Pic-Time Review 2024 - Best Practices and Insights From Long Time User

What is Pic-Time?

Pic-Time is an online platform designed for professional photographers to share their images with clients. So its main purpose has always been an Online Gallery. But It never stopped there, as we’ve seen over the years new features being added to platform, such as Print Store, Sales and Marketing Tools (called automations), Slideshow Creator and most recently – Blogs. I’ve been pro user of Pic-Time since 2017 and over the years I got to know all the ins and outs of this amazing tool and will share with you my long term review in this article, as well as some of my tips how to make the best out of your Pic-Time galleries.

Key features of Pic-Time

Online Galleries for professional photographer – creating aesthetic and minimalistic galleries

Let’s start with the main feature of Pic-Time, which is Online Gallery. I can’t stress enough how important the way we deliver images online is. Since we’ve all been doing this online for the past few years, we’ve been stripped of the personal touch and physical element of image deliver, that we used to have back in the days when showing up at our clients houses with beautiful prints, presentations or albums. It all changed to a simple link in an e-mail that that send our clients to the google drive or dropbox folder.

Pic-Time offers something that is completely next level – a beautiful looking email invitation that leads our clients to the minimalistic, yet very aesthetic image gallery. And we – photographers, craft this experience by designing the gallery cover page. There’s choice of couple cover templates and then you can add a personal touch to the look of the page by adding your logo and custom colour. You can also use Pic-Time Color Sets, which is something I really like about Pic-Time – the design aesthetic that they use is top notch and usually all the predefined designs and colours work great.

The gallery itself present the images on the white background in the masonry layout, with some of the images being highlighted by default (highlighted images are bigger in the layout), but of course as photographer you are able to select which images are presented this way. The gallery can be divided into sections, that are called Scenes. I personally use the scenes to divide wedding photos into parts of the day – getting ready, first look, ceremony etc. The images load super fast and guests of the gallery have option to see them in the gallery layout or full screen. You can even upload GIFs to the gallery and I’m not gonna lie they look super rad!

There’s also option to offer image downloads (full or small resolution, free or paid), image sharing, creating lists of favourites and selling prints directly from the gallery (more on that later). The experience on the Client’s side of the gallery also going to be different depending on who’s viewing the gallery. As a Photographer you can invite certain users (for weddings it’s usually the couple) to be Gallery Owners, and gives them additional level of permission including hiding the photos from the gallery.

The upload process can be achieved by two ways – upload via browser or straight from Lightroom using Lightroom Plugin. Both ways require to use Pic-Time Uploader which is a little app running in the background. The dedicated uploader lets you continue upload high res photos after restarting your computer or unplugging the drive with the files by accident. It does also compress the images for optimisation of the storage and user experience (downloading takes less time etc).

Online Store built into the gallery

One of the most important features of Pic-Time galleries is ability to set up your own print store to offer printed products to your clients directly from the gallery. This can be achieved in 2 different ways – you can either connect your store to one of the labs that works with Pic-Time or Self-fulfil orders by printing them yourself or with any of your local labs that you work with.

I have to say – the choice of labs from all around the world is very impressive. Pic-Time is very international with their offer here and even in my country (Poland) there’s 2 different labs I can choose from. You can even choose more than 1 lab to fulfil your product (depending on the products you want to offer) and when you have it set, the next step is to choose products and set prices. Pic-Time is design in a way, that you can go with many default settings – like product choices and pricing models that will work.

But if you want to take time to craft experience better and you’re more specific about what you offer and how you price things – you can set everything manually the way you want. And that’s something I personally recommend. Choose products you want to offer, order samples, take your own photos of the samples and set the prices the way it works best with your market and the way you run your marketing campaigns.

