Questions & answers
Everything people ask,
answered properly.
38 questions, including the awkward ones about what we don't do. If yours isn't here, email us and we'll add it.
01
Getting started
What Confetti Gallery is, and what happens in the first two minutes.
- How does Confetti Gallery actually work?
- You create a gallery for your event and get one QR code plus a short web link. You print the code and put it where guests will see it. Guests point their phone camera at it, which opens your gallery in their browser, and they upload the photos they took — tagged with their name. Everything lands in a single shared gallery. When you're ready, you pay once to download every full-resolution original as a zip.
- How long does it take to set up?
- About two minutes. You enter what kind of event it is, what it's called, the date, your name, an email and a password. Your QR code and share link are on your dashboard the moment you finish — there's no approval step and nothing to wait for.
- Do I need to install an app?
- No — and neither do your guests. Confetti Gallery runs entirely in a web browser. That's deliberate: asking a room of eighty people to download something at a party is where every other photo-sharing idea falls apart.
- Do guests need an account or a password?
- No. A guest scans the code, picks photos from their camera roll, types their first name so you know who took what, and uploads. There is no sign-up, no email address and no password. The only person with an account is you, the host.
- When should I set my gallery up?
- Whenever you like — there's no cost to being early. Setting up months ahead gives you time to get the QR code printed properly. The 30-day clock that governs when photos are deleted runs from your event date, not from the day you signed up, so an early start never eats into your time.
- What exactly do I print?
- Your dashboard shows a QR code and a short link. The obvious choice is a table card, but it works just as well on an order of service, a sign by the bar, a name badge, a slide between talks, or a sticker on the back of the menu. Print it at least 4cm across on something matte, and put the short link underneath as a fallback.
- How do guests know what to do with the QR code?
- Modern iPhone and Android cameras recognise a QR code automatically — a guest points the camera at it and a link appears to tap. Write one line of instruction next to the code, something like "Point your camera here to add your photos", and have someone mention it out loud once. A code nobody has explained reads as decoration.
- Can I run more than one gallery?
- Today an account holds one gallery, so a second event means signing up again with a different email address — or emailing info@tcgcommunityapps.com and we'll set it up alongside your first. Each gallery is genuinely separate: its own QR code, its own guests, its own one-off price. Hosts running a rehearsal dinner and a wedding, or a conference and its evening party, usually want them apart anyway so the photos don't get muddled.
02
On the day
Uploads, limits, file types, and what guests can see.
- Is there a limit on how many photos guests can upload?
- No. Uploads are unlimited, from as many guests as you like. The only cap is per file: a single photo can be up to 25MB, which is comfortably more than any phone camera produces.
- What file types can guests upload?
- Any image format their phone hands over — in practice that's JPEG, PNG or HEIC. Video isn't supported yet; if a guest tries to upload a clip they'll be told images only, so it's worth saying "photos" rather than "pictures and videos" on your signage.
- Do photos lose quality when guests upload them?
- No. The file is stored exactly as the guest sent it, at full resolution, and that's the same file you get in your download. The smaller, watermarked versions you see while browsing are previews — the originals sit untouched behind them.
- Can guests add their name or a caption?
- Their name, yes — it's required, so every photo arrives signed with whoever took it. A caption is optional, up to 200 characters. Both show on the photo in your gallery, which is how you end up with things like "Auntie Bea — caught this from the back row".
- Can guests see the photos everyone else uploaded?
- Only after they've contributed. A guest who lands on your gallery sees an upload prompt, not the photos. Once they've uploaded something from that device, the gallery opens up to them. It's a gentle nudge that turns lurkers into contributors, and it stops a shared link becoming a public album.
- What if a guest uploads something we'd rather wasn't there?
- Email info@tcgcommunityapps.com with your gallery link and we'll remove it. There's no self-serve delete button in the dashboard yet — it's on the list, and being straight with you: right now it's a message to us rather than a click.
- Can guests upload after the event is over?
- Yes. The gallery stays open for uploads for 30 days after your event date, which catches the guest who meant to do it on the night and remembered a fortnight later. After that the gallery closes and uploads are refused.
- Does it work on bad venue wifi?
- Uploads happen over whatever connection the guest's phone has, so a rural barn with one bar of 4G will be slow. Two things help: tell guests they can upload later from home, and remember the gallery stays open for weeks afterwards. Nobody has to get their photos in on the night.
03
Privacy and who sees what
The part people care most about, answered precisely.
- Who can see my gallery?
- By default, only you and the guests who have uploaded to it. Your collection gallery is private: you see it when you're logged in, and a guest sees it only from a device that has contributed a photo. Anyone else who follows the link gets the upload prompt.
- Will my gallery turn up in Google?
- No. Galleries are excluded from our sitemap and blocked in robots.txt, and there's no browsable index of galleries anywhere on the site. The only route in is your link.
- What's the public highlights gallery?
