platforms let you archive or delete finished galleries to stay under a cap.

The practical consequencearchiving is a workflow on both, not an optional tidy-up. Whichever you pick, decide now how long a gallery stays live, because "keep everything forever" is the decision that quietly moves you up two pricing tiers.

In one linehigh-megapixel shooters are cheaper on ShootProof; high-gallery-count, small-file shooters are cheaper on Pixieset.

3. The Client Experience: Pixieset Wins

Pixieset's gallery is the more polished object, and it is the reason it stays the category default.

The cover treatment, the mobile behaviour, the favoriting flow, and the download experience are all a step ahead, and there is a real advantage in your client having received a Pixieset gallery before: they already know where the download button is.

ShootProof's galleries are perfectly good and noticeably more utilitarian. Everything works, nothing surprises you, and nothing about it makes a couple screenshot the page. Where ShootProof puts its effort is the transaction, not the presentation.

The standout detailShootProof lets you set the markup on every print size yourself and keeps all of it, which means your print pricing is a real pricing decision rather than a platform default.

Photographers who take that seriously often make more per gallery on ShootProof despite the plainer galleries, because the money model rewards attention.

What reviewers say elsewhereon Capterra, reviewers of both products are consistent in an unflattering-to-both way. Pixieset reviewers praise the client experience and repeatedly raise storage limits.

ShootProof reviewers praise the commission model and contracts and repeatedly call the interface dated. Treat that as sentiment, not a test result.

In one linePixieset looks like your brand at its best; ShootProof looks like a competent tool that makes you more money per print.

4. Beyond Galleries: Websites, CRM, and Contracts

Pixieset has grown into a suite. Alongside galleries it sells a website builder and Studio Manager, its CRM for invoicing, contracts, and booking, so one subscription can cover most of a small studio's software.

ShootProof does not build websites at all. It does include contracts and invoicing, so the client relationship from booking to delivery to print order can live in one place, but the public marketing site is your problem.

Here is the trap in "Pixieset does websites too". The companion site builder is built to sit next to your galleries, not to compete with a real website builder, and the SEO and design ceiling reflect that.

A photographer who picks Pixieset because it bundles a site usually ends up with a site that is fine and forgettable, which is expensive in a different way than 15% is.

Skip Pixieset's website side ifyour website is how you get found. Use a real builder for the marketing site and let Pixieset do the job it is genuinely best at, which is delivering and selling.

In one linePixieset covers more of your software stack; ShootProof covers the money end of the client relationship and stops there.

5. The Thing Both of Them Cost You: The Address

This is the part neither pricing page mentions. On both platforms, the gallery your client opens lives on the platform's subdomain, with your studio name in front of a vendor's brand.

The mechanism is worth spelling out because "own your domain" is usually chanted rather than explained. Every gallery you deliver is a page a paying client visits, sometimes repeatedly, sometimes for years.

On your own domain, those visits land on your site, next to your portfolio and your contact form, and every link a client shares builds your domain's search authority.

On a vendor subdomain, the visit lands on the vendor, the link equity builds the vendor's domain, and none of it follows you if you leave.

It costs nothing in month one, which is exactly why it is easy to accept.

It shows up in year three, when the studio delivering from its own domain has three years of client visits and inbound links pointing at the place that books work, and the other one has three years of pixieset.com or shootproof.com traffic.

In one linethe 15% is the visible cost of a gallery platform and the subdomain is the invisible one, and only one of them is refundable by upgrading.

6. Refunds, Payouts, and the Fine Print

Print sales bring the parts of commerce photographers rarely read about until something goes wrong, and the two platforms handle them differently enough to matter.

Refunds and reprints. When a lab print arrives damaged and you reprint it, you are dealing with the lab's remake policy, not the gallery platform's.

Check whose account the remake is billed to before you promise a client anything.

On a commission platform, also check whether the platform's cut is returned on a refunded order, because a refunded sale that keeps its commission is a straight loss.

Payout timing. Both platforms let you collect through your own processor on the appropriate plans, in which case payouts run on your processor's schedule, commonly a rolling two business days on a mature Stripe account.

When the platform collects on your behalf, payouts run on the platform's cycle instead, which can be weeks after the client paid. If cash flow is tight, self-collection is the setting to find.

Chargebacks. A chargeback on a print order is charged back to whoever is the merchant of record. If you connected your own processor, that is you, plus the processor's dispute fee, typically around $15. Neither platform absorbs that for you.

