Pricing
The model is simple and honest. The numbers are set for your program.
We won’t put invented prices on a page. Here is exactly how Pholio pricing works — what you pay for and what you never do, the four-way split that pays the school, the cost floor, and the self-hosting model — and where a specific number belongs, we ask you to get a quote so it’s real for your program.
What you pay for — and what you never do
A pricing page should be honest about both sides. Two things carry a price; the rest of the incumbent model’s cost — the contract, the minimum, the overprint, the exit fee — simply isn’t here.
What’s priced
Quoted per program
- The platform license and any setup — self-hosted in your own VPC, set per deployment.
- The portrait catalog — each product priced above a code-enforced cost floor, so nothing can sell below cost.
That’s the whole surface a quote pins down: the terms to run the platform, and the price of a print. No published list price we’d have to walk back for your program.
What you never pay for
- No contract and no minimum order — nothing to sign that strands you.
- No forced overprint — print-on-demand means no leftover inventory to move.
- No charge to leave — your roster and your photos are yours to export, whole.
- No cost to evaluate — the demo and the quote don’t cost anything, and asking for one commits you to nothing.
The four-way split
Every portrait sale splits four ways. The school is a named party — not an afterthought, and not a kickback.
Studio
The studio that owns the school relationship keeps a leg of every sale. Share: pending
Photographer
The photographer who shot the day gets a named, explicit cut. Share: pending
School
The school gets a real, named share of every sale — a line item, not a favor. Share: pending
Platform
Pholio takes a platform share to run the software and the in-VPC pipeline. Share: pending
The four shares are not finalized — we will not publish a percentage we can’t honor. Ask for a quote and we’ll give you the real split for your program.
Who pays whom, and in what order
Money moves in one direction, on one ledger. Here is the whole path from a family’s order to the school’s leg.
- A family places a portrait order. The ordering flow lives in the parent-facing storefront, which is still in early access — this page describes the model, it doesn’t take an order.
- The order settles on the net. The split is taken on the net amount — what’s left after the payment processor’s fee — not on a gross figure that hides the cost of moving money.
- That net splits four ways. Studio, photographer, school, and platform, with each share recorded at payout creation on an exact-penny, add-only ledger.
- The school’s leg is a named line item. Not a rebate someone has to remember and not a kickback — a real leg of the ledger where the incumbent model gives the school nothing.
- Honest on the money. The ledger routes the school’s leg and flips the order paid, but the school-leg payout wiring is the launch-critical fast-follow — we don’t claim dollars reach a school’s account today.
Want the split walked through end to end? See how the split that pays the school works in the FAQ.
How it’s structured
Self-hosted software plus a cost-floored catalog
Pholio is the platform, self-hosted in the school’s or operator’s own VPC. Portrait products are priced above a code-enforced cost floor — nothing in the catalog can sell below cost, because the floor is a check in the software, not a pricing guideline someone has to follow — and the proceeds split four ways. There is no required overprint and no leftover-inventory risk. The platform license terms and any setup fee are set per deployment.
Because the specific numbers depend on your program — the catalog, the volume, and how you self-host — we share them in a quote rather than guess at a page. A number that’s wrong for your program is worse than no number, so we don’t print one.
What’s true at any size
- Self-hosted — no child-photo cloud egress.
- A four-way split that pays the school.
- A code-enforced cost floor — never below cost.
- No required overprint, no leftover-inventory risk.
- No contract, no minimum, no lock-in.
- Specific pricing set per program, shared in a quote.
Platform license and setup: set per deployment, shared in your quote. Pricing pending publication
Want a real number?
Tell us about your program — how many schools, your catalog, and how you want to host — and we’ll give you a quote with the actual split and pricing. No invented figures, no surprises.