been doing paid shoots for about a year now mostly real estate and some construction progress stuff. the flying part i have pretty dialed in but my delivery workflow is kind of a mess and i know it. right now im basically just uploading everything to google drive and sending a link and it feels really unprofessional honestly, especially for the construction client who is paying decent money.

curious what other people are doing for this ? like how do you actually get footage to clients in a way that feels legit. do you use frame.io or something like that, or is google drive actually fine and im overthinking it. also do you watermark previews before final payment or just trust people? had one situation a few months back where a client kind of went quiet after i sent the files and i had to chase the invoice which was not fun.

not looking for anything crazy complicated just want to tighten things up a bit and seem more like a real business

frame.io is genuinely great for this and honestly not that expensive for what you get. clients can leave time-coded comments right on the video which cuts down on those vague emails like "the part at the beginning" ? you know the ones. i switched to it maybe eight months ago and it made a noticeable difference in how revision conversations go. also just looks way more polished than a google drive link, which matters more than people think when you're trying to retain clients.

on the watermark thing ? i do low-res watermarked previews until the invoice is cleared, every time, no exceptions. had zero pushoff on it from clients, i just frame it as standard practice in my initial onboarding email and nobody blinks. the one time i didnt do it with a construction client i regretted it, guy used the footage for three weeks before i even noticed he hadn't paid. never again.

i use pixieset actually, i know its mostly a photo platform but they added video and it works fine for what i do. the client gallery experience is really clean and people seem to like it. might not be the best for big raw files though, i mostly deliver compressed masters so havent hit any issues. the watermark thing is smart, i should probably start doing that, i've just been trusting people which is probably naive at this point