Question 1

Can I try Pixload without a credit card or commitment?

Accepted Answer

Yes. No credit card is requested at sign-up: the free plan is assigned to your account automatically and it has no end date. There is no time-limited trial: the free plan is the trial, with its limits (1,000 photos, 5 GB, Pixload watermark, unlimited events). To test the AI features on a real event, two options: the first month of Pro for 1 EUR (current offer, no commitment, cancellable at any time from the dashboard) or a one-off pass, with no subscription. A subscription can be cancelled at any time; you keep access until the end of the period already paid.

Question 2

What does the free plan include, and what are its limits?

Accepted Answer

The free plan includes as many events as you want, 1,000 photos in total (5,000 as soon as an event sells photos by packs) and 5 GB of storage, with no end date. You get the four upload channels (computer or phone, camera over FTP, Google Drive folder, iPhone app), automatic processing, the gallery with link and QR code, selfie recognition for guests and photo sales. It does not include AI Selection, the editing Studio, custom presets and filters, your own logo or the branded site. The Pixload watermark is applied to every photo displayed and downloaded; it is burned into the file and cannot be turned off. It goes away from the Starter plan or with a one-off pass, and you then place your own logo. The limit is a hard stop: an upload that would exceed the quota is refused, nothing is deleted.

Question 3

Concretely, what do I see in the first 5 minutes, and can I show a test gallery to a client?

Accepted Answer

After signing up (no card), you create an event, confirm your publication rights on its page and drop a few photos from your computer or phone. The dashboard shows each photo's progress, then you open the gallery link or QR code as a guest would: grid, slideshow, download, sharing and a "Find my photos" selfie button. This whole journey fits in the free plan and takes a few minutes. For a client demo, keep in mind that a free-plan gallery carries the Pixload watermark, without your logo or your domain: it shows the guest journey, not the result you will sell. For a faithful demo, the Starter plan (49 EUR per month, no commitment) removes the watermark, adds your logo and opens your branded site; a Standard pass (199 EUR) creates a watermark-free event valid for 365 days, with no subscription.

Question 4

I uploaded photos but the gallery is empty: what is going on?

Accepted Answer

Three causes come up almost every time. Either you have not yet confirmed your publication rights on the event page: guests then see "The photographer is preparing the photos" and the selfie is refused. Or the photos were received but not published: automatic publication off and no photo marked with a heart (if AI Selection is enabled, it decides which photos are published). Or processing is not finished, which the progress display in Photos shows. If the camera sends over FTP, also check that FTP access points to the right event: with no target event, or if the target event is archived, photos are rejected and a warning banner appears. An archived event remains visible to guests; a deleted event becomes unreachable.

Question 5

Without a connected camera, can I start an event from a computer or a phone only?

Accepted Answer

Yes. From the dashboard, Photos > Add photos accepts file selection or drag-and-drop (JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC; no RAW or AVIF, 100 MB maximum per file), with pause, resume and duplicate detection; it also works from a phone browser. You can also share a read-only Google Drive folder with import@pixload.io and start the import from the event. The FTP camera is only one of four input channels, and all of them feed the same processing. Only the "Find my originals" tool requires a computer with Chrome or Edge.

Question 6

Can I use Pixload outside France, and in which languages?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The dashboard is available in French and English. The guest gallery is displayed in French or English depending on the guest's browser language, and the guest can switch at any time (the choice is remembered); a partial Vietnamese translation exists on branded sites, and other languages are not available for now. Prices are shown in euros for the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Monaco, and in US dollars elsewhere; what is displayed is what is billed. No country restriction at sign-up.

Question 7

Are my cameras compatible with live FTP upload, without a cable?

Accepted Answer

Any camera that can send over FTP or FTPS on port 21 in passive mode can work, with no cable: the camera itself sends over WiFi or 4G. We publish step-by-step setup guides for Sony A7 IV, A7 V and FX3, Canon EOS R6 Mark II and Nikon Z 8 (settings also valid for other Nikon Z bodies); most pro and semi-pro cameras with FTP since 2015 are covered. For a model outside this list (Fujifilm, Panasonic, OM System, Leica, or a recent Sony, Canon or Nikon not named here), we have no documented test yet: run a trial before the day and tell us what you see. Our server certificate is issued by a recognised public authority: Sony and Nikon generally accept it directly, Canon often requires importing the root certificate, downloadable from the dashboard.

Question 8

How long between the shutter release and the photo being visible to a guest in the gallery?

Accepted Answer

The server processes each JPEG as soon as it is fully received: the figure we quote is 15 to 45 seconds between the shutter release and the photo appearing in your dashboard, excluding the camera's transfer time, which depends on your WiFi or 4G bandwidth. The photo then appears in the public gallery once published: as soon as processing completes if automatic publishing is enabled, according to the automatic selection if AI Selection is enabled, otherwise when you publish it yourself. A stuck photo is retried automatically every 5 minutes. This is not a contractual commitment: run an on-site test before selling live display to a client, and for a 10,000-photo event, talk to us before the day.

