Studio Ninja alternatives for Australian photographers

Studio Ninja is Australian, it's been around for years, and it does client management well. So when photographers start looking for an alternative, it's rarely because it's bad. It's usually because of the things it was never built to do: your galleries live somewhere else, so you pay for two tools, and the bits of your business that matter most to clients sit in a second login.

A disclosure first: we make Lumi HQ, which is one of the options below. We've tried to write this the way we'd want to read it, including where the others do better. Prices were checked in October 2026 and are per month in Australian dollars unless we say otherwise.

Why photographers look elsewhere

• No client galleries. Studio Ninja connects to gallery tools such as Pic-Time and ShootProof rather than delivering photos itself, so most studios run two subscriptions and two logins.
• The plan limits. Starter is $24 a month for one user and five active jobs. Unlimited jobs start at Pro, $36 a month, and more than one brand needs Master at $53.
• Your clients see two brands. The contract and invoice come from one system, the gallery from another, each with its own look and its own emails.

What to look for in a replacement

1. Galleries and studio admin in one place, so the client who signed the contract is the same client who opens the gallery.
2. Australian money done properly: prices in AUD, GST tax invoices with your ABN, and the choice of GST-inclusive or exclusive prices. See our guide to GST tax invoices.
3. A way to bring your history across. Studio Ninja has no API, so whatever you move to has to read its export files.
4. Something you can use on your phone between sessions, not just at a desk.
5. A price for what you actually use, compared with what you pay today for Studio Ninja plus a gallery tool.

The options at a glance

1. Lumi HQ

Lumi HQ puts client galleries, a print store, enquiries, bookings, invoices, contracts, questionnaires and a two-way client inbox behind one login. It's built on the Sunshine Coast, priced in AUD, and its invoices are ATO tax invoices with your ABN, with deposits and instalments on a payment schedule.

For a Studio Ninja user the important part is the importer. You export your clients, leads and jobs, and payments from Studio Ninja, drop the files in, and Lumi HQ shows you exactly what will come across before it writes anything. Booked shoots land on your calendar, old jobs are archived rather than cluttering your pipeline, and none of your clients is emailed. Running it twice is safe: it updates what it brought across last time rather than doubling it. The step-by-step guide shows each export.

Where it falls short: there's one login per studio, with no separate staff accounts yet, so a studio with several team members is better served by Studio Ninja's Pro or Master plans. There's no app-store app either; the dashboard installs to your phone's home screen instead. And Studio Ninja can't export contracts or questionnaires except as PDFs, so you'll set those templates up again.

Price: Starter is $19 a month for galleries and the print store. The studio tools come with Pro at $69. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial.

2. Stay on Studio Ninja and add a gallery tool

If the CRM side works for you and you have staff who each need a login, staying is a perfectly good answer. Studio Ninja's integrations with Pic-Time and ShootProof mean your galleries can still be good ones. The cost is the second subscription and a client experience split across two brands. Add up both bills before you decide that's cheaper.

3. Pixieset

Pixieset is best known for its client galleries, which are polished and easy for clients to use, and its Studio Manager adds bookings, invoices and contracts. It's the most likely tool you already use for galleries. The things to check as an Australian are that it's billed in US dollars, so your cost moves with the exchange rate, and that Studio Manager is its own subscription unless you buy a bundle. Our Pixieset alternatives guide goes into it in more detail.

4. HoneyBook or Dubsado

Both are American client-management tools with strong automation, built for creative businesses generally rather than photographers. Neither delivers galleries, so you'd still need a gallery tool. Before signing up, check that they support Australian businesses, show prices in a currency you want to pay in, and can produce a tax invoice with your ABN and GST shown the way the ATO requires.

How to move without losing a week

1. Export your clients, your leads and jobs, and your payments from Studio Ninja. The leads and jobs export arrives by email as a ZIP, so start that one first.
2. Start a free trial and drop the files into the Studio Ninja importer. Read the summary, then import.
3. Bring your galleries across from Pixieset, Pic-Time or SmugMug with the gallery importer. Imported galleries arrive unpublished, so nothing changes for a client until you're ready.
4. If you want your past client emails too, the mailbox import files them under the right clients.
5. Set up your contract and questionnaire templates, then run your next enquiry through Lumi HQ before you cancel anything.

If you'd rather not do it alone, get in touch and we'll run the first import with you.

Nik Nieuwenhuis, co-founder of Lumi HQ. Nik builds Lumi HQ from the Sunshine Coast, working alongside a photographer who uses it every week.