Sales tax. Physical print orders are taxable in most US states and most of Europe, and neither of these platforms is a merchant of record that files on your behalf.

Selling prints means your own tax position, which is a real difference from selling digital goods through a platform that handles VAT for you.

In one lineon both platforms you remain the business, which means the disputes, the tax, and the lab relationship are yours, and the platform is software rather than a shield.

7. Pixieset vs ShootProof at Three Business Sizes

Neither tool is better in the abstract, so here is the same question asked at three realistic scales, with subscription and commission combined for one year.

Plan costs widen at the top of the table because both platforms push you up their tiers as volume grows, on storage for Pixieset and on photo count for ShootProof. Payment processing applies on top of every cell.

Run this on your own numbers. Take last year's print revenue, multiply it by 0.15, and compare that figure to twelve months of the paid plan that removes it.

If the commission number is larger, you are paying rent on your own print sales, and the exact amount is the gap between those two figures. Most photographers who run this discover they crossed the line two seasons ago.

8. Where Framekit Fits, Since We Make It

We have kept our own product out of the head-to-head because a vendor scoring itself against two competitors in eight rounds is not a comparison, it is an advertisement. Here is the honest positioning instead.

Framekit is an AI website builder with client galleries and a digital store built in, which means the gallery you send a client opens on your own domain, inside the same site that holds your portfolio and your booking page.

Delivery carries no commission on any plan because there is no print store taking a cut, and gallery storage runs 3GB free, 10GB on Starter at $9 a month, 100GB on Pro at $19, and 1,000GB on Business at $39.

The part we lose on is the part this whole article is about. Framekit has no print lab. If a couple wants a framed 20x30 or an album, Pixieset and ShootProof can fulfil that and we cannot.

If prints are a meaningful share of your revenue, one of those two is the correct tool and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

Where we are the better answer is a photographer whose income is bookings and digital delivery, who is tired of the client relationship ending on someone else's subdomain, and who would rather run one site than a website subscription plus a gallery subscription.

See the full field in our best client gallery platforms comparison, or the tools-only view in best photo delivery tools.

How to Choose: A Decision Tree

Answer these in order and stop at the first branch that fits.

Are print and album sales a meaningful part of your income, say more than $2,000 a year?

• No. Neither of these is obviously right for you, because you are paying for a print engine you do not use. Look at a delivery-first tool or deliver from your own site.
• Yes. Continue.

Will you pay for a plan, or do you need to stay on a free tier this year?

• I need to stay free. ShootProof, without hesitation. Pixieset's free plan takes 15% of everything you sell, and ShootProof takes 0% on every tier.
• I will pay. Continue.

Do you deliver a lot of very large files, or a lot of galleries?

• Very large files, fewer galleries. ShootProof, because photo count rather than gigabytes decides your tier.
• Many galleries of normal-sized files. Pixieset, because storage scales more gently than photo count at that shape.

Do you also need a website and a CRM from the same vendor?

• Yes, and I accept a companion-grade site. Pixieset, which bundles both.
• Yes, and my website is how I get found. Use a real builder for the site and keep the gallery tool for delivery. Our best website builders for photographers guide covers that half.
• No, contracts and invoicing are enough. ShootProof includes those.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ShootProof cheaper than Pixieset?

ShootProof is cheaper than Pixieset's free plan and roughly level with Pixieset's paid plans.

ShootProof charges 0% commission on every tier, so on $4,800 of print sales it costs about $120 a year in subscription and nothing in commission, while Pixieset's free plan costs $0 in subscription and about $720 in commission on the same sales.

Once you move to Pixieset Basic at roughly $10 a month the commission disappears and the two are close, with the remaining difference coming from storage and photo caps rather than fees.

Does Pixieset really take 15%?

Yes, on the free plan. Pixieset charges 15% commission on every store sale made through a free account, covering prints, albums, and digital downloads, and drops that to 0% on its paid plans starting around $10 a month.

The commission is calculated on the full order value including your markup, not on your profit, so a $300 order with $120 of lab cost pays $45 of commission against a $180 margin.

Which is better for a wedding photographer?

For a wedding photographer selling prints and albums, ShootProof is the stronger money tool because it never takes a commission and lets you set your own markup on every size.

Pixieset is the stronger client-experience tool, and its galleries are the ones most couples have seen before, which lowers the support burden on delivery day.

If print revenue is above roughly $3,000 a year, the commission model matters more than the polish; below that, pick on the client experience.

Can I use my own domain for Pixieset or ShootProof galleries?