Question 9

Which formats and file sizes are accepted on each upload channel?

Accepted Answer

Camera FTP: JPEG only (extension and file contents are checked), 100 MB maximum per file; RAW, HEIC, PNG and video are refused on upload. Web upload from the dashboard: JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC/HEIF, 100 MB maximum per file; AVIF is refused with an explicit message and RAW files are not accepted. Before uploading, you choose the quality: Original (default, file sent as is), 8, 4 or 2 MP (resized in the browser), with no plan restriction. Google Drive folder: JPEG only. No channel accepts video. For a panorama or a print file between 50 and 100 MB, web upload is the only possible channel. Above 100 MB, the file is refused in Original quality; choosing 8, 4 or 2 MP shrinks it in the browser before upload, at the cost of the original resolution.

Question 10

Are my RAW files (ARW, CR3, NEF, RAF...) accepted, and what happens to my originals?

Accepted Answer

No: no channel accepts RAW files. Set the camera to RAW+JPEG with JPEG-only transfer; the RAW stays on your card and Pixload never sees it. Pixload keeps the original as sent (the camera JPEG, or the file uploaded via the web at Original quality) in private storage that is never rewritten: web versions, edits and watermarks are produced alongside. To later find the RAW files matching your selected photos, the Find my originals page matches your photos against your memory cards directly on your computer (see the question "Can I get my full-resolution originals back").

Question 11

If WiFi or 4G drops during an upload, do I lose photos, and where can I check that none got lost on the way?

Accepted Answer

In the usual case, you lose nothing and get no duplicates. With no network, the camera keeps photos in its queue and sends them when the signal returns; a file cut off mid-transfer is detected by the server and refused, which forces the camera to resend it in full (up to 10 attempts per file). Deduplication (event, file name, size) guarantees that a resend does not create a duplicate. Queuing and resending depend on the camera, not on Pixload: check this behaviour in your model's FTP menu. To verify, the Camera page of the dashboard shows live reception status (last photo received, count received, the last 20 uploads with thumbnails) and lists camera photos that were not received; Pixload retries automatically as soon as the camera resends the same file, and you can relaunch the upload from the camera's FTP menu.

Question 12

The camera sends to a single event at a time: what happens if I forget to switch the target, and how do I cover two events on the same day?

Accepted Answer

Your account's FTP access targets a single event, chosen in the dashboard and changeable at any time; the change applies to photos already in transfer and every switch is logged. If you forget to change the target, photos land in the previous event: check the target before you start, because if automatic publishing or AI selection is enabled on that event, they become visible to its guests. In that case, open photo management, select the photos concerned and use "Move" to send them to the right event (or delete them). Archiving or deleting an event automatically resets the target to "none", and with no target photos are rejected with a warning banner: archiving each event once delivered is a good safeguard. For two events one after the other on the same day, simply change the target in the dashboard between them. To cover two events at the same time, a single FTP access is not enough: each event must be owned by a separate account with its own access, or the second event goes through web upload.

Question 13

Can I connect several cameras, including two of the same model, to the same FTP access?

Accepted Answer

Yes. There is one username and password pair per account, and you can enter it on several cameras at the same time: the server adds an anti-collision suffix to files, so two cameras each sending a DSC00001.JPG do not overwrite each other. The server is sized for 2 to 4 cameras per event (32 simultaneous connections per IP address at most); we do not publish a contractual photos-per-minute rate, so run a burst test if you shoot sports. In photo management, a per-camera filter (brand, model and serial number read from metadata) tells cameras apart, even two identical bodies.

Question 14

Can my second shooter or collaborators upload to my event, over FTP or the web, and whose quota does it use?

Accepted Answer

You can invite up to 5 collaborators per event (email invitation, link valid 7 days) with the "photographer" role (upload only) or "editor" role (upload, sorting, editing, deletion); no collaborator can change the event settings, and your collaborators do not need a paid subscription. This delegation is reserved for events under a Studio subscription or an active Prestige pass; if the Studio subscription ends, collaborators are revoked. Collaborators upload through the dashboard's web upload: an account's FTP access can only target an event that account owns, so a collaborator cannot route their camera to your event. Photos uploaded by a collaborator count against the event owner's photo and storage quota.

Question 15

My FTP access expires after 90 days: do I really have to re-enter a password on all my cameras, and what if it expires on the morning of an event?

Accepted Answer

Yes: the access expires 90 days after activation and, past that date, the server refuses the camera connection. To renew, you reset the password from the dashboard: this generates a new password and restarts the 90 days. That new password must be entered on each of your cameras; write it down when it appears, because it is shown only once (we keep only a hash). To avoid surprises, an email goes out 30 days and then 7 days before expiry, the dashboard shows a banner under 30 days and an alert window at every opening once access has expired, and the Camera page shows the exact date. Our advice: renew at the start of the season or the week before an event, never on the morning itself.

