mesgaleries.comMesGaleries.com is a French online photo gallery platform dedicated to photographers: weddings, sporting events, portraits, school photography, real estate, associations. Born in 2010 from a practical need among friends, the application became in 2022 a complete professional tool for creating, sharing and selling photo galleries, with a rare standard: no advertising, no tracking, data stored in France and hosting powered 100% by solar energy.
This page tells where the project comes from, who is behind it, what sets it apart from Pixieset, ShootProof, Pic-Time or Lumys, and where we want to take it.
The adventure began in 2010 under the name marichaire.fr. At the wedding of a close friend, the photographer delivered the photos on a DVD: to share the images with the family, the couple had to burn copy after copy, which quickly became unmanageable. Meanwhile, each guest took their own photos and posted them on Facebook or the sharing platforms of the time, which compressed them again and again until they were unusable for printing.
I have been a developer since 2010, with a career built around SaaS and business software. Passionate about photography since the arrival of large-sensor digital cameras, I wanted to solve this simple problem: allow the couple to bring together in one place the photos from the professional photographer and those from the guests, in high quality, for free and with no technical constraints. The first platform was launched that same year, free and run on a volunteer basis.
Very quickly, other communities discovered the platform. Classic car enthusiasts in particular, who organize meets and want to gather in a single place the photos taken by all the participants. To make sharing easier on the forums of the time, the application added automatic generation of BBcode links: a single click to copy and paste the code and display the photo in any discussion. At a time when free hosting services drastically limited the lifespan of images, this feature was valuable.
For nearly eight years, the platform hosted weddings, car meets and association events, while remaining free and self-funded.
From 2017-2018 onward, most forums added native photo uploads: the added value of BBcode disappeared. Without structured search engine optimization, the audience eroded while the cost of hosting several million photos remained mine to bear. At some point, the equation was no longer sustainable. I preferred to take a deliberate pause rather than degrade the quality of the service or compromise the integrity of the stored data.
This break, three years long, turned out to be useful: it made it possible to step back and rethink the project entirely (for whom, how, and with which business model).
In 2022, I attended the wedding of friends. The official photographer was himself a close friend, whom I had introduced to photography a few years earlier. It was while talking with him that everything became clear: there is a real gap in tools for professional photographers in Europe. The dominant solutions are built for the North American market (Pixieset, ShootProof, Pic-Time), with roughly translated interfaces, prices in dollars and data outside the EU.
I offered this friend the chance to become the first beta tester of a complete rewrite of the platform. For several months, we designed the tool together: he brought the reality of the field (needs, friction points, repetitive tasks to automate), and I turned that into features. It is this collaboration between a developer and a working photographer that gives MesGaleries.com its distinctive ergonomics, where every interaction is designed to reduce friction.
The current platform offers everything a photographer needs to take their business digital: highly customizable online photo galleries, print sales with an adjustable commission, selfie face recognition so that each participant finds their photos in one click, built-in event scheduling, digital contracts with electronic signature, video hosting, sharing by QR code, custom subdomains and collaborative multi-photographer galleries.
The pace of development is sustained: we release something new every two weeks on average, in direct response to user feedback.
Our purpose can be summed up in one sentence: to provide photographers in Europe with a French platform that complies with the GDPR, never resells any data and brings the rigor of a professional tool without the complexity.
In practice, this means that a photographer who is just starting out can get to grips with MesGaleries in a few minutes, without training, and benefit from day one from tools that freelancers have historically not been used to using: structured scheduling of assignments, digitally signed contracts, tracking of downloads and sales, management of image rights. This professionalizes a business that is often run on intuition and helps make it sustainable over time.
Our core audience is photographers who want a European platform, in Europe and beyond: France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Canada, the French overseas departments and territories, Africa. We serve both established professionals and serious amateurs who want to structure their business.
The current breakdown of our users reflects several complementary worlds:
For school photography and children in particular, the ability to protect an entire gallery with face recognition means that no photo is visible until a parent has confirmed their identity with a selfie.
The international solutions (Pixieset, ShootProof, Pic-Time) are solid but built for the North American market. Lumys is French but positioned differently. Here are the choices that make MesGaleries unique:
Sustainability in the SaaS world is often a marketing argument with little follow-through. We chose to go further:
This approach is not a selling point that we capitalize on, it is simply our way of doing things properly.
Support is the blind spot of many SaaS platforms, especially when they are run from the other side of the world. We take this aspect very seriously: our average response time across all tickets is under 18 minutes, weekends and public holidays included. Our support is based in France, with a real understanding of the photography profession, and no copy-pasted generic answers.
When you contact MesGaleries.com, you are talking to someone who knows the platform inside out and who is able to report a bug, deploy a fix or add a feature right away if it makes sense.
The goal is clear: to become the French reference for all photographers, professionals and amateurs alike. This involves three commitments that we are setting ourselves for the long term:
We are also working on extending our network of printing partners in other countries, in order to offer the sale of physical prints with reasonable shipping costs to Belgian, Swiss or African photographers. This is a project that takes time, because we want partners of the same quality as our French reference lab.
We chose demanding French partners, selected for the quality of their service and their reliability over time:
Would you like to know more about the platform's features, pricing or security? The FAQ answers more than 50 questions. Would you rather try it directly? The Free plan is open with no credit card required. And if you have a specific question, the contact form is handled by a real person, in under 18 minutes.