Most photographers who search for a Pixieset alternative are not unhappy with Pixieset. They have taken on a different kind of job (a wedding with three hundred guests, a conference, a school sports day) and noticed that a beautiful client gallery does not answer the question every guest asks: "which of these are me?" This article is about that gap, and it tries to be fair about what Pixieset does better.
What Pixieset is built for
Pixieset describes itself as a client photo gallery, website and CRM for photographers. Its Client Gallery is organised around a collection you deliver to a client, with a Store for selling prints and products and a wider suite of apps around it. That is a strong fit for portrait, family and couple work, where there is one client, the client wants to view, favourite and order, and you want the gallery, the website and the invoicing in one place.
Pixieset does have controls for groups. Its Client Exclusive Access setting lets a visitor enter a collection as either a guest or a client, with guests limited to the sets you make available to them. And its photo editor includes face detection, used there to score portraits so you can cull faster.
Why an event is a different job
At an event, the person paying is not the only person who wants the photos. A wedding gallery of three thousand images has three hundred people in it, and each of them wants the dozen frames they appear in. In a client gallery the guest has two options: scroll through everything, or message you asking for "the ones with me". Sets and folders help with structure (ceremony, reception, day two) but not with people, because nobody is in only one set.
What an event gallery needs is search by face: every guest opens the same link, takes a selfie, and sees only the photos they are in. We could not find a guest-facing selfie search described on Pixieset's own pages when we read them on 12 October 2026. Its library search works on keywords describing what is in a photo, and its filters cover camera settings and metadata rather than people. If that changes, this section is out of date, so check Pixieset's help centre before relying on it.
How the pricing models differ
Pixieset Client Gallery is a subscription. Its pricing page lists a free plan with 3 GB of storage and a 15% commission on Store sales, then paid plans from Basic at $8 a month billed annually ($10 monthly, 10 GB) up to Ultimate at $40 a month annually ($50 monthly) with unlimited storage, with no Store commission on paid plans. Studio and Suite plans sit above those.
FotoMe AI is priced per event rather than per month: free for a gallery of up to 375 photos, then from ₹499 for up to 3,000 photos, up to ₹9,999 for 60,000. The two models suit different businesses. If you deliver many small sessions every month, a flat subscription is likely the cheaper and simpler option. If your work is a handful of large events with gaps between them, paying per event means nothing recurs in the quiet months and the cost of each gallery is known before you shoot it.
What Pixieset does that we do not
- •Selling prints and products. Pixieset has a built-in Store. FotoMe AI does not sell photos or prints at all.
- •A website and business tools. Pixieset offers a website builder and CRM alongside galleries. We only do event galleries.
- •Video. Pixieset's pricing includes video time as an add-on. FotoMe AI delivers photos only.
- •A long track record and a large user base, which matters when a gallery is part of what you sell.
What we built for events specifically
- •Selfie search with no app and no account. A guest opens the link in a phone browser, takes a selfie, and gets only the photos they appear in.
- •Private galleries behind a PIN, which you can regenerate if it leaks.
- •Named people and album links. Name a face once and send that person (or the couple, or the family) one link to their complete set.
- •Guest photo upload. Guests can add photos from their phones into an approval queue; nothing appears until you approve it.
- •A printable QR poster for the venue, and analytics showing whether visits came from the QR, WhatsApp or email.
- •Automatic retention. Each gallery closes at the end of its plan's window, and its photos and face data are deleted.
Using both is a reasonable answer
These tools overlap less than the "alternative" framing suggests. A common split for wedding photographers is to deliver the couple's curated gallery, with favourites and print orders, in their client gallery, and to share a separate face-search gallery with the guests so each one finds themselves without asking. The couple get the polished product; the guests get their own photos; your inbox stays empty.
If face search is the reason you are looking, our comparison pages cover the event-focused tools that do offer it, with what each one does better than us.