Every gallery has a storage lifecycle. What happens and when depends on the tier. Here is the full picture so you can set expectations with the couple and plan your own workflow.
The short version
| Tier | Retention | What happens at the end |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 90 days after event | Gallery purged (files deleted) |
| Couple | 12 months after event | Gallery purged (files deleted) |
| Pro | 12 months after event | Auto-archives, kept on your account |
| Founding Member | Lifetime while subscribed | Never purged |
The clock starts on the event date, not when you created the event or when uploads finished.
Free tier: 90 days, then purge
Free galleries are designed as a try-before-you-buy. We keep everything for 90 days after the event, then the nightly purge job deletes all uploads and the gallery itself.
The 90 days is counted forward from the event date. A wedding on April 1 is purged on June 30.
If you want to keep a free gallery longer, you have three options:
- Upgrade the single event to Couple tier ($49 one-time, see plan comparison)
- Upgrade your account to Pro ($29/mo, unlimited events on the Pro lifecycle)
- Download everything before the 90 days are up, the couple can re-upload to their own cloud storage
Couple tier: 12 months, then purge
Couple tier gives you the normal one-year keepsake window. Families typically want 6-12 months to go back and revisit the gallery, make prints, share with distant relatives. 12 months covers most of that.
At 12 months post-event, the gallery purges the same way a free one does. Purged means gone, we cannot recover files after the purge runs.
Pro tier: 12 months active, then archive (not purge)
Pro events are different. After 12 months of active storage, they auto-archive instead of purge:
- The gallery disappears from your active dashboard
- The public URL returns a "This gallery has been archived" page
- Guests cannot access the gallery
- But the files are preserved: they stay on your account, counted against your Pro storage tier
You can unarchive any time while you are a Pro subscriber. Unarchived galleries go back to the active dashboard and the public URL resumes working.
This is useful for:
- Couples asking for access years later ("can you get me those wedding photos again?")
- Archive-everything studio workflows: you keep a complete record of every wedding you shot
- Legal/business retention: your studio contract says you keep galleries for X years
Founding Member: lifetime while subscribed
The $249 Founding Member deal gives you the same features as Pro but lifetime storage while you stay subscribed. Archived galleries never auto-purge as long as your account is active. See Founding Member tier.
How much time is left on a gallery
The event page shows a small lifecycle chip with the exact expiration date, e.g. "Stored until July 1, 2026 (90 days after event)."
The chip color changes as expiration approaches:
- Gray: more than 30 days remaining
- Amber: 30 days or fewer remaining
- Red: 7 days or fewer remaining
If you are planning to upgrade the gallery or download a full backup, do it before the red window. The purge job runs nightly and does not give second chances.
What gets deleted in a purge
When a free or Couple gallery purges:
- All photo uploads
- All video files (the source MP4s and the Mux-encoded playback versions)
- The gallery itself (the URL returns a "gallery not found" page)
- Guest names and comments
What is retained for account auditing:
- The event metadata (name, date, owner), kept indefinitely, just no media
- Your dashboard shows the event as "past, purged" for 30 days for accounting purposes
What does NOT get deleted
Your own studio account, settings, branding, custom URL reservations, billing history, all stay. Purges are scoped to a single gallery's media, not your account.
Can I extend a gallery's expiration without upgrading?
Yes. Changing the event date pushes the expiration forward by the same amount. If an event was on March 1 and you change it to April 1, the expiration date moves forward by 31 days.
This is a legitimate workaround for "the couple is traveling and will not look at the gallery until next month" situations. We don't patrol for this, but keep in mind it also changes what guests see as the event date on signage and emails.
Purging vs archiving, quick comparison
- Purge: files deleted, gone forever. Free and Couple tiers.
- Archive: gallery hidden from everyone, files preserved on your account. Pro tier only. You can unarchive to restore full access.
Downloading everything before expiration
If the gallery is about to purge and you want to keep a copy:
- From the event page, click Download all in the toolbar (Pro/Couple; free tier is gated)
- Wait for the zip to build, usually a few minutes for a big wedding
- Save the zip locally or to your own cloud storage
- Optionally, upload the zip to the couple's Google Drive or Dropbox as a gift
The download zip includes every photo and video at original quality, plus a manifest listing each upload's guest name and moment tag if set. See Bulk management for ways to clean up the gallery before downloading.
Contacting us about a specific gallery's expiration
If you need a gallery extended past its auto-purge date and do not want to upgrade, contact support before the red window. We can sometimes grant a short extension, typically 2-4 weeks, for good-faith requests. This is case-by-case; it is not a published feature.