Gallery software for galleries that have outgrown spreadsheets

What a commercial gallery needs from software

A gallery between three and thirty staff, representing six to thirty artists, doing two to six fairs a year and four to twelve shows in-house, has the same five operational needs regardless of whether the prices are four-figure or eight-figure: catalogue every work properly, remember every collector, send curated viewing rooms, invoice cleanly, and publish a public site that the team does not have to maintain twice.

These are the workflows where the wrong tool slows the gallery down or causes mistakes that lose artist trust and collector relationships. Everything else (accounting, payroll, generic productivity) is solved by the same tools every other small business uses.

The five workflows that have to live in one place

A gallery that fragments these five across separate tools spends most of its operational time in copy-paste mode. The five below are the ones that need to share a single record per work and per contact.

• Inventory. Works, editions, consignments, locations. The Inventory guide explains what the catalogue has to capture.
• CRM (collectors, advisors, artists, institutions). Linked to works, with notes the director can write privately. See the CRM guide.
• Private viewing rooms. Live-linked to inventory, sent per collector, revocable. See Private viewing rooms.
• Invoicing and Stripe payments. Deposits, balances, instalments, refunds, all referencing the works. See Art invoicing software.
• Public website (artist pages, exhibitions, optional storefront). One catalogue, one website, no double maintenance. See Gallery website builder.

Where the existing gallery software market falls short

There are essentially three categories of software galleries currently use: dedicated gallery platforms (Artlogic, Artwork Archive, ArtCloud, ArtGalleria), generic business platforms (Shopify, Squarespace, HubSpot, QuickBooks), and homemade spreadsheets. Each has predictable failure modes.

Dedicated gallery platforms get the catalogue right and tend to be slow to evolve, expensive on a per-seat basis, and weak on the integrated public site. Generic business platforms get the underlying tech right and miss everything art-specific (edition copies, consignment splits, viewing rooms). Spreadsheets work for one person and break the third time someone asks "is this work available?". The comparison pages are blunt about each.

Art.industries is built specifically to solve this: art-specific data model, modern web tech, integrated CRM and viewing rooms and Stripe and public site, modular pricing rather than per-seat.

A typical week in a 6-person gallery on Art.industries

A concrete example. A 6-person gallery with two spaces, 18 represented artists, doing 5 fairs a year and 8 shows in-house. Their week looks like this.

1. Monday: The director reviews reserves expiring this week (one click from the dashboard) and follows up. The associate updates the exhibition checklist for the next show with new artist studio photos.
2. Tuesday: Three private viewing rooms sent to specific collectors based on engagement from last week's campaign. The registrar processes a return shipment from the most recent fair, with custody events and condition reports.
3. Wednesday: One sale closes via Stripe deposit from a viewing room. The work moves to "Deposit paid"; the consignment statement updates; the public website marks the work as sold within the hour.
4. Thursday: An advisor calls about a Mary Smith piece. The director pulls up the contact in the CRM, sees they have not bought yet but visited two rooms last quarter, and sends a tailored proposal in 10 minutes.
5. Friday: The director reviews the next month's exhibition prep timeline and the upcoming fair shipping schedule, both as live views in the workspace. Nothing depends on a Word doc on someone's laptop.

How small can a gallery be on this, and how big

The smallest viable user is a one-or-two-person gallery with 80+ works who has hit the limit of spreadsheets but has not hit the budget for a $400/month dedicated gallery platform. Art.industries on Core (from $15/month) covers them comfortably until the team grows.

The largest commercial gallery we work with has multiple international locations, 35 staff, and ~8,000 works in active rotation. They run on Max with full custom rollout. The catalogue scales because it is built on modern infrastructure, not the 2014 web stack most dedicated gallery platforms still rely on.

Most galleries land somewhere between: 4–12 staff, 200–2,000 works, 6–20 represented artists. This is the sweet spot for Advanced (which adds Website Studio, custom domain, email campaigns, and public storefront).

Migration from existing tools

Most galleries we onboard are migrating from a combination of (a) a dedicated gallery platform that has stagnated, (b) Excel/Airtable, (c) Mailchimp, (d) Squarespace or WordPress, and (e) Stripe used ad-hoc. The migration plan that works:

Start with the inventory: import works from CSV (or directly from Artlogic, Artwork Archive, ArtCloud, or ArtGalleria — see the comparison pages for field maps). Move contacts second, with their tags, lists, and unsubscribe states. Set up Stripe. Run one fair on the new system before fully cutting over.

Most galleries are fully cut over within 4–6 weeks, with the public website migrated in a separate phase that follows once the team is comfortable with the operational side.

Pricing and what each plan actually includes

Core (from $15/month) includes Inventory, CRM, Private viewing rooms, Invoicing, and Stripe-backed payments. Suitable for solo dealers, small primary-market galleries, and most studios.

Advanced ($40/month base) adds Website Studio on a custom domain, email campaigns, and the public storefront. Suitable for most commercial galleries who want one platform for both private and public-facing work.

Max ($200/month base) lifts capacity caps (unlimited works, artists, collaborators) and adds custom rollout support. Suitable for larger galleries with multiple locations or significant inventory volume. The pricing page has the current full matrix.