Switching to Tellisto: a practical plan

This page is for the photographer who likes Tellisto but dreads the move. There isn’t a move, at least not the kind you’re picturing. There’s no weekend where everything transfers at once and something breaks. New work starts in Tellisto today, your old galleries stay where they are, and you decide gallery by gallery what comes across and when. While Tellisto is small, tell me what you use now and I’ll help you move it myself.

The short version

You don’t need a migration weekend. Your next shoot gets delivered through Tellisto, and your enquiry form goes live on your site the same day. Everything you’ve already delivered stays put and keeps working. The old catalogue moves over on its own schedule, or never, depending on whether clients still open it. And while Tellisto is small, you don’t do the fiddly part alone. Email me what you use today and we move you across together. Switching to Tellisto is a handover done by a person, not an import tool you point at your old account and hope for the best.

Move the active work first

Start with the work that’s still in progress. Upcoming shoots, anything about to be delivered, and jobs where a client is still waiting on you go into Tellisto now. Setup takes about ten minutes, and from then on you’re delivering under your own name. For a walkthrough of that first delivery, read Deliver your first gallery, start to finish.

Your enquiry form can go live the same day. Add the embedded form to your website, or point your Instagram and TikTok links at your bio-link page. New enquiries then arrive in one pipeline, with an instant reply in your words. So new enquiries already come to Tellisto while your old galleries stay on your old tool. Nothing about your old delivered galleries changes because you’ve started here.

Decide per gallery, not all at once

Most people picture switching as moving everything, and that’s the mistake. You almost never need to. Most old galleries have already done their job. The wedding was delivered, the client downloaded everything two years ago, and nobody has opened the link since. That gallery doesn’t need to move.

So work the other way. Move the galleries clients still open, such as recent deliveries and clients likely to rebook, and leave the rest on the old tool. When a gallery does need to come across, re-upload the finished files from your own archive. You own the originals, so uploading the versions you keep is cleaner than pulling web-sized copies out of another platform. You can upload a whole shoot at once, and it keeps running in the background while you set up the rest.

Run both tools for a while

Running two tools side by side doesn’t mean the switch failed. It’s the normal middle stage. Your old account becomes a read-only archive. You don’t deliver new work from it, but it still holds the galleries your old delivery emails link to. Keep it open while those links still matter, and let it lapse once clients stop using them. Tellisto’s free plan lets you run alongside your old tool without cancelling anything, so cost doesn’t force the timing.

Get one thing right early: what your clients see and hear during this period. If you’re worried about old links, or a client wondering why the gallery looks different, read Tell clients you’ve moved gallery platforms. It covers what to say and when.

Finish work in progress where it started

If a booking is already under way or an invoice is already out, it’s usually easiest to finish it on the tool it began on. Moving a live money conversation across halfway gains you nothing. It can also confuse a client who’s already partway through paying. Close it where it started, then start the next job in Tellisto. After a few weeks of new bookings, nothing is left in progress on your old tool, and all your work is in Tellisto.

Your data moves both ways

A fair switch has to work in both directions, so here’s how each direction works.

Coming in, your client list can import on its own. Clients → Import reads a CSV export from Studio Ninja, Dubsado, Pixieset, HoneyBook or any spreadsheet. It walks you through matching the columns before anything is saved. Bookings and galleries aren’t part of that import, so we move those across with you. You tell us what you use today and send what your old tools let you export. Then we bring your bookings and galleries over together. I mean that literally: while Tellisto is small, the person doing it is me.

Going out, Tellisto exports your clients, leads and bookings to CSV any time, from Settings, then Plan & billing. A full account export (clients, leads, bookings, invoices, payments, contracts, galleries and more) is one click away in the same place. You’re never locked in. If you stay on Tellisto, it should be because it’s the easiest place to run the whole job, not because leaving would cost you your records.

When you’re ready to start, Switching from Pixieset shows what maps to what if that’s the tool you’re leaving. The Client Vault explains how clients can pay to keep their delivered galleries once they’re here.