Question 16

What is the mobile app for, on iPhone and on Android?

Accepted Answer

The Pixload app, on the App Store and on Google Play, links your camera to Pixload: the camera connects to the phone over USB-C or WiFi, and the app sends the photos as they come to the chosen event, using the phone's connection (WiFi or 4G/5G). With no network, photos wait on the phone and leave when the signal returns. The app is not for shooting with the phone. Without the app, the camera can also send directly over FTP, and you can drop photos from the browser or a Google Drive folder.

Question 17

What happens to my original file once uploaded? Do auto-correction and the Studio alter it, and can I go back?

Accepted Answer

Your original is stored exactly as sent, in private storage, whatever the channel and whatever your plan, and it is never rewritten: resizing, auto-correction, straightening, denoising, watermarking and the Studio all produce separate versions. What guests see and download in the gallery is a generated version, not the original. Ingest correction is set per event among four modes: none, LUT (filter with intensity), Lightroom preset, or automatic (a recipe computed by our AI photo by photo, with a look and an intensity, previewed on one of the event's photos); if you want no correction, choose "none". The Studio keeps a history of 5 versions with a return to the unedited version, and a failed correction is never blocking: the photo is delivered uncorrected. RAW files are never uploaded or stored: they stay on your cards.

Question 18

What resolution do my guests download, and can they get everything at once?

Accepted Answer

Your original is kept at full resolution, but it is never served to guests. For display, we generate a 4-megapixel web version (JPEG quality 85, never upscaled), a thumbnail for the grid, then a final version (JPEG quality 90, 4 megapixels at most) with your chosen look and your watermarks baked into the file: this final version is what the gallery displays and what the download button serves, on every plan. Downloads are one photo at a time; there is no bulk ZIP download for guests. Downloads stay blocked until you confirm your publication rights and require sign-in if you made it mandatory; on the free plan, the Pixload watermark is on every downloaded photo. If you must deliver full-resolution files to your clients, use your usual delivery channel alongside Pixload, or the built-in photo sales, which deliver full resolution to the buyer.

Question 19

Can I get my full-resolution originals back from Pixload?

Accepted Answer

Pixload keeps each photo exactly as you sent it (the camera JPEG over FTP, or the file you chose on the web if you left the "Original" quality) in private storage. RAW files, however, are never sent to or stored by Pixload: they stay on your cards. The dashboard does not currently offer a download of the original stored with us; it offers the "Find my originals" page, which matches the photos you uploaded (everything you sent, those visible in the gallery, kept and favourites, or favourites only) against the files on your memory cards or already offloaded folders, then copies to a destination folder only the matching files: the JPEG or HEIC and its associated RAW (ARW, CR2, CR3, NEF, RAF, ORF, RW2, PEF, DNG...). Each copied file is read back to verify its size, and ambiguous cases are skipped. Everything runs in your browser, on your own machine: no image goes back through our servers. You need a computer with Chrome or Edge, and a card reader if the photos are still on the card; you can add several cards one after another, each staying plugged in until its copy finishes, and the tool sets no limit on the number of files. Check the copy before you format your cards, and keep your own copies. For the resolution served to guests, see the dedicated question.

Question 20

Can I download a whole gallery as a single ZIP, or hand it over to my client that way?

Accepted Answer

Not today. Gallery downloads are one photo at a time, and the dashboard does not generate an event archive. Pixload is built for sharing during and after the event (link, QR code, selfie search), not as a final delivery tool: to hand a complete full-resolution set to a client, keep your usual delivery channel. To gather your own originals from your cards, see the question "Can I get my full-resolution originals back".

Question 21

Who owns my images, and what does Pixload commit to regarding their use?

Accepted Answer

You retain all rights to your photos. By uploading them you grant us a limited licence to process, store and distribute them as part of the service; that licence ends when you delete your content. Our privacy policy states that we never access your content for anything other than providing the service, and never to train AI models. Today only one process sends a copy of your photos outside our servers in Europe: if you enable AI curation on an event, a reduced copy of each photo (1024 px on the long side, metadata stripped) is sent, for the duration of the analysis, to a third-party AI provider based in the United States; we do not keep that copy. Your full-resolution originals are never sent to that provider.

Question 22

When I delete a photo or an event, is it really gone, how fast, and can I provide proof?

Accepted Answer

A deleted photo first goes to the trash; you can empty it yourself at any time, otherwise a daily task permanently removes from storage, 30 days after trashing, the original, the web versions, the thumbnail and the masks. Deleting an event is restricted to its owner: download links stop working immediately, the gallery becomes unreachable within a few minutes at most, all its photos are marked deleted without going through the trash, detected faces are erased on the spot, and both the files and the facial recognition templates are purged within the day: by the next day at the latest, nothing remains. Two limits: an event created from a one-off pass can only be deleted 30 days after it expires, and on the free plan, deleting the event does not free your single slot. The dashboard does not generate an erasure certificate: if a client or an institution requires written confirmation, write to privacy@pixload.io with the event concerned; data-related requests are handled within one month.

