Client gallery access, now in one place: deliver every gallery with confidence.
September 14th, 2026
Deliver galleries with confidence and let your photography take center stage. Introducing Gallery Access Settings: a flexible way to manage who sees what in every gallery you deliver.
The moment every photographer knows: gallery delivery gone wrong.
Every photographer knows the feelings of pride, laced with dread and anticipation.
You finish a beautiful shoot. You’ve edited late into the night. You hit send on the gallery and exhale. Then the phone lights up. The bride’s mother cannot log in. The team parent says the download button is missing. The Realtor is stuck behind a password loop on closing day.
The work was beautiful. The handoff was not.
We have heard this story from hundreds of photographers, and today we are introducing new Gallery Access Settings, available across all NextZen plans.
Who client gallery access settings are built for.
Any photographer using Zenfolio to deliver galleries to mixed audiences: Wedding, family, real estate, school, sports, dance, and more. If a single gallery ever needs to serve specific permissions for more than one type of viewer, this update was built for you.
New to Zenfolio? You can set all of this up on a free trial. Try Zenfolio free →
One page to manage every client gallery permission.
Gallery permissions used to live across multiple feature pages, which made it hard to see what each gallery visitor could (or could not) do. The new centralized Gallery Features page changes that.
Everything in one view:
- Every permission for every audience, organized clearly on a single page.
- audience-based sub-tabs for the three default audience groups: General, Guest, and Client.
- Tiered, granular controls per audience. Five downloads for Guests. Unlimited for Clients. No duplicates.
- Built-in alert validation that flags problematic configurations before you hit send.
- A dynamic contact sidebar with live counts and access alerts.
The contact sidebar is a key part of the updated feature. While many platforms expect you to simply trust that the configuration you set is the configuration your clients will experience, Zenfolio shows you, in real time, who can see what right now.
Custom audiences: gallery access built around how you actually work.
On Professional and Advanced plans, you can now create custom-named audiences that match real-world audiences instead of abstract platform labels.
A few examples:
- Weddings: Newlyweds, Wedding Party, Parents, Guests
- School, sports, dance: Coaches, Parents, Team Extended Families, Admins
- Real estate: Realtor, Homeowner, Prospective Buyer
- Family and portrait: Primary Client, Extended Family
Each audience gets its own tiered permissions. For example, a wedding gallery could be set to give the Newlyweds unlimited downloads, the Wedding Party and Parents 5 each, and their Guests with access to the gallery store so they can purchase downloads and prints. Alternatively, a school or sports gallery can give Admins or Coaches full download privileges while Parents are limited to the downloads included with their purchased packages.
In testing, 1 in 3 photographers called out custom-named audiences, unprompted, as the standout part of the experience.
See how gallery access audiences work →
A smoother client experience when they open the gallery.
When permissions are configured cleanly, your clients land in the gallery exactly the way you intended.
- The right people see the right view, the first time.
- The right buttons are visible to the right viewer. No mystery missing options.
- Passwords work. Logins work. The technology fades into the background.
Clients open a gallery to feel something: connection, pride, joy in the work you made for them. Every friction point chips at that feeling, and at the trust they placed in you. Our gallery access settings remove those friction points, so the only thing your clients notice is your craft.
Gallery access settings by plan: Basic, Professional, and Advanced.
The updated gallery access settings are live across all NextZen plans, with custom-audience capability tiered by plan:
- Basic: Centralized Gallery Features page, tiered access permissions, and alert validation across the three default audiences.
- Professional: Everything in Basic, plus 2 custom-named audiences per gallery. Ideal for photographers who only need a couple custom access permissions for their shoots.
- Advanced: Everything in Professional, plus up to 5 custom-named audiences per gallery. Built for Volume photography and complex multi-audience delivery.
If your work regularly spans more than one extended audience, Advanced is built for exactly that.
Why photographers prefer this way to deliver photos to clients.
Most platforms ask photographers to bend their workflow to fit rigid audience categories. Gallery access settings goes the other way. It bends to fit how you actually think about your viewers, then gets out of the way at the moment it matters most.
It was validated across 47+ photographers in two rounds of research, with a third validation round before development. The custom-named audience concept came directly out of those sessions.
What photographers had to say about Zenfolio’s new custom client audience gallery settings:
- “This new system provides great flexibility for galleries and contacts.”
- “It seems very easy to create how you want the gallery organized once, and then organize all future galleries this way.”
- “It’s VERY useful to be able to individually set up permissions for guests and clients. I love this!”
- “Been waiting for this for some time. This is going to be super helpful. Thank you!”
Try it on your next client gallery delivery.
On the next gallery you send, visit the new Gallery Features page. Customize the audiences to match the way you actually think about your gallery visitors and viewers. Hit send.
Then notice what doesn’t happen. No frantic texts. No password loop. No support ticket. Just your work, getting the attention and kudos it deserves.
On a Basic plan? Compare NextZen plans →
Not on Zenfolio yet? Deliver client galleries the way they were meant to be delivered. Start free trial →
Quick links:
Help Center: How to set up Gallery Access with custom audiences and permissions.
