The ZIP download: why we built it, how hosts use it

The moment we realised we were missing something obvious

That message stuck with me because it wasn't a feature request written in angry caps. It was a practical question from someone who'd just witnessed the value of what Poolr does - pulling every guest photo into one place - and immediately hit a wall when she wanted to work with them afterwards.

The thing is, we'd spent so much energy on the collection side (the QR code, the mobile browser upload, the frictionless experience for guests) that we hadn't fully thought through what happens next. Once a host has gathered 500 or 2,000 or 5,000 photos in their Poolr gallery, they don't just want to look at them on the web. They want to sort them, edit them, back them up, hand them to a photographer, or send them to a printing service.

That's when the bulk ZIP download became obvious. Not novel, not flashy. Just necessary.

How it actually works, and why the details matter

In Poolr, the bulk ZIP download is something hosts unlock when they choose the Occasion tier (£19.99, unlimited photos, never expires) or any of the higher tiers. They go into their gallery, click the download option, and within minutes they have a single ZIP file sitting on their computer with every full-resolution photo their guests uploaded.

The friction here is almost zero. No need to select individual photos, no need to sort them first, no batch-processing tool to learn. One click, one file. The host controls whether they want to download everything or just the photos from a specific date range or album section, but the default is simple: give me all of it.

We made sure the file names were sensible too. Guests often upload from their phones, and phone photos usually come with timestamps and device-generated names. When everything lands in a ZIP, a host can see at a glance when each photo was taken and from which device. It sounds small, but when you're trying to reconstruct the chronology of an event, those details matter.

The ZIP itself stays available for 7 days. Long enough for a host to download it once, twice, or share it with someone else. Not so long that we're storing every ZIP ever made on our servers forever.

What happens after the download

Here's where the real story starts. A couple getting married downloads their Poolr gallery as a ZIP. They hand it to their photographer, who uses it as reference material for editing decisions. A church administrator downloads photos from the Easter service and feeds them into the parish newsletter template. A corporate events team downloads their company away-day photos and runs them through their internal comms system.

We've heard from wedding planners who use the ZIP download to build custom photobooks on their own terms, rather than waiting for our automated photobook feature. Sport event organisers who download, sort by team, and use them for club newsletters and social media. Parents who grab everything from a school play, print a few, and archive the rest.

The bulk ZIP download isn't sexy. It doesn't appear in press releases. But it's the moment when Poolr transforms from "a nice way to collect photos" into "the source of truth for all the photos from this event." Everything after that is up to the host. We get out of the way.

Why we didn't overthink it

When we built the bulk ZIP download, we resisted the urge to add layers of complexity on top. We didn't create a "download settings dashboard" or make the host choose compression levels or ask them to tag photos before downloading. We just let them download the photos as they were uploaded: full resolution, complete, ready to work with.

I think that's the right call because the people using this feature usually have their own tools downstream. A photographer has Lightroom. A planner has Photoshop or design software. A corporate comms team has their own publishing pipeline. Poolr isn't meant to be the end of the journey; it's meant to be the collection point. Once the photos are in your hands as a ZIP file, you own them and can do whatever you want.

The tiers and who actually needs it

The bulk ZIP download comes with Occasion tier and above, which also means unlimited photos and no expiry date. That's intentional. If you're collecting hundreds or thousands of photos, you probably care about keeping them around and being able to do something with them later. The lower tiers (Free and Moment) are designed for smaller gatherings, and downloading 30 or 200 photos individually is annoying but not impossible.

For repeat hosts, there's the Host+ annual pass (£49.99/year), which gives you the bulk download across all your events, plus a few other tools that add up if you're running events regularly. Wedding planners and venues have the Pro Organiser tier, which layers on team management and client dashboards.

The point isn't to lock down a basic feature behind a paywall for the sake of it. The point is that if you're running events regularly enough to care about bulk downloads, you're probably generating enough value that a small subscription makes sense.