- An optional second gallery you can switch on after you've unlocked downloads. You hand-pick which photos go in it, and it gets its own shareable link — the one you send round the family or post for colleagues. Everything you don't pick stays private. It's off until you turn it on.
- Can just anyone open my public highlights gallery?
- They need the link and they need to answer one question: the date of your event. It's a light gate rather than a password — enough to stop a stray link being browsed by a stranger, without making your gran ask you for credentials.
- Why are the previews watermarked?
- Until you've unlocked your gallery, a watermark sits across the previews. It's there so the browsing experience is genuinely useful before you pay while the clean, full-resolution files stay the thing you're paying for. Once you unlock, you download the originals with no watermark anywhere.
- Do you use our photos for marketing or to train AI?
- No. Your photos are used for one thing: showing them to you and your guests in your gallery. We don't licence them, we don't publish them, we don't feed them to any model, and the photography you see across this website is our own or properly licensed stock — never a customer's.
- How long do you keep the photos?
- 30 days after your event date. A job runs every night and permanently deletes the photos of any gallery past that point, from the database and from storage. This is a real deletion, not an archive — which is exactly why you should download your zip as soon as you've unlocked it.
- Can I extend the deadline if I need longer?
- Email info@tcgcommunityapps.com before your gallery closes and we'll push the date out. Once the nightly job has run, though, the files are gone and no one can get them back — us included. If you only do one thing after unlocking, download the zip.
- Where are the photos stored?
- In Vercel's blob storage, with each gallery's files under their own path and an unguessable filename. Account passwords are hashed with bcrypt and never stored in a readable form, and your login session is a signed, httpOnly cookie that JavaScript on the page can't read.
04
Price and payment
One number, paid once, with no subscription hiding behind it.
- How much does Confetti Gallery cost?
- Setting up a gallery and collecting photos is free — you can run your whole event without paying anything. Downloading every full-resolution original costs £25.00, once, for that gallery.
- Is it a subscription?
- No. There's no recurring charge, no monthly plan and no card kept on file for later. You pay once per gallery, and if you never run another event you never hear from our billing again.
- What do I get when I pay?
- Every photo your guests uploaded, at full resolution, as a single zip — plus the ability to publish a curated public highlights gallery. There's no per-photo charge and no cap on how many you collected.
- How do I pay, and is it secure?
- Through Stripe's hosted checkout, by card. Your card details go straight to Stripe and never touch our servers — we only ever learn whether the payment succeeded.
- Can I get my gallery for free?
- Yes. Every gallery comes with a referral code. When 5 hosts you've sent our way set up and unlock their own galleries, yours unlocks for free automatically. Referrals only count once the other host has actually unlocked, so it can't be gamed with throwaway signups.
- Can I pay before the event?
- You can, but there's rarely a reason to. The price is the same whenever you pay, and paying early doesn't add anything you can use until the photos exist. The natural moment is a day or two after the event, when you can see what you've got.
- What if something goes wrong with my download?
- Email info@tcgcommunityapps.com with your gallery link and we'll fix it. A zip that failed, photos that didn't make it, a gallery that closed sooner than you expected — tell us what happened and we'll sort it out rather than pointing you at a policy page.
05
When something goes wrong
The handful of problems that actually come up, and how to fix them.
- A guest says the QR code won't scan — what do I do?
- Nine times out of ten it's the print, not the phone. Check the code is at least 4cm across, printed dark-on-light with real contrast, and not on a glossy card catching the venue lighting. Failing that, point them at the short link printed underneath it — typing that in always works.
- A guest's upload failed. Why?
- There are three likely causes: the file is over the 25MB limit, it isn't an image (a video, or a screen recording), or the gallery has passed its closing date. Everything else is usually a wobbly connection — trying again on wifi, or later from home, clears it.
- Photos aren't showing up in my gallery.
- Refresh the page — photos appear as they're uploaded rather than pushing themselves onto an already-open screen. If they're still missing, check you're looking at the right gallery, and check the guest actually reached the confirmation rather than closing the tab mid-upload.
- I've forgotten my password.
- There's no self-serve password reset yet — email info@tcgcommunityapps.com from the address you signed up with and we'll get you back in. It's the most-requested thing on our list and it's being built.
- My download zip is huge and it's taking forever.
- A gallery with hundreds of full-resolution photos makes a genuinely large file, and it's built on demand while you wait. Start it on a desktop rather than a phone, on a stable connection, and leave the tab open until the file lands.
- My gallery closed before I downloaded the photos. Can you get them back?
- No — and we'd rather tell you that plainly than leave you hoping. When a gallery passes its 30-day deadline the nightly job deletes the files permanently, with no archive and no backup to restore from. We'd genuinely rather you downloaded your zip the day you unlock it.
By event
Questions specific to your kind of day
A christening raises different worries to an away day. Each event page carries its own set — plus where to put the QR code and how the run-up usually goes.
Still not answered?
Write to us. One of the two people who built this reads it, and if the question is a good one it ends up on this page.