Both host client galleries on their own subdomains by default, so the delivery link carries the vendor's brand.

Pixieset supports connecting a custom domain to its website product on paid plans, which improves the marketing site but does not turn the gallery URL into a page of your own website.

If the requirement is that clients open galleries on a domain and site you own, that is what a builder with galleries built in, such as Framekit, does differently.

What happens to my galleries if I stop paying?

On both platforms, galleries typically become inaccessible to clients when the subscription lapses, though your originals usually remain downloadable for a window while the account winds down.

Neither platform deletes your files the moment a card fails, but neither guarantees delivery links keep working either.

Export every gallery you might need before you cancel, and treat the platform as delivery infrastructure rather than an archive.

ShootProof vs Pixieset: which has better print quality?

Print quality comes from the lab, not the gallery platform, so both can produce identical prints if you select the same lab. ShootProof connects to a wide set of professional labs worldwide and lets you set your own markup on each product.

Pixieset also fulfils through professional labs with in-gallery ordering. Choose on lab availability in your country and on the ordering experience, because the paper and the press are the lab's, not the platform's.

Do I need a separate website if I use one of these?

Usually yes with ShootProof, which does not build websites, and optionally with Pixieset, which includes a companion site builder.

The practical answer for most working photographers is that a gallery platform's bundled site is fine for a placeholder and weak as a marketing asset, so the common stack is a real website builder plus a gallery tool, which means two subscriptions.

The alternative is a builder that delivers galleries natively so both jobs share one site and one domain.

Which one is better for high-volume school or sports work?

Neither is ideal. Both are shaped around individual client galleries rather than hundreds of subjects self-serving from one shoot, which is a different product category with subject matching and parent ordering.

ShootProof scales further on raw photo count with its unlimited tier, so it copes better than Pixieset if you simply have a lot of images, but a volume-specific platform will handle the matching and ordering that neither of these does.

Does Framekit replace Pixieset or ShootProof?

Only partly, and it depends on what you sell. Framekit delivers unlimited client galleries from your own website and domain with no delivery commission on any plan, which replaces the delivery half of both tools.

It does not replace the print half, because Framekit has no print lab and cannot fulfil physical prints or albums.

Photographers whose revenue is bookings and digital files can move entirely; photographers whose revenue is prints should keep a print platform.

How much do payment processing fees add on top?

Roughly 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction on a standard card payment, which neither platform absorbs. On a $300 album order that is about $9, on top of any platform commission.

When you compare a 15% commission plan against a 0% commission plan, add processing to both sides, because it applies either way and does not change which platform is cheaper.

Is Pixieset's free plan good enough to start with?

It is genuinely usable for delivering a few galleries and is one of the better free tiers in the category, with 3GB of storage and no gallery-count limit.

It stops being a good deal the moment you sell prints, because 15% of everything is a lot to pay for a plan you would replace for about $10 a month.

Use it to learn the product, then price the upgrade against your actual sales rather than leaving it free by default.

Which platform makes it easier to move away later?

ShootProof is marginally easier to leave because its data model is simpler and you keep your lab relationships and your own markup structure.

Pixieset is stickier because contracts, invoices, a website, and galleries can all live in Studio Manager, and unwinding all four at once is a project.

In both cases, the exportable asset is your image files; the client list, the gallery URLs, and any SEO value built on the vendor's subdomain do not come with you, which is the strongest practical argument for delivering from a domain you own.

Final Verdict: Pixieset vs ShootProof in 2026

ShootProof wins the money question and Pixieset wins the experience question, and which of those you care about more is genuinely the answer.

Pick ShootProof if print and album sales are real income, if you want to set your own markup and keep all of it, and if you would rather have contracts and invoicing than a website builder. Its 0% commission on every plan is the strongest single fact in this category.

Pick Pixieset if the gallery is a brand moment as much as a delivery, if you want the client experience your couples already recognise, and if consolidating a site and a CRM with your galleries is worth about $10 a month to remove the commission.

Where Framekit loses to both: we have no print lab, so if a client wants a framed print or an album, we cannot fulfil it and one of these two should.

Where we differ is that the gallery lives on your own website and domain rather than on ours, so the client's return visit and your search authority stay with you.

Related reading: our best Pixieset alternatives guide, the best ShootProof alternatives, the full client gallery platform ranking, and how to deliver photos to clients without a link that expires.

Commission rates, plan prices, storage caps, and photo caps in this comparison were re-verified against both vendors' published pricing pages in July 2026.