Cloud storage · checked 2026-10-20Can I vibecode Pic-Time?
KINDA· weekend project
Delivering photos is a weekend: originals on a disk, resized copies, scenes, favourites, a PIN or email gate and a streamed zip download. An agent builds that in a day, and the proofing flow of picking photos for an album is a few extra tables. What a copy lacks is everything that makes Pic-Time a business tool: print orders sent to 30+ labs with payments and tax handled, the album designer, face and selfie search for guests, licensed music for slideshows and a polished phone app. Photographers who only deliver and proof can replace it; those who sell prints can't, short of rebuilding a storefront.
$8/moprice
$96you'd save a year
weekendbuild time
—people replaced it
What you need on hand.
DifficultyIntermediate · Some system setup or keys.
TimeA weekend; the image pipeline and zip streaming take the longest
- Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
- Go 1.23
- SMTP credentialsA transactional provider's free tier is plenty for one photographer.
- A public address and disk spaceA small VPS with attached storage behind Caddy, or a home machine and a tunnel.
- Your Pic-Time downloadsDownload each gallery as a zip before the paid period ends.
Before you buildPic-Time Free keeps 10 GB for three months and then 3 GB, and whole-gallery downloads need a paid plan. Check whether your shoots fit before paying or building.
- 1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
- 2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
- 3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.
The prompt
Build me a private client proofing and delivery gallery to replace Pic-Time. Requirements: - Go 1.23: one binary using `chi`, `html/template` and `modernc.org/sqlite`. `go run .` serves http://127.0.0.1:4940: client galleries at /g/<slug>, admin at /admin. - Storage: SQLite at ./data/gallery.db for galleries, scenes (named sections), photos (EXIF date, size, scene, order), visitors, favourites and a download log. Originals in ./data/originals; 400 px and 1600 px copies (WebP and JPEG) in ./data/cache, made with `disintegration/imaging` by 4 workers on upload. - Admin: create a gallery from a folder or zip, where subfolders become scenes; set cover, title, event date, expiry date and an optional PIN. - Client page: scene tabs, a justified grid, a lightbox with arrow keys and a heart to favourite. Pre-registration: a visitor enters name and email before the grid opens, kept in a signed cookie. - Selections: favourites are saved per visitor. "Send to photographer" freezes the list, emails me the filenames through SMTP (.env) and shows it in admin as a CSV and a plain filename list. - Downloads: one photo, a scene or the whole gallery as a streamed zip (`archive/zip`, no temp files), original or web size; admin chooses which sizes are allowed and every download is logged. - Expiry: a daily job disables expired galleries and emails me a reminder 7 days before. - One photographer, one password in .env. No client accounts, no telemetry, local-first: outbound calls are SMTP only. - Out of scope: print store and lab fulfilment, payments, album designer, face or selfie search, video. - README: building on macOS and Linux, putting it behind Caddy or a tunnel with HTTPS, backing up ./data, and a warning to keep your originals backed up somewhere else too.
Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.
Then keep going
Next prompts, same folder.
The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Pic-Time.
Add watermarks to the gallery in this folder. Requirements: - Upload a PNG logo in admin and choose its position, size and opacity per gallery. - Apply it when the 1600 px copies are generated, with `disintegration/imaging`, and keep the unmarked copies out of public routes. - A gallery setting chooses whether downloads of the web size are marked, with originals always unmarked. - Changing the watermark regenerates only that gallery's copies, in the background, with a progress bar. - Update the README.
Add photo comments to the gallery in this folder. Requirements: - A visitor can leave a note on a photo, stored with their name and email from pre-registration and a timestamp. - The admin list shows notes grouped by photo with a thumbnail, and an "Email me daily digest" option through SMTP. - Escape every note wherever it is rendered, limit notes to 500 characters and rate-limit by visitor. - A "Done" flag per note that clients can see. - Add tests for escaping and rate limits. Update the README.
Add print order requests to the gallery in this folder. Requirements: - In the favourites list, a visitor picks a size and quantity from a price list in prices.yaml for each photo and sends a request. - Store the request, email me a table of filenames, sizes and totals, and show it in admin with a status of new, quoted or paid. - No payment processing: the page tells the client I will send an invoice. - Export a request as a CSV for my lab's order form. - Update the README.
What you lose
- The print and album store with 30+ labs, payments and automatic fulfilment
- Face and selfie search that lets guests find themselves in a wedding gallery
- The AI album designer and album proofing with the client
- Licensed music for slideshows, blogs and the vendor network
- The mobile app, and storage and delivery that someone else keeps online
Why people still pay
Photographers pay to turn a delivery into a sale: clients order prints and albums from the gallery, money arrives every two weeks, and the lab ships to the client. The galleries are the easy part; payment handling, lab connections and an app clients trust are why a hand-built page rarely earns anything.
Pic-Time or your own copy?