Question 23

Which AI features are included in each plan?

Accepted Answer

Technical photo analysis (sharpness, closed eyes, duplicates) and selfie search work on every plan, free included. AI Selection, the editing Studio and custom presets are included in Pro (99 EUR per month or 990 EUR per year) and Studio, as well as in the Premium (499 EUR) and Prestige (999 EUR) passes; Starter and the Standard pass give the custom logo but not these AI features. The Noise Reduction add-on is a 10 EUR per month extra reserved for Pro. Your effective plan is the most generous of your active entitlements (subscription or pass).

Question 24

Does AI curation delete photos, or do I keep control over every decision?

Accepted Answer

It never deletes or excludes anything: for each photo it records a decision (Reject, Review, Keep, Star) and a publication flag. Only Keep or Star photos are candidates for the public gallery; the others stay in your dashboard, untouched. You can change the decision on any photo from the Curation screen. The gallery selection is recalculated automatically each time a new photo is processed and each time you change your curation settings (activation, target number, VIP or banned people); changing a decision on its own does not publish or remove a photo. To publish or remove a photo immediately, use the heart in the Curation screen: it publishes the photo (and promotes it to at least Keep) or unpublishes it. If our AI is unavailable at analysis time (outage, quota), the photo is marked Review and is never blocked. To sort, it scores each photo from 0 to 100 on sharpness, exposure, composition, face quality and expression, weighted by scene type (portrait, group, atmosphere, details, dance floor), and gives 2 to 5 reasons per photo. Content judged inappropriate is downgraded to "Review" and never published automatically.

Question 25

Is the target number of published photos a cap or a guarantee? How do I make sure the couple appears and an unwanted person does not?

Accepted Answer

It is a cap, not a guarantee: you set it between 10 and 5,000 (default 500), and if only 200 photos pass the selection, 200 are published. These settings only take effect when AI Selection is enabled on the event. The selection reserves up to 20% of the cap to give at least one photo to each detected person (if there are very many people, the best-photographed ones are served first), keeps about 8% of photos without faces (atmosphere, details), limits any single scene type to 60% of the total and spreads photos over time in slots of at least 30 minutes. For the couple, mark them as VIPs: 4 levels (about 5%, 10% or 20% of the cap on top, or, at the Headliner level, all their retained photos, with no de-duplication), always added beyond the cap without displacing other guests. For an unwanted person, ban them: every photo they appear in is removed from the public gallery, reversibly (the ban takes precedence over VIP status), and any change to these settings re-runs the selection.

Question 26

Does the Studio work on my original or on a reduced version, and what does it include?

Accepted Answer

The Studio works on the web rendering (4 megapixels) or on the clean master from a previous save, not on the full-resolution original; this final version (JPEG, watermarks included) is what guests see and download. It has five modes: Develop (basics, curves, HSL, color grading, effects, detail, logo), Masks (pre-computed subject, AI detection, brush), Retouch (blur, AI eraser, denoise), Crop (horizon +/-45 degrees) and Styles (presets and LUT filters), plus clipping alerts, a white balance picker, before/after and copy/paste of settings. Batch processing applies auto-correction, a preset, a LUT, a rotation, a logo or settings copied from another photo to a selection. On a delegated event, only the owner and the editor role can enter.

Question 27

Can I import my Lightroom presets (.xmp) and my .cube LUTs?

Accepted Answer

.xmp presets: yes, from the editor or from the event page (Pro plans and above, plus Premium and Prestige passes). Imported: highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, vibrance, saturation, tint, exposure, contrast, incremental temperature, tone curves (master and RGB), 8-band HSL, 3-zone color grading or split toning, vignette. Not imported: clarity, texture, dehaze, sharpening, noise reduction, grain, lens corrections, geometry and crop, masks, calibration, parametric curve, profiles and looks, absolute Kelvin white balance; in the editor, the import window lists the ones your preset actually uses. The file is read in memory and never stored. .cube LUTs: a library of built-in filters is available in the Studio and at ingest, but uploading your own .cube files is not available today; if your style relies on a custom LUT, let us know.

Question 28

For AI Selection, is a copy of my photos sent outside Europe, and can I avoid it?

Accepted Answer

Yes, for AI Selection only: a reduced copy of each photo (1024 px on the long side, no metadata) is sent to an AI provider based in the United States for the duration of the analysis; we do not keep that copy and the full-resolution original is never sent. No biometric template, name or account data is sent, and face templates never leave Europe. Everything else (detection, technical analysis, correction, denoise, watermarking, selfie recognition) runs on our servers in Europe. AI Selection is enabled per event: if a client, a school or a federation requires that images do not leave the EU, leave it disabled on that event and no transfer takes place. For the details of this processing, see our privacy policy or write to privacy@pixload.io.

