Why We Built Folio

I shot a friend's wedding last year. The photos turned out well, but delivering them ended up being a whole separate problem.

They wanted the photos available for friends and family to browse, but not for the whole internet. Reasonable ask. My options at the time were Google Drive (ugly square thumbnails, slow previews), Google Photos (forces everyone to sign into Google and "accept" the album into their account), or just... a zip file over email. None of these felt right for someone's wedding photos.

And so I ended up building a one-off password-protected page as part of their wedding website. It worked, but I was rushing to get it done alongside everything else, and the result wasn't up to my own standards. That's when the thought stuck with me: why doesn't a proper solution for this already exist?

The gap

I looked around. Dedicated gallery delivery platforms do exist, but they bothered me in two ways.

First, the pricing. Google gives you 15GB for free. Cloud storage is cheap. Yet photographer-specific platforms charge a steep markup for what is, at the end of the day, hosting images. High-quality photos take up a lot of space, and the markup just didn't feel fair.

Second, the workflow. Most of these services wanted me to fill out pages of forms and questionnaires before I could even upload a single photo. In my head, the ideal flow looks a lot more like Google Drive: one click to create a folder, drag-drop the files in, and share. That's it.

Neither of those issues were things I could just work around. And so I started building.

Respecting everyone's time

Folio's upload flow is as short as we could make it. Create a gallery, drag your photos in, and share. Photos start uploading immediately, and while they're going up you're free to look around and adjust gallery settings — add your branding, set a password, toggle watermarks, or limit the download resolution if you're delivering drafts. No blocking upfront forms.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about the other side of things: what it feels like to receive a photo gallery link. I've been on that end too, and getting a link to a zip file is really annoying. You can't preview anything from your phone. If it's a Google Drive link, you see cropped square thumbnails that don't do the photos any justice, and the previews are slow to load depending on the file size.

When someone opens a Folio gallery, they land directly on a photo grid. Photos are displayed in their full aspect ratio with no cropping, and tapping one opens it full-screen with controls that are meant to feel native — swipe to browse, pinch to zoom. If the photographer enables it, there's EXIF info, individual photo downloads, and full-album zip downloads. We kept the UI intentionally minimal, with clearly labelled controls, because we want this to be usable by everyone — including someone's grandma who shouldn't need to call for help just to view some photos.

The photographer's stage

I see photography as a form of art, and the photographer's branding is a part of that. Folio supports custom domains, custom logos, and branded gallery pages because as a platform, we see ourselves as providing the stage for photographers to present their work. The photos and the photographer's identity should be front and center, and everything else that gets in the way of that is a distraction.

That same line of thinking shaped pretty much every design decision we made. My own photography gallery at captures.moe is hosted on Folio too — it's a product I built because I wanted to use it myself, and I do.

The team behind Folio

Folio is born out of passion by a group of friends. It's a lot of work, and I won't pretend otherwise. But we share a very specific vision for what this should be, and compromising on that vision isn't something any of us are willing to do.

I'm a very particular person when it comes to my work. Photography is my art. And building Folio is, in its own way, also my art. When it comes to these things, I'd rather do it right than do it fast.

Try it

We could keep talking about what Folio feels like, but honestly, we'd rather you just try it and see for yourself. We have a free tier with 10GB of storage, and paid plans start from SGD $1.90/month for 25GB.

Sign up at folio.photo, deliver a gallery, and tell us what you think. We're still early, and any and all feedback is welcome.

— the Folio team