Art.industries vs ArtCloud

Where ArtCloud fits

ArtCloud is a credible integrated platform for galleries that want website, CRM, and Stripe payments under one roof, with a free Starter tier for tiny inventories. The per-user pricing is simple to reason about for very small teams.

Where artists, galleries, and collectors pick Art.industries

Per-user pricing punishes growth: an 8-person gallery on Essential ($99/user) pays $792/month before add-ons. Art.industries Advanced is $30/month per workspace. The same math applies when a studio adds an assistant or a collector adds an advisor login. ArtCloud bundles deals and commerce per user; Art.industries bundles both per workspace with pipeline and storefront on the same catalogue. See the pricing matrix.

Four tools, or one record

Most art businesses run archival software for inventory, a site builder for their public face, a commerce platform for checkout, and Eventbrite (or similar) for opening RSVPs and ticket sales. Four systems means four copies of price, availability, edition counts, and guest lists.

Art.industries unifies archival depth, website publishing, storefront commerce, and events and ticketing on one live record—no Eventbrite embed or spreadsheet reconciliation after every opening. The sections below compare a specific product on deals, commerce, and collector experience, not which single dimension they happen to excel at.

Simple tiers: pay for what you use, subscription only

Art.industries has three workspace plans (Core, Advanced, and Max), not a stack of paid modules. Inventory, CRM, viewing rooms, pipeline, consignments, Website Studio, storefront checkout, email campaigns, and events are included in the tier you pick. You are not buying a Gallery Management module, a Marketing module, and a Website module separately, and you are not stacking Shopify-style apps so inventory talks to the cart.

You pay for what you use: start on free Core for the full deals stack; upgrade to Advanced when you need public commerce on your domain; choose Max when unlimited capacity is simpler than counting seats. Optional capacity applies only when you outgrow included works, workspace members, artists, or email sends, spelled out in the pricing simulator, not buried in a renewal call.

We do not take a percentage of your sales or add a platform fee on top of Stripe. Invoices and storefront checkout run on your Stripe account; funds settle to you. Your bill from us is the subscription fee for the tier you chose; nothing else on each transaction.

Deals and commerce: what each platform actually covers

Art businesses sell in two modes that most software conflates. Deals are coordinated private sales, viewing rooms, holds, negotiated offers, consignor splits, deposits, and invoices. Commerce is self-serve public checkout for editions, books, and multiples at fixed prices.

Art.industries runs both modes on shared inventory records: mark a work room-only, storefront-eligible, or both; either path updates availability when a sale closes. Many competitors skew toward one mode, deal-focused CRMs handle private sales but force a second catalogue for the website; Shopify-style tools handle commerce but miss holds, consignments, and confidential rooms.

Use the matrix below to see which side each product actually covers, not which checkout widget they advertise.

Switching from ArtCloud

Export your inventory and contacts from ArtCloud to CSV, then run the Art.industries import: AI suggests a column mapping, you adjust it, and a validation preview runs before anything is written. Works, contacts, prices, and inventory numbers carry over; your public site is rebuilt in Website Studio reading the same catalogue. Keep ArtCloud read-only during the 2-3 week cutover and reconcile against the inventory count when done.

Free plan vs free plan

ArtCloud Starter is $0 for 50 artworks and one user. Art.industries Core is free with no card and covers cataloguing, CRM, viewing rooms, and Stripe payments, so you can run a real sale cycle before paying anything. Compare both free tiers with your actual inventory size on the pricing matrix.

Collector portals: one home instead of forwarded links

Collectors usually receive one-off links, a viewing room grant, an invoice payment email, a Stripe checkout URL, each minted and forwarded by staff. Art.industries gives every collector contact a branded client portal on one share link: open invoices with PDF download, pay balances and installments through your Stripe account, revisit shared viewing rooms, review owned works and shop orders, and open diligence documents, scoped to that contact only.

Many art-business CRMs stop at emailing payment links. Some sell a separate collector product (Artlogic Collector is a distinct module). The Collector client portal row in the matrix below shows who ships a persistent, self-service collector home inside the same workspace as invoicing and rooms.