Moving across

Moving across at your own pace.

Nobody moves a photography business in an afternoon, and the platforms promising you can are counting on you not checking. What you can do is start delivering through Tellisto this week and let the old account wind down. Here is how that goes, step by step.

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Nothing here asks you to cancel anything today.

The short answer

Your records travel. Your photos come from your archive.

Two kinds of thing get moved, and they move differently. Most migration pages blur that.

Your records, meaning clients, leads, jobs, invoices and payment history, come out of your current platform as exports. Most of them do this well. Your contacts import in one go from Clients → Import, with ready-made settings for the common platforms. Bookings and invoices you set up for the jobs that are live, and the rest stays in your export files. If anything won’t come across, send it over and I’ll help.

Your photos come from your own archive, not from the old platform. That sounds harder, but it’s the better route. What a gallery platform stores is a web copy of your work, usually resized for the browser. Pulling those back out and re-delivering them would hand your client a worse version of their own photos. The files on your drive are the real ones, so those are the ones that go up.

So you don’t need to move your back catalogue on day one. Old galleries go up when a client asks for one again, or in a single sitting if you’d rather have it finished. There is no clock on it either way.

The order

The order that keeps you safe.

1. Get everything out first, while you still have an account. Before you change a plan, cancel anything or even sign up here. Some platforms take up to an hour to build your export and email you a link. Some don’t publish what happens to your data once you cancel, so assume cancelling ends your access that day. Check the files actually open.
2. Set up the work that’s live, not the archive. The clients with a shoot booked or a conversation open, your current leads, and your upcoming dates. For most photographers that is a dozen or so records and about fifteen minutes. From that day on, Tellisto is where you keep that work up to date.
3. Deliver one real job end to end. Brand your studio, which takes about ten minutes, then run one shoot the whole way through: the enquiry, the booking, the invoice, the gallery. One complete job teaches you more than a fortnight of comparing feature lists.
4. Bring the back catalogue whenever. When a client comes back for their photos, or in one weekend session, or never. It’s your archive and there’s no deadline on it.
5. Cancel last. Once you have the exports, and you’ve delivered through Tellisto and it fits, then the old bill goes. Not before.

Per platform

What your platform lets you export.

Every one of these is different, and a few have exports that are easy to miss or that expire. Each guide names the exact buttons in the exact order, including the things with no export at all that you have to copy out by hand.

What stays behind

What doesn’t come across.

Some things you will rebuild rather than move. It’s better to know that now than to find out halfway through the move.

Email templates and workflows. Most platforms have no export for these. Open the handful you actually send, paste the text somewhere safe, and rebuild them here. Most photographers use far fewer than they think.
Your old gallery links. A link on another platform belongs to that platform. Delivered galleries stay where they are under that platform’s rules, and new work goes out on your own studio address here.
Client-side history on the old galleries. Favourites, comments and download records from another platform stay there.
Anything you never exported. This is the one that catches people out, and it’s why exporting everything is step one.

Frequently asked questions

Questions about moving across

Do I have to move everything at once?

No, and you shouldn't. On the free plan, Tellisto can run alongside whatever you're on now without cancelling anything. Deliver one new shoot through it, see how it feels, and move the rest at whatever pace suits you. There's no trial clock forcing the decision.

Will my old gallery links break?

Not because of us. Galleries you've already delivered stay wherever they live now, under that platform's rules. The usual pattern is to deliver new work through Tellisto from day one and bring an older gallery across when a client asks for it again.

Do my photos come out of my old platform or my own archive?

Your archive. That's the better option, even though it isn't the quickest. You own the originals. What a gallery platform holds is a web copy, often resized, so pulling photos back out of one means re-delivering a worse version of your own work. Uploading the finished files you already keep gives your client the real thing.

What about my clients, invoices and bookings?

Your client list you can bring across yourself. Export your contacts, then open Clients → Import in Tellisto. There are ready-made settings for Studio Ninja, Dubsado, Pixieset and HoneyBook, and any other spreadsheet works too. Bookings and invoices don't import, so set up the ones that are live and keep the export files as your archive. If you get stuck, email me. While Tellisto is small, the person answering is me rather than a support queue. There's a guide for each platform covering exactly which exports to pull and in what order.

How long does it take?

Getting your data out is usually under half an hour, and some platforms take up to an hour to prepare the file and email it to you. Setting up your active work (the clients with a shoot booked or a conversation open) takes another fifteen minutes or so. The back catalogue is the long part, and it's the part you never have to do in one sitting.

When should I cancel my old subscription?

Last, never first. Get your exports, check they open, deliver a job or two through Tellisto, and cancel when you're sure. Some platforms don't publish what happens to your data after you cancel, so treat the moment you cancel as the moment access ends.

Bring one shoot and see.

Start free in about ten minutes and run a whole job through it before you move anything else. You don't need a card, there's no trial clock, and there's zero commission.

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