The choice of product is massive! Starting from various print types, frames, gallery boards, albums, folios, magazines, wooden boxes and even calendars or Christmas tree ornaments. Then on top of that you can also set up your custom products. For each product you can set your custom pricing and the model you want to operate at – either you want the products to be sent directly to customer (products are white labeled when you do it this way) or you want to sent products to yourself, and then you deal with delivery to your clients. I personally do it the automated way, since most if my clients are destination wedding clients and they live in different country than I do. But for someone operating on local market I can see huge benefit of sending products to themselves, repacking, branding and adding personal touch before deliver.

Marketing tools to boost your print sales – Sales Automations

Selling prints to the clients is something that often photographers have troubles doing. Often, photographers become professional wedding, portrait, or family photographers due to their passion for the art, not for sales. However, this industry is service oriented and at the end of the day offering printed products to your clients can become a lucrative income source. Additionally if you client can purchase products directly from you – their trusted photographer, it creates a win-win situation. They don’t have to search for labs, deal with the pixel sizes, color spaces and so on. But as I mentioned earlier, selling is not always easy for many photographers.

To assist photographers in selling more printed products, Pic-Time has developed marketing campaigns that are called Sales Automations. These consist of a series of actions including email sequences and promotional offers displayed in the gallery as banners, all designed to encourage clients to make purchases.

There’s many sales automations to choose from – from seasonal campaigns made for occasions like Holidays, Valentine’s Day and more to evergreen campaigns made for weddings, mini sessions to boost your sales when you share the gallery with the clients. These campaigns are pre-made with email templates, banner graphics and were designed to work based on how potential clients use their galleries and purchase product. But just like with any other Pic-Time features, you can customise the campaigns to suit your personal style more – and that includes email copy, email frequency, type of banners and coupons and many more! That feature alone can actually pay for the whole yearly subscription of the service.

Slideshows Creator with License Free music library

I personally deliver slideshow to every single couple I photograph, so this one is huge for me! Slideshow creator that is built in inside of the gallery is a game changer. This tool allows you to select the photos (from those you already uploaded to the gallery), choose a song from a vast library of music that you, as a user of Pic-Time, have license for, and create great looking slideshows – either horizontal or vertical for mobile. On top of that you have options of different slide layouts, and you can customise colors and fonts used in the slideshow. But that’s not all! You can also either include the slideshow in the gallery (what I personally do), embed on your website or share on social media. Moreover, you can even offer the slideshow for download to your clients, either for free or at a price you set. I absolutely love that feature in Pic-Time.

Create Blogs for your website

And now, my recent personal favorite, which I have been using extensively on this website and on my wedding photography website – blogs. Just like the slideshow creator, now you can also create blogs straight from the gallery using previously uploaded for photos. You have choice of different type of layouts, which you can also customise to make it look the way you like with background colors and fonts. Once you’re done creating a layout for your blog you can take some time to edit SEO description and alt text for the images. Photos can be renamed for better SEO and according to the documentation and my tests big is well optimised for fast loading. Blog created like this can be either embedded on your website (which is what I do) or shared as standalone page or social media clip.

User Interface and Ease of Use

Photographer’s experience

The experience with Pic-Time is going to be obviously different for a user like me, and you, a photographer, with access to the backend, store settings, and all the powerful tools I mentioned above, compared to the end client, who uses the gallery and the store to download or purchase items. Starting with the user experience, the dashboard is pretty straightforward, offering gallery creation and various settings, including setting up your store and pricing. Setting up galleries, slideshows, and blogs is, in my opinion, super easy and intuitive, so you can jump right into that. However, for the store and marketing tools – I’m not going to lie – the system is quite complex. If you want to make it work for you, I do recommend taking a deeper dive into the guides or YouTube webinars (which I personally hosted a few times for Pic-Time). Fortunately, Pic-Time has very detailed step-by-step instructions and guides for every feature of the system, so there’s a lot of knowledge widely available.