Question 29

Are my photos or my guests' selfies used to train your AI models?

Accepted Answer

No: no training process uses your photos or your guests' selfies. An optional "help improve face recognition" checkbox is offered to guests who register their selfie on an account; it can be revoked at any time from their settings, and today no process uses it. Only AI Selection relies on a third-party AI provider, on a reduced and temporary copy of each photo (see the previous question); if that blocks you, do not enable AI Selection on the event concerned: all other processing stays on our servers.

Question 30

On a race or tournament (10,000 burst photos), will the burst rule and the 5,000 cap make me lose participants?

Accepted Answer

The burst rule only targets consecutive photos showing exactly the same people, taken less than 5 minutes apart: in that case, only the best-scored one is kept. 300 different runners crossing the line in 5 minutes are 300 different compositions, not duplicates. However, AI selection does not guarantee a photo for every participant: the reserve of one photo per detected person is limited to 20% of the target number (100 people for a target of 500, 1,000 for a target of 5,000); other people only appear in the published gallery if their photos are picked by the rest of the selection. The target number is set per event between 10 and 5,000 photos (500 by default): it is a cap on the published gallery, not on upload or storage, which depend on your plan's quota (20,000 photos on the Prestige pass). Participants, for their part, find by selfie all the photos they appear in that curation classified as kept or favorites (or not yet evaluated), whether or not they are published in the gallery. For an event of that size, talk to us before selling it to an organizer.

Question 31

How do my guests get to the gallery?

Accepted Answer

Every event has a unique public address of the form pixload.events/event/identifier (or under your branded subdomain, or your own custom domain); the identifier is a random 16-character string that reveals neither the event name nor your plan. From the event page you get the link and a QR code in 4 variants (black or white, solid or transparent background), downloadable for print; the QR always encodes the guest address. For a tournament or a school, the team view also gives one link per team inside the same event (see the question on the team view). Galleries are not indexed by search engines, but the share preview (WhatsApp, SMS...) works and only shows the event name, date and venue, never a photo.

Question 32

How does a guest find their photos with a selfie, and do they need an account?

Accepted Answer

No account is needed. The guest opens the gallery, ticks an explicit consent box, then takes a selfie with their phone camera or uploads an image (JPEG or PNG). Our recognition service compares that selfie with the faces detected in the event photos and opens a personal album: it shows every photo they appear in, including those the photographer has not published to the shared gallery. The product goal is to put the guest in front of their photos in under 60 seconds after opening the link. If they create an account (magic link by email or password), they find their photos from every event they visited in a "My photos" space; their face signature is kept on the account for 90 days (renewed on each successful match) and is used automatically whenever they open a new gallery, with no new selfie needed as long as that consent remains valid.

Question 33

What happens to a guest's selfie, how long is it kept, and how can they be forgotten?

Accepted Answer

The text shown before the selfie says the essentials: the selfie is turned into a numeric face signature (biometric data), the selfie image is deleted within minutes (it passes through a temporary private space and is erased after matching, even on error), and for a guest without an account the link between them and their photos is erased automatically after 24 hours by default (up to 7 days for a multi-day tournament, a setting applied to the event by our team), with no reusable signature kept. For a guest with an account, the signature is kept for a rolling 90 days (the clock restarts at each successful match) and only serves the galleries they open themselves, unless they also tick the multi-gallery option. At any time, the "Forget my selfie" button in their album erases, for a guest without an account, the link between them and the event's photos; for an account, that same button (or Settings > Privacy) erases the link, the signature held by our recognition service and the associated consents. What you can tell your guests in two sentences: "Your selfie is only used to find your photos and the image is deleted within minutes. You can be forgotten with one click from your album."

Question 34

Can I password-protect a gallery or restrict it to certain people?

Accepted Answer

There is no per-gallery password today. Protection relies on the unguessable, non-indexed link plus two per-event settings: "Login required" (visitors must sign in with their email to view the gallery and download, enforced server-side) and the gallery mode: either every guest sees all published photos, or each guest only sees the photos they appear in, after a selfie. For a confidential event, combine both: a forwarded link then gives access to nothing without an email and a selfie. Nothing technically stops a link from being passed around; if a password is essential for you, tell us, it is not available today.

Question 35

How do guests share photos, and can I project the gallery live during the event?

Accepted Answer

From the viewer, the Share button sends a link to the gallery opened on that photo (never the raw image address), through the phone's share sheet or, failing that, by copying to the clipboard; the gallery also offers its QR code and a copy-link action for the event. For projection, the gallery includes a full-screen slideshow: 5, 8 or 12 seconds per photo, in chronological, random or "latest photos" order for a live wall, with an optional on-screen QR code of the gallery. The gallery detects new photos without reloading and guests have a refresh button. Every share and link copy is counted in your statistics.

