Albums vs. galleries
When to use one gallery with albums vs. multiple separate galleries — the two ways to structure a multi-phase event.
~3 min read
A gallery in PixVenu is the top-level container for one event. It has its own QR code, its own privacy settings, its own download archive, and its own hosting window. Most hosts only ever need one gallery per event.
Albums are an Essential-and-above feature. Free galleries collect everything in one stream — there are no albums on the free tier. Upgrade to Essential or higher to organize uploads into albums; see Free vs paid galleries.
Albums live inside a gallery. They're a way to organize uploads — think "Ceremony," "Reception," and "After-party" inside a single wedding gallery. Each album gets its own QR code so signage at the right phase points guests directly into the matching album, but everything lives under the one parent gallery: one combined download archive, one moderation queue, one set of host settings. Guests can also upload into the main "no album" view via the gallery's primary QR; the album QRs just nudge them into the right bucket.
Multiple galleries is the other option. If your event has phases that really ARE separate events — a proposal weekend in one city, an engagement party in another, a rehearsal dinner before the wedding — create one gallery per event instead of one album per phase. Each gallery is its own QR, its own moderation, its own archive. The downside is no single combined archive at the end; each gallery exports independently. The upside is cleaner separation of concerns when the phases have different guest lists or different privacy postures. One thing to plan for: only one free gallery can be live at a time, so additional galleries start as free drafts — running several events live at once needs a paid plan per gallery or a Premier bundle slot (see How many galleries can I create?).
The duplicate-gallery affordance on the host dashboard makes the multi-gallery path manageable — settings, theme, branding, and welcome content all copy across when you clone a gallery, so you don't have to redo setup for each phase.
Quick decision guide:
- One event, multiple phases the same guests attend → one gallery, multiple albums.
- Multiple separate events that happen to share a host (or family, or season) → one gallery each.
If you're not sure, start with one gallery. You can always create additional galleries later if the event grows past what albums can elegantly handle. Going the other direction — collapsing multiple galleries into one — isn't supported, so the safer default is one-gallery-first.
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