Pixline vs Zenfolio
Zenfolio is the closest of the gallery platforms to the problem Pixline solves: it is explicitly built for volume work, with unlimited client galleries, proofing and a website builder. The difference is who builds the galleries. Zenfolio gives you unlimited galleries; Pixline builds one per family from the faces in the photos.
What Zenfolio does well
- Unlimited client galleries and online proofing at every tier — clients can mark favourites and leave comments.
- A real website builder with custom domain, blog and SEO tooling included.
- Booking and scheduling on the Advanced plan, which Pixline does not have at all.
- Print store with partner lab fulfilment and price lists you can attach to a gallery.
Where delivery breaks for an event with forty kids
"Unlimited galleries" is the honest description of what Zenfolio offers for a photo day: you may create as many galleries as you like, and you create them by hand. Forty families means forty galleries, forty links, forty sets of photos sorted into the right folder. Zenfolio has no face detection and no concept of a person in a photograph, so nothing does that sorting for you. And a commerce fee applies on top of the subscription.
What Pixline does instead
| Problem | Zenfolio | Pixline |
|---|---|---|
| Forty families, one gallery | Unlimited galleries, but you make and populate each one yourself | Faces are detected and clustered into people; naming a family assigns its photos and generates the link |
| Proofing | Clients favourite and comment inside the gallery | Not in v1. Pixline delivers; it does not proof. |
| Getting files onto a phone | Gallery download | A save-all page of direct image links, one per photo, verified in a 390×844 phone viewport |
| Knowing who opened it | Analytics per gallery | Views and downloads per family, plus a suppression list naming the families whose email bounced |
These are measured on the staging deployment: open the demo event and look at what each family sees.
Price
| Tier | Zenfolio | Pixline |
|---|---|---|
| Free | None — trial only | One event, 100 photos, 30-day galleries, Pixline-branded |
| Paid | $9/mo Basic (15 GB), $23/mo Professional (150 GB), $40/mo Advanced (unlimited JPEG + 150 GB video); roughly half on annual billing | $9.99/mo or $99/yr. 100 GB, unlimited events, unlimited families, no commerce fee |
When Zenfolio is the right choice
If proofing, booking and a website are part of your workflow, Zenfolio is the more complete product and Pixline is not a substitute. If the work is a photo day where the sorting is the job, Pixline does the sorting.