Question 36

How long does a gallery stay online, and can I schedule its closure?

Accepted Answer

Events created under a subscription (Free, Starter, Pro, Studio) have no expiry date: they stay online, including after the subscription ends; the Pixload watermark then becomes mandatory again on those events and invited collaborators lose their access, but nothing is deleted automatically. Events bought as one-off passes (Standard, Premium, Prestige) are valid for 365 days from purchase, extendable by one year for 49 EUR (59 USD); the dashboard shows the expiry date. There is no closure date you can schedule yourself: to take a gallery down, you archive the event (it leaves your dashboard but remains viewable by guests) or delete it (gallery unreachable within a few minutes at most, files removed from storage by a daily task; a one-off event can only be deleted 30 days after it expires). Automatic closure on a chosen date is not available today.

Question 37

What does white label include, and from which plan?

Accepted Answer

You create a branded site on your own subdomain, yourname.pixload.events (3 to 32 characters, permanent once created, provisioned in a few seconds), with your name, a theme among 6 templates (wedding, corporate, sport, family, gala, international sports tournament), your brand and accent colors, a light and a dark logo (1 MB max), a hero image (5 MB max), the languages offered and the default language, light or dark mode, and a contact email; your galleries are served there. It is available from the Starter plan and on all one-off passes; the free plan has no access. The "Powered by Pixload" line in the footer is present for all accounts and no plan currently lets you remove it. A contrast safeguard automatically corrects a brand color that is too light or too dark so buttons stay readable.

Question 38

Does selfie search have limits (number of photos, helmets or sunglasses, multi-day tournaments), and can a runner search by bib number?

Accepted Answer

The personal album shows every photo of the event in which the face was recognised, with no practical limit on the number. We do not publish a success rate by condition (helmet, sunglasses, profile or sweaty face): a well-lit, front-facing selfie remains the best bet. An album for a guest without an account is valid for 24 hours by default; for a multi-day tournament, this can be extended up to 7 days per event on request to support before the event, and a guest who creates an account no longer has this limit. On a race, bib numbers are read automatically on every photo: the runner finds their photos by entering their number on the gallery's bib page, in addition to or instead of the selfie.

Question 39

Can I exclude someone from the gallery, and how does the team view work?

Accepted Answer

You can ban a person detected in an event (event page, Banned section). They no longer serve as a matching base: they can no longer find their photos by selfie and no longer appear in the team view. If AI Selection is on for the event, every photo they appear in, even next to other people, is removed from the public gallery, and you cannot pin such a photo as public. Without AI Selection, banning does not change the public gallery: published photos they appear in remain visible, and you have to unpublish them by hand in photo management (a "Banned person" badge flags the photos concerned). In all cases, other guests still see their own photos in their personal album, even if a banned person appears in them incidentally. Banning is reversible. The team view (tournaments) groups the photos of people who declared the same team during their selfie; it is reachable by anyone with the gallery link, without an account, not indexed, an information notice is shown at declaration time, and each person can leave the grouping without losing their album.

Question 40

Is there a limit on visitors or downloads, and does the gallery hold up under a post-race traffic peak?

Accepted Answer

There is no quota on visitors, views or downloads: your plan's limits apply to events, photos and storage. Images are served through a content delivery network, the gallery loads photos page by page and detects new ones without a reload, and selfie recognition has up to 90 seconds per search. We do not publish a load measurement for a peak of 2,000 visitors in one hour: for a very large event, talk to us beforehand.

Question 41

What is the difference between a subscription and a one-off pass, and do I have to pick a paid plan from the start?

Accepted Answer

No: start on the free plan and change plan whenever you need, from Dashboard > Plans, effective immediately; your free event and its photos are kept, and the Pixload watermark is removed from it automatically. A subscription (Starter 49 EUR, Pro 99 EUR, Studio 249 EUR per month, or 10 months for a year) covers all your events: unlimited events, a photo quota that resets every billing period, galleries with no expiry date. A one-off pass (Standard 199 EUR, Premium 499 EUR, Prestige 999 EUR) is a single payment that creates one event, valid for 365 days, with its own quota, independent of your subscription; it can be extended by one year for 49 EUR. Feature-wise, Standard matches Starter (custom logo, no AI), Premium matches Pro (AI Selection and Studio), Prestige matches Studio (plus multi-photographer). Both can be combined: a free or Starter account can buy a Premium pass for a specific event and use the AI tools there. The currency of your first payment (EUR or USD) then stays fixed on the account.

Question 42

What are the exact quotas of each plan, how many photos can a gallery hold, and what does the Studio plan include?