Client’s experience

Regarding the clients impressions of the system, from my personal experience, I can say that clients love the gallery design, store, and slideshows. I have never had any negative feedback, and my clients enjoy using their “client” perks of the system, like creating lists of favorites, hiding images, and sharing photos with their guests. But also, the fact is that most of my clients are in their mid-30s, so they’re pretty tech-savvy. And just like with everything online, the store might be a little overwhelming for older users. With galleries from weddings or family events, you have to be aware that your clients will often share them not just with themselves but also with their parents or even grandparents. If you know your galleries will be primarily used by less tech-savvy users, my personal recommendation is to either prepare a little step-by-step guide or even a video on how to use the gallery. What you can also rely on is the customer support that is available 24/7, not only for you but also for your clients. So, if there are any technical issues, they can use this functionality if you allow it.

Performance, Reliability, and Customer Support

Pic-Time performance in terms of smoothness of the gallery and store has been nothing but amazing for me. In the past seven years of using the system, I can count the instances of system disruption on the fingers of one hand. And if there are any system issues or problems there’s always customer service chat available 24/7, that is super helpful. Customer support chat can also help solving some workflow issues or just answer more and less basic questions if you’re new to the system. There are for sure times of the year that might be little bit more demanding for the chat support, which means you’re gonna have to wait longer to get to talk with someone (for example winter holidays).

Pricing, Value, and ROI

Pic-Time is subscription type of service offering 4 different pricing tiers. There are two options for beginners wanting to test the system main features – so online gallery and store with marketing automations. These options are Free and Beginner – for 7$ per month. But both of these come with space limits and do charge commission on store sales. And features are limited within Free and Beginner tiers. For more serious businesses, that need to store way more photos and want to use all the system features like Slideshows or Blogs – there are two higher end tiers Professional for 21$ per month and Advanced for 42$ a month. But for those of you who want to see if Pic-Time can work for their business, there’s fully functional 30 day free trial of professional plan (without credit card required, which is great), and on top of that you can use my personal code: MAGIC for one more extra free month when you sign up.

Is it worth signing up for Pic-Time?

To evaluate is it worth for your business to use Pic-Time to deliver images to your clients, you need to look at your own business and determine how are you planning to use the service. As you can see, Pic-Time offers a variety of features, ranging from basic to more professional tools. Some of these will be instrumental in enhancing your client experience, such as:

image delivery in aesthetic and minimalistic masonry galleries’
present your images to your clients in the form of slideshow
using blogs feature to create attractive image layouts for your website

These features are difficult to quantify because they contribute to how your client interacts with your brand. For some photographers, these aspects are priceless and definitely worth spending 40$ a month, while for others the value might not be as significant. Personally, I would be willing to pay only for these features.

But on top of that, Pic-Time also provide you tools to monetise your photography. And with just little effort on your end you can really quickly see return of you investment of 42$ a month and actually make substantial profit. However, this also depends on you, on the way you operate in the market and how willing you are to actually use those tools and offer printed or digital products to your clients. For me personally, I’m not that super salesy type of photographer, and I was still able to sell many printed products when using Pic-Time, with just couple clicks and setting up the automations that worked for me.

Pros and Cons of Pic-Time

Pros:

beautiful galleries for image delivery to your clients;
online store with labs from all over the world to fulfull your orders;
ability to sell custom products and self fulfilled products;
slideshow creator tool (in Advanced and Professional plans);
blog creator tool (in Advanced and Professional plans);
customer service for you or you galleries visitors available 24/7

Cons:

there’s some learning curve if you want to use most of what Pic-Time offers;
no slideshow and blog tools on lower end plans (Free and Beginner)
15% commission on store sales on lower end plans (Free and Beginner)
limited customisation options for the gallery look

Comparing Pic-Time with Other Platforms

Before signing up for Pic-Time I personally used two other major platforms Shootproof and Pixieset. Both served well as galley, but neither of these platforms had the aesthetic appeal of Pic-Time galleries, nor did they offer the same functionality, such as slideshow creator or blogging tools. For those of you who are willing to use the system not just as a beautiful gallery, but also a great sales tool and image presentation tool, Pic-Time has simply more to offer.

