How to share site photos with your client
Take the photos wherever you like, but file them against the job rather than leaving them in a phone or a chat thread. The two things that matter are that a photo can still be found in a year, and that the client can see the ones meant for them without you forwarding anything. WhatsApp does neither.
What is wrong with using WhatsApp for site photos?
Nothing, until you need one back. Photos in a chat thread have no structure: they are ordered by when they were sent rather than what they show, they are not attached to a job, and they compress on the way through, which matters when the photo is meant to evidence a detail.
The bigger problem is that they only exist where they were sent. When a dispute arrives eighteen months later, the photo that settles it is in a thread on a phone that may have been replaced, and nobody can prove when it was taken or by whom.
What should a site photo record actually do?
Three jobs. It should let someone find a photo without scrolling, prove when it landed and who put it there, and let you show a client some photos without showing them everything.
- Organised into folders you name, not one endless roll
- A caption on the shot, so the detail is searchable in words
- Filed against the project, not a person
- A record of who uploaded it and when
- Per-folder access, so internal shots stay internal
How does Portal Worx handle site photos?
Every project has a gallery of folders you create, each with its own audience. Upload from a phone browser or a desktop, in bulk, with a caption and description on every shot. Open any image full screen to check a detail, and download a whole folder as a zip when someone asks for the lot.
Because the folder carries the access, the internal photos and the client-facing photos can live in the same project without you keeping a second set somewhere else. Every upload is logged in the project activity trail, filtered so nobody sees an entry for a folder they cannot open.
What about someone who will never log in?
Send it by magic link. A photo, a document or a whole report can go to someone who never sets up an account, which covers the building-control officer, the insurer or the client who will not create another login.
You can also see whether it arrived. The Email Delivery Centre lists every email the workspace sent with its delivery status, and lets you resend, so "did you get those photos" stops being a phone call.
What are the practical limits?
Images cap at 50MB each, which is far above what a phone produces, and the usual formats are supported: JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, BMP, TIFF and AVIF. Storage is 10GB on Starter, 100GB on Professional and 250GB on Business, with warnings at 80 and 90 per cent.
One thing to know before you commit: there is no offline mode and no native app. It runs in a phone browser, so a site with no signal means the upload waits until you have some. If your crews routinely work without coverage, test that first.
Common questions
- Can I upload photos from my phone?
- Yes, through the phone browser, including several at once. There is no native app and no offline mode, so an upload needs signal at the time.
- Can the client see all the photos?
- Only the folders you share with them. Each photo folder carries its own audience, so internal shots and client-facing shots can sit in the same project without the client seeing both.
- Can I send photos to someone without an account?
- Yes, by magic link, with no signup needed at their end. The Email Delivery Centre then shows whether it was delivered and lets you resend.
- How big can an image be?
- Up to 50MB per image, well above what a phone camera produces. Storage across the workspace is 10GB on Starter, 100GB on Professional and 250GB on Business.
- Is there a record of who uploaded what?
- Yes. Every upload is written to the project activity trail with the person and the time, kept for a year, and filtered so nobody sees entries for folders they cannot access.
Related
What else Portal Worx does
This page covers one part of it. Portal Worx is a full project workspace: projects holding your documents and site photos, reports with conditional logic and captioned photos that export to a logo-stamped PDF, threaded messaging where being in the thread is what grants access, a year-long activity trail, and AI that catches you up on where a job stands without ever seeing more than you can.
See everything it does, or check the plans. Unlimited users on all of them.
See it on one of your own jobs.
14 days on the Professional plan, no card required. Unlimited users on every plan, so your team, your clients and your collaborators are all included.