After an offsite, the photos are scattered across attendees' phones, the photographer's camera and the communications team's drive. Three tools come up every time when it comes to gathering and then redistributing them: WeTransfer, Google Drive and dedicated event galleries. They do not solve the same problem: WeTransfer transfers, Drive stores, a dedicated gallery collects and redistributes. Confusing the three costs you photos and time.
WeTransfer: a transfer, not a collection
WeTransfer does one thing and does it well: send large files from one person to another. The photographer sends their 500 photos to the communications team, simply and without an account.
For collecting photos from 80 attendees, though, it does not hold up. Each attendee would have to create their own transfer to your email address, the free tier caps the upload size, and links expire after a few days. You end up with dozens of separate emails to download one by one before they expire, then merge and sort by hand.
Verdict: perfect for delivery from a professional photographer, unsuited to collecting from attendees.
Google Drive: storage that demands accounts
A shared Drive folder solves storage but moves the problem to access. To drop photos in, attendees have to be signed in to a Google account: at an offsite, some staff have no personal account to hand, and the company's Google Workspace accounts do not cover contractors or external speakers.
Then come the governance questions: who owns the folder, how long the photos stay available, who can delete them, and how all of that gets documented for GDPR. Our article on centralising offsite photos without involving IT goes through these friction points in detail.
Verdict: good for internal archiving by the communications team, real friction for collecting from attendees, and vague on compliance.
The dedicated event gallery: collection and redistribution
A dedicated gallery like Evokly for companies inverts the logic: instead of asking attendees to come to your storage tool, the event gets its own web gallery, reachable through a QR code displayed in the room. Attendees scan it, add their photos from their browser (no account, no app) and browse the shared gallery.
For the organising team, collection and redistribution happen in the same place: automatic sorting, an AI best-of for internal communications, bulk HD download, and each attendee can retrieve their own photos through facial recognition (subject to their explicit consent, recorded in line with GDPR).
On compliance, the framework is set in advance: data hosted in the European Union, a retention period defined by plan with automatic deletion at the deadline, individual deletion on request, and a DPA available for the legal team.
Verdict: built for exactly this case, at the cost of a paid plan for the full feature set.
Comparison table
| Criterion | WeTransfer | Google Drive | Dedicated gallery (Evokly) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collecting from attendees | One transfer per person | Google account required | Scan a QR code, no account |
| Redistributing to attendees | Links to forward | Folder link | Same gallery, available for the whole plan period |
| Availability window | A few days (free tier) | Unlimited, yours to manage | Defined by plan, automatic |
| Sorting and organisation | None | Manual | Automatic, AI best-of |
| Finding your own photos | No | Manual search | Facial recognition |
| GDPR compliance | One-off transfer | Document it yourself | EU data, defined retention, DPA |
| Cost | Free then subscription | Free then Workspace/One | Free up to 100 photos, Event €69 |
The combination that works in practice
In the field the three tools do not exclude each other, they follow on from one another:
- During the event: the dedicated gallery collects attendee photos through the QR code displayed in the room and announced by the host.
- After the event: the professional photographer delivers their official photos, by WeTransfer or straight into the gallery.
- For archiving: the communications team downloads everything in HD and archives it on the company's internal Drive, following its own retention policy.
This split gives you the best of all three: frictionless collection, a classic professional delivery, and archiving you control. To estimate the cost for your next offsite, Evokly's plans are detailed here, and the team answers compliance questions on the GDPR and security page.