Frequently asked questions

ShootHive is a production OS for photo and video studios. It replaces the patchwork of spreadsheets, Google Docs, and chat threads that most teams use to plan shoots, manage crew and talent, build budgets, and store releases — and brings it all into one workspace.

Photo and video production teams of any size: from a freelance photographer who runs a few shoots a month, to a studio with multiple producers, retouchers, and recurring agency clients. If you ship shoots for a living, ShootHive is built for you.

Yes. ShootHive is live and used for real production today — sign up and start running shoots now. A solo operator gets the whole product for free; teams pay a flat price per operator. There's no waitlist and no preview gate.

Create a free account and you're in — no card, no sales call. One operator has the full product for free, so you can set up a real project, put a shoot on the calendar, and invite your crew before you ever decide whether a second, paid operator is worth it.

Yes. The live demo opens a shared, pre-filled ShootHive workspace in one click — sample projects, shoots on the calendar, a crew with day rates, signed releases, and budgets — with no sign-up. It's the fastest way to see how the pieces fit before you create anything of your own.

Work nests in three levels: your organization holds projects, and each project holds shoots. A project is the campaign or client engagement; a shoot is a single production session — photo or video — with its own date, location, crew, budget, and documents. Most teams run several projects at once, each with its own shoots.

Yes. Shoots, holds, and team availability sync with Google Calendar, Outlook, and any iCal-compatible calendar, so producers see the same schedule wherever they work. You can also publish a read-only feed for people who only need to follow the dates.

Crew, freelancers, and talent each have their own profile, and you book them onto specific shoots with a role and, where relevant, a day rate. Day rates feed straight into the shoot budget, so staffing and cost stay in one place instead of two spreadsheets.

Yes. Locations are reusable records with their own details, notes, and attachments. You attach a location to a shoot, keep its access and logistics