Over
Your usage
12h ×$/h
Pic-Time, 1 yr$96
Your own copy, 1 yr$165running + build session
Paying is cheaper by$69never pays for itself
Estimate · A VPS with 100 to 200 GB of disk or object storage runs a few dollars to about twenty a month, and the delivery traffic is included on most hosts. The build is token usage on your agent plan.
Take your data, then cancel.
1 · Take your data out of Pic-Time
- 1Desktop, Pic-Time 2.0: open the gallery's Photos & Media tab, click the downward arrow at the top right and choose Download Full Gallery, then Download to Computer, or save to Dropbox or Google Photos.
- 2The download is a set of zip files; galleries with scenes unpack into subfolders named after the scenes.
- 3Full-gallery download is not available on Free plans; downloading from the Workflow tab is for Professional and Advanced.
- 4Archived galleries take 4 to 15 hours to package, and you are emailed when they are ready. We found no export of your client list or order history.
2 · Cancel Pic-Time
- 1Go to Settings, then Plans & Billing, and click Cancel next to your current subscription.
- 2Click Confirm Change. The remaining days stay active, then the account reverts to the Free plan.
- 3If you are in the 30-day free trial, no cancellation is needed; the account falls back to Free when the trial ends.
- 4Moving down a paid tier (for example Professional to Beginner) is a downgrade from the same Plans & Billing page.
- Free is 10 GB for the first three months and then 3 GB: galleries over the limit are permanently deleted one week after the change, oldest first, and can't be restored after a week.
- Dropping to Beginner limits storage to 20 GB with deletion of over-limit galleries after 45 days, unpublishes blogs, and turns off the custom domain.
- Download every gallery you want to keep before the paid period ends, and check storage under Settings, then Storage.
- Tell clients where their gallery has moved: links on a custom domain stop working, so re-invite them or point them to your portfolio page.
Checked 2026-10-20 against Pic-Time's docs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
The escape hatch
Don't feel like building it? These are already free.
LycheeOpen sourceMIT PHP photo gallery with albums, public and unlisted sharing, tags and download options; no store or client proofing.★ 4.3k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗PiwigoOpen sourceGPL-2.0 PHP gallery with albums, user permissions, tags and many plugins; also offered as a hosted service.★ 3.9k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗ImmichOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 self-hosted photo and video library with phone apps, shared albums and share links; made for personal libraries, with no store or proofing.★ 117k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
Web, iOS, AndroidVisit ↗
WebVisit ↗PiwigoOpen sourceGPL-2.0 PHP gallery with albums, user permissions, tags and many plugins; also offered as a hosted service.★ 3.9k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗ImmichOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 self-hosted photo and video library with phone apps, shared albums and share links; made for personal libraries, with no store or proofing.★ 117k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
Web, iOS, AndroidVisit ↗
The numbers
Pic-Time pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual, per month | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 10 GB photos (3 GB after 3 months), 1 GB video, unlimited galleries, mobile app, portfolio page. |
| Beginner | $8 | $7 | 20 GB photos (about 6K), 5 GB video, print store with 30+ global labs and automatic fulfilment, basic design tools. |
| Professional | $25 | $21 | 100 GB photos (about 30K), 30 GB video, client selections, album proofing, custom domain, custom products, commission-free self-collected payments, full design kit. |
| Advanced | $50 | $42 | Unlimited photo storage (terms apply), 60 GB video, AI album designer, AI photo search for clients, 10K+ licensed tracks for slideshows. |
- Free tier
- 10 GB for the first three months then 3 GB; full-gallery downloads are not available on Free.
- Billing
- Monthly or annual; the page shows the annual per-month price and the monthly price next to it. New accounts get a 30-day free trial with Advanced features. Prices are for individual photographers; agencies are quoted separately.
- Hidden costs
- Extra brands cost $6 a month each. The 4K slideshow and Blog Retention add-ons are monthly subscriptions with no price on the page. Store profits are paid every two weeks, and commission applies to Pic-Time-collected sales, with a higher rate on lower plans.
- Source
- www.pic-time.com
Also on the list
Related apps
Free allows unlimited galleries with 10 GB of photo storage that drops to 3 GB after three months, and no full-gallery downloads for the photographer.
Kinda. The core is a weekend build with the prompt on this page, but real gaps remain: The print and album store with 30+ labs, payments and automatic fulfilment, Face and selfie search that lets guests find themselves in a wedding gallery.
About $8 a month on the Beginner plan, $96 a year (checked 2026-10-20).
The print and album store with 30+ labs, payments and automatic fulfilment; Face and selfie search that lets guests find themselves in a wedding gallery; The AI album designer and album proofing with the client; Licensed music for slideshows, blogs and the vendor network; The mobile app, and storage and delivery that someone else keeps online. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.
Yes: Lychee (open source), Piwigo (open source), Immich (open source).