Accepted Answer

Free: unlimited events, 1,000 photos in total (5,000 if the event sells by packs), 5 GB, Pixload watermark, no AI Selection or Studio. Starter: unlimited events, 5,000 photos per billing period, 250 GB. Pro: 10,000 photos per period, 1 TB. Studio: 20,000 photos per period, 2 TB, all the AI features of Pro and multi-photographer delegation (up to 5 collaborators per event, photographer or editor roles); it can be subscribed directly by card from the dashboard, the sales contact being for specific needs (bank transfer, high volumes, contractual terms). One-off passes: Standard 5,000 photos and 25 GB, Premium 10,000 photos and 100 GB, Prestige 20,000 photos and 250 GB, for that one event. On paid subscriptions there is no per-gallery cap: the limit is your photo quota per period and your storage; with AI Selection enabled, the target number you set (10 to 5,000) caps what guests see, the rest staying in your dashboard. A 15,000-photo marathon within a single period therefore exceeds the Pro quota: it requires Studio or a Prestige pass. Quotas are frozen on your subscription when you subscribe.

Question 43

What happens if I hit my photo or storage quota in the middle of an event?

Accepted Answer

It is a hard stop at the exact limit, on every plan: the upload that would exceed the quota is refused, nothing is deleted and nothing extra is billed. There is no tolerated overage and no automatic surcharge. You are warned by e-mail at 80%, 95% and 100% of the quota, and the dashboard (Billing) shows your usage. To unblock: change plan from the dashboard (immediate, the difference is prorated); if storage is what blocks you, delete photos and then empty the trash (the photo counter for the cycle, however, does not go down when you delete). A one-off pass does not attach to an existing event: it creates a new event with its own quota. Photos sent by the camera during a block are not lost: they are set aside for seven days; once the plan has changed, resend them from the camera (no duplicate will be created) or ask support to replay them. Our advice: check your counter before a large event.

Question 44

For my volume (20 weddings a year, or 15 races of 10,000 photos), which option is cheapest?

Accepted Answer

Work it out from two numbers: photos per billing period and events per year. Twenty weddings at 1,500-3,000 photos each means 30,000 to 60,000 photos a year: a monthly Pro plan (99 EUR, 10,000 photos per cycle) taken only in the months you shoot (re-subscribing before you create the next event), or a yearly Pro at 990 EUR, costs far less than 20 Premium passes at 499 EUR; a pass only makes sense for an isolated event or one billed separately to the client. For 15 races of 10,000 photos, one month of Pro covers one race (10,000 photos per cycle, hard block beyond that; two races in the same cycle call for Studio, 20,000 photos, or a Prestige pass), while the Prestige pass at 999 EUR gives 20,000 photos and 250 GB for a single event over 365 days. Be careful with a monthly plan cancelled right after the event: the account drops back to Free and the Pixload watermark becomes mandatory again on subscription events (see the cancellation question); an event created with a pass is not affected.

Question 45

Can I change plan, or switch from monthly to yearly, mid-way?

Accepted Answer

Yes, from the dashboard (Plans), at any time and in both directions. The change is immediate: the difference for the remainder of the current period is prorated and billed right away, and any scheduled cancellation is dropped at the same time. Switching from monthly to yearly on the same plan follows the same rule. A downgrade may be refused if your usage exceeds the new plan: storage above the new cap, or photos uploaded since the start of the period above the target plan's quota; you then need to free space or wait for the end of the cycle.

Question 46

If I cancel my subscription, what happens to my galleries, logos and collaborators?

Accepted Answer

You can cancel at any time from Billing (customer portal); the subscription stays active until the end of the paid period, then the account automatically drops back to Free. Your events, photos and originals are neither deleted nor closed: galleries stay online and guests can still view and download, and no deletion of originals is planned to date. However, on events created under the subscription, the Pixload watermark is enforced again (a forced setting you can no longer switch off), invited collaborators are revoked and notified by email, the denoise add-on is cancelled, and Free quotas apply (uploads blocked above 1,000 photos in total or 5 GB). Events created with a one-off pass are not affected. If you later return to a paid plan, the forced Pixload watermark is removed automatically from subscription events that have no custom watermark.

Question 47

Am I billed in euros or dollars, and can I change currency later?

Accepted Answer

Before your first payment, the currency follows your choice (selector on the pricing page) or, failing that, your country: EUR for the European Union, the EEA, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Monaco, USD everywhere else. USD prices are Starter 59, Pro 119, Studio 299 per month, Standard pass 249, Premium 599, Prestige 1,199, renewal 59. From the first payment onwards, the currency is permanently locked on your account: what is displayed is what is billed; on the pricing page the other currency in the selector is disabled, and in the dashboard the selector is no longer shown. An account billed in EUR cannot switch to USD (or the other way round); that would require closing and recreating a customer account.

Question 48

Why is my invoice VAT-free, and can it show my company name and VAT number?

