FOCL vs Pixieset for wedding photographers

We make FOCL, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to be fair: Pixieset is a good product, it has been around for more than a decade, and there are photographers it suits better than us. Prices below are from pixieset.com/pricing on 12 September 2026 and from our own pricing page. Check both before you decide.

The short version

Choose Pixieset if you want a website builder, a CRM with contracts and invoicing (Studio Manager), branded mobile apps for clients, RAW delivery, or truly unlimited storage at the top tier.

Choose FOCL if you shoot weddings and want the wedding day itself handled too: the timeline, the shot list, the family photo list, a couple portal, and an offline phone app, alongside galleries that cost less per gigabyte and never meter downloads.

FOCL Galleries also works for portraits, families and events. Create a standalone gallery with a client or session name; no wedding is needed. In Settings → Downloads, choose which sections or individual photos clients can download while keeping the others visible. How download controls work.

Pricing

Both have a free plan. Both charge for storage. The difference is how much storage each dollar buys.

	FOCL	Pixieset Client Gallery
Free	3 GB, photos only	3 GB, 30 min of video, store takes 15%
Around $10 a month	Essentials: 100 GB, $10 monthly or $100 a year	Basic: 10 GB, $10 monthly or $8 a month billed annually
Around $20 a month	Studio: 500 GB, $19 monthly or $190 a year	Plus: 100 GB, $20 monthly or $16 a month billed annually
Around $30 a month		Pro: 1,000 GB, $30 monthly or $24 a month billed annually
Around $40 a month	Pro: 2 TB, $39 monthly or $390 a year	Ultimate: unlimited, $50 monthly or $40 a month billed annually

The free plans are the same size, 3 GB, and only Pixieset’s includes video. At the plans most wedding photographers actually buy, FOCL gives you about ten times the storage for the same money: 100 GB for $10 against 10 GB for $10. At the very top, Pixieset’s Ultimate is unlimited for roughly what our 2 TB Pro costs. If you deliver more than 2 TB of finished work and keep all of it online, Pixieset wins on that line.

Every FOCL plan, including Free, includes unlimited galleries and couples, your logo and branding, passwords, expiry dates, watermarks, and full-resolution downloads. Videos are the one feature that needs a paid plan.

Downloads and bandwidth

FOCL does not meter downloads or bandwidth. However many times a couple and two hundred guests open or download a gallery, it costs you nothing extra. Storage is the only thing we count.

Pixieset’s paid plans also include full-resolution downloads. The difference is in what happens at the edges: FOCL lets a guest download one section of a gallery on its own (just “Ceremony”, say), and large downloads are zipped in the background and emailed as a link that stays valid for seven days.

Video

Both products meter video in hours, which makes this a straight comparison.

• Pixieset: 30 minutes on Free, one hour on Basic, two hours on Plus, five on Pro, unlimited on Ultimate, with 4K from Plus up. Extra hours are $5 a month each.
• FOCL: no video on Free, 3 hours on Essentials, 10 on Studio, 30 on Pro. Files up to 30 GB each, streamed at whatever quality the viewer’s connection supports. Extra hours are $5 a month per 10.

At the plans most people buy, FOCL includes more: 3 hours for $10 against Pixieset’s 1, and 10 hours for $19 against 2. Extra hours are also ten times cheaper, $5 per 10 hours rather than $5 each.

Pixieset wins at the top. Ultimate is unlimited video for $40 to $50 a month, where FOCL’s Pro caps at 30 hours for $39. If you deliver full ceremony and reception edits for every wedding, unlimited is worth more than any per-hour price.

The wedding day itself

This is the real difference, and it is not something Pixieset tries to do.

FOCL started as a wedding-day app. The same subscription that hosts your galleries gives you:

• A timeline of the day with photo moments flagged. Import the planner’s PDF and it fills itself in. On the phone, “+5 min” cascades a delay through the rest of the day.
• A family photo list you work through on your phone, ticking off each grouping.
• A shot list in sections, assignable to a second shooter.
• A couple portal where the couple fills in people, family groupings and their timeline, and nothing lands in your brief until you approve it.
• A phone app that works with no signal at the venue.
• Team access: two seats included, $5 a month for each extra.

Pixieset’s Studio Manager covers the business side instead: contracts, invoices, questionnaires and scheduling. If you need contracts and invoicing inside your gallery tool, that is a point for Pixieset. If you need the day of the wedding run from your pocket, that is FOCL.

Galleries, feature by feature

Both do the essentials well: sections, cover photos, favorites, passwords, expiry, watermarks, email delivery, download PINs, and a print store. Both offer custom domains on eligible paid plans; FOCL includes custom gallery domains with Studio and Pro.

Things FOCL does that we think matter:

• Photo search for guests. A guest types “cake” or takes a selfie and gets every photo they are in. You can tag moments (“first look”, “speeches”) so those searches are exact.
• Couple Controls. The couple can hide photos from their own guests with a short code, without emailing you at 11pm. You can always see what they hid and put it back.
• Favorites you can act on. See favorites by person or by photo, ranked by how many people picked each one, and export a CSV for your lab or album designer.
• Shared sets. Send a florist or a magazine a link to just the photos you choose. They never see the gallery.
• A design tab with a live preview of the real gallery at desktop and phone width, eight cover layouts, 65 type pairings, and a focal point so the cover crops well on every screen.

Things Pixieset does that FOCL does not:

• Branded mobile apps for clients.
• A website builder.
• RAW upload and delivery on higher plans. FOCL accepts JPEG, PNG, HEIC and WebP, and asks you to export from RAW first.
• Email campaigns to your client list from inside the gallery product.
• A photo editor as a paid add-on.

Print store

Both let couples order prints from the gallery, fulfilled by a professional lab. FOCL’s prints are made by WHCC; you set a markup over the lab cost and keep the difference, and FOCL handles payment and shipping. Pixieset’s store is commission-free on paid plans and charges 15% on the free plan.

Switching

Moving from Pixieset to FOCL is a download and an upload. Export your galleries at full resolution from Pixieset, then drag each folder into a FOCL gallery. Sections come across as folders. Your couples get a new link. There is no importer that copies favorites or visitor history between the two.

Which one should you pick?

If galleries are one part of a business that also needs a website, contracts and invoices, and you want all of it from one vendor, Pixieset’s suite is the safer choice.

If you are a wedding photographer first, and what you want is the day handled and the photos delivered without watching a storage meter, that is what FOCL is built for. Start on the free plan and see.