Love this company
Love this company. Loved the REIGN product. They were there the entire time helping me set things up; and when things went wrong? They were quick to take action and help find a solution.
For photographers
Reign for photographers. Photography client portal + community.
Wedding + portrait photographers deliver galleries via PixieSet + invoice via QuickBooks + email everything - hard to scale, no recurring revenue.
Reign + MediaVerse + MemberPress for client galleries, a photography education community and recurring membership for repeat clients. MediaVerse installs free; MemberPress does the paywall.
Galleries, the community feed and tutorial courses, free to install. You buy the Reign theme; MediaVerse, BuddyNext and Learnomy are ours and install free.
- MediaVerse media
- BuddyNext community engine
- Learnomy courses
Three highlights for photographers.
- 01
Private client galleries via MediaVerse, free to install, with member-tier gating.
- 02
Photography education tier: tutorials + masterclasses.
- 03
Recurring revenue via annual membership (gallery + education combo).
What the site looks like on day one.
You launch with galleries, a client portal for delivery and proofing, and a booking enquiry flow. Public galleries are the portfolio; client galleries are gated per shoot. Delivery happens on your own domain rather than a third-party gallery service, which keeps the branding and the client relationship with you.
What a member actually does.
A client finds you through a gallery or a referral, enquires, books. After the shoot they log in to proof and download, and that portal visit is often the last good impression the business makes, so it is worth getting right. Past clients return for the next occasion, and the public galleries keep working as a portfolio in the meantime.
How this usually makes money.
Shoots are the revenue and the site supports them; where it earns directly it is print sales or digital downloads through a commerce plugin, and sometimes courses for other photographers, which is a common second income. Replacing a paid gallery-delivery subscription is a real saving for a working photographer.
The mistake to avoid.
Serving full-size images. A gallery of unoptimised photographs is the slowest page most photographers ever publish, and clients open it on a phone first. Correct sizes, lazy loading and a CDN are setup work, not optimisation to do later.
Photographer-specific questions.
PixieSet integration?
No native bridge. Export from PixieSet and import to MediaVerse, or run MediaVerse on its own for new galleries.
Can clients download their photos?
Yes, through a gated gallery per shoot with downloads enabled, optionally expiring after an agreed window. Test on mobile, because clients overwhelmingly open a gallery on a phone first and a download flow that fails there generates support messages.
Will large galleries slow the site?
They can if images are served at full size. Use proper sizes, lazy loading and a CDN, which together handle most of it. This is the single biggest performance issue on a photography site and it is entirely solvable at setup.
Is this better than a gallery service?
It removes a subscription and keeps clients on your domain, which matters for branding and for repeat work. A dedicated service may be slicker at proofing specifically. The trade is control and cost against a little convenience.
How long should client galleries stay up?
Set an expiry, usually a few months, and offer extensions. Unlimited storage of every shoot forever becomes a hosting problem, and an expiry date is also a gentle prompt for clients to download and order prints.
Can I sell prints through the gallery?
Yes, with a commerce plugin, and it works best when the print options sit inside the gallery rather than on a separate shop page. Fulfilment is yours to arrange, whether in-house or through a lab.
Buy the theme. Add the plugins free.
MediaVerse, BuddyNext and Learnomy cost nothing to install, and each has its own Pro plan for later. Running the third-party stack instead? The BuddyPress Community Bundle kit is the packaged route. Or have the Wbcom team install either one for $699 flat.