In my experience, Pic-Time has also very personalised approach towards the photographer’s community. I have met both Pic-Time founders at the company booth during multiple events for photographers across the Europe and beyond. This level of dedication, speaks volumes, extending far beyond just the product itself, a quality I have not seen that in any other company to date. They genuinely listen to user feedback, and consistently implement many new features each year, making an investments in their monthly or yearly plan worthwhile and ensuring the system is future proof.

Special Offer: Exclusive Promo Code

If you found this review worth it and if you’re considering joining Pic-Time make sure to use code: MAGIC at checkout to receive extra free month when signing up for yearly subscription. This way when signing up for the first time, you first get 30 days of trial and then have one more free month added to your plan, which takes down monthly price of advanced plan from 42$ per month to only 36$ .

USE CODE: MAGIC

Best Practices and Tips

Since I’ve been a long time Pic-Time user I do have some tips for you if you want to see if the system can be beneficial for you.

Tip 1 – Migrate your old galleries and use the Gallery Migration App

Pic-Time does offer gallery migration from your old system. You can either sign up for this for the price of 50¢ per gallery or do it yourself by downloading your photos from old system and re-upload them to Pic-Time. Next set up store. You can either go full manual on this and read through the guides on setting up the store, or go easy way and use one of the pricing templates that Pic-Time offers. When you have your store set up, use Gallery Migration App to invite your old clients to your new galleries with the promotional offer that you set up within the Gallery Migration App. You can use this guide to learn how to set up the app – https://help.pic-time.com/en/articles/7904548-how-do-i-create-and-use-the-gallery-migration-app. This way all of you past clients when they see their new beautiful galleries will also be attracted by the store functionality and time limited promotional offer. I’ve seen some great results from my friends using this app to start their Pic-Time journey and I highly recommend trying this one out!

Tip 2 – set up Print Incentive sales automation

Print Incentive automation is designed to engage your clients with the store by offering 3 free prints (by default, you can set up more or less if you want). There’s no better incentive to encourage clients to choose and order some photos then offering some of them for free. Providing 3 complimentary is unlikely to strain your budget, but it often leads to clients selecting more than just the free prints and potentially ordering a variety of other print products

Tip 3 – BLOG, BLOG, BLOG

Since you have that functionality I highly encourage you to start blogging regularly. There’s no better way to book more clients, then making those posts on your website showcasing your work and attracting clients trough organic search. Learn the best SEO practises and start blogging right away!

Conclusion and Additional Resources

My final thoughts on Pic-Time

After extensively using Pic-Time since 2017, I’ve witnessed its evolution into a robust and versatile platform that provides many of essential tools professional photographers. From creating visually appealing online galleries to offering a super functional online store, Pic-Time stands out not just for its aesthetic appeal but also for its functional depth.

The platform’s constant innovation, evident in features like sales automation, slideshow creators, and the recent addition of blogging tools (my personal favourite), demonstrates a commitment to staying ahead in a competitive market. This, coupled with exceptional customer support, makes Pic-Time in my opinion a worthy investment for photographers aiming to elevate their client experience and business efficiency. It does come at a cost – there’s a learning curve and you will need to spend some time to understand how to use Pic-Time best for your business.

Most importantly, Pic-Time’s personalized approach to community engagement and responsiveness to user feedback sets it apart from other platforms I’ve used, like Shootproof and Pixieset. Over the last couple of years Pic-Time had become a community-driven tool that evolves with and for its users.

In conclusion, based on my long-term experience and the continuous positive feedback from my clients, I confidently recommend Pic-Time. It’s more than just a gallery or a store; it’s a comprehensive tool that can definitely help you out on your photography business. And remember, if you decide to give it a try, use my exclusive promo code: MAGIC, to get an extra month free on your yearly subscription, making this excellent tool even more accessible and affordable.