Accepted Answer

Pixload Limited is established in Hong Kong: displayed prices are net and no VAT is collected. If you are VAT-registered, in particular in the European Union, you must self-assess VAT under your local rules (purchase of a service from outside the EU); your accountant will know the mechanism. Every payment generates a PDF invoice downloadable from Billing (the last 10 are listed, all are available in the customer portal); a billing address is required at checkout and appears on the invoice. If your invoice must show a company name or an intra-EU VAT number, write to support@pixload.io with those details: we will tell you how to proceed.

Question 49

Which payment methods do you accept, and can I pay by bank transfer or use a promo code?

Accepted Answer

Self-service: card only, through a secure checkout embedded in the dashboard; no SEPA or ACH direct debit. Subscriptions renew automatically (monthly or yearly), one-off passes are single purchases with no renewal. If a charge fails, access is kept during the retry window (about three weeks); if payment ultimately fails, the account drops back to Free. Payment by bank transfer is possible on request: the team then creates the subscription manually and tracks its renewal with you. Promo codes are entered at checkout, unless a referral discount is already applied: the two do not stack.

Question 50

What is your refund policy?

Accepted Answer

For consumers residing in the European Union, you have 14 days from subscribing to exercise your right of withdrawal, unless you expressly agreed to immediate provision of the service; write to support@pixload.io and the request is handled within 14 days. Outside that framework there is currently no fixed rule (pro-rata, results guarantee): each request is reviewed on a case-by-case basis at the same address. We do not offer a contractual uptime commitment; you can cancel at any time with no commitment, and the free plan lets you test the full workflow before paying. Note for one-off passes: a full refund expires the event immediately (photo uploads are blocked); a partial refund does not change access.

Question 51

Who answers support, through which channel, how fast, and is WhatsApp run by an AI?

Accepted Answer

Three channels: email (support@pixload.io for support and refunds, privacy@pixload.io for GDPR rights), the form on the Contact page, and WhatsApp (site bubble, Contact page, help centre). The Contact page states an email reply within 8 hours and WhatsApp within 5 minutes; these are targets, not contractual commitments: there is no SLA in the Terms, and we do not publish human on-call hours for evenings and weekends. WhatsApp is handled first-line by an AI assistant (Sam), which escalates by email to the human team when it cannot answer; limit of 20 messages per hour per number. The "priority support" (a reply within 2 hours is displayed) and "dedicated support during the event" mentioned on the Premium and Prestige passes have, today, no defined channel or hours beyond those same channels, and are not contractual commitments either.

Question 52

Where are my photos, my database and the face templates hosted? Is everything in Europe?

Accepted Answer

The dashboard and the gallery run in Ireland, the application database (accounts, events, consents) is hosted in Ireland, and photos are stored in object storage configured for the EU jurisdiction. Since July 2026, image processing and face-template computation run on our servers in Europe (a dedicated server for the heavy computations, orchestration and processing services in Belgium), and the face-template database on an instance declared in Paris. Several of these providers are US companies operating European regions; our privacy policy describes the contractual safeguards. One documented exception: when AI Selection is enabled on an event, a reduced copy of each photo is sent to a provider in the United States (see the dedicated question).

Question 53

A template is computed for every face on upload: what must I tell guests, and what legal basis can I rely on for a school or a sports club?

Accepted Answer

A numeric face template is computed for every face detected on every photo as soon as it is uploaded, on all plans, regardless of whether selfie search is used; your publication consent blocks the output (display, matching, download), not the computation. By signing that consent on the event page, you commit to holding the publication rights, to understanding this computation, to informing the people photographed and to relaying their requests; the proof (time, IP, browser, text version) is recorded. We do not yet provide an information kit (sign or text to display on the day) or a ready-made legal basis for minors: that is for the controller to determine, and we cannot give legal advice. On the guest side, the selfie relies on an explicit consent ticked in the gallery, with a "Forget my selfie" button in their album.

Question 54

Can I fully disable face recognition on an event (no template computed at all)?

Accepted Answer

Not today. There is no per-event switch that prevents template computation: face detection and analysis run on all plans, as soon as each photo is ingested, on our servers in Europe; this is what powers filtering by person, AI selection and selfie search. Selfie search also remains available to guests of any published event; it cannot be switched off either. You can, however, limit what is done with it: leave "Face search" in the viewer disabled (the default), keep the full gallery visible to everyone rather than the "each guest sees only their photos" mode, and ban people: a banned person can no longer find their photos by selfie or in the team view and, if AI Selection is on, their photos leave the public gallery (face search in the viewer, however, does not filter banned people). No template ever leaves the European Union, and templates are deleted when you delete the event. If a client refuses any biometrics, tell them honestly: the computation happens, and the publication consent you sign on the event page commits you to informing the people photographed. If an organiser requires zero biometrics, write to us at privacy@pixload.io: this need is identified.

Frequently asked questions

Getting started

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Your photos: quality, originals, ownership

AI selection and editing

The gallery and your guests

Plans, pricing and billing

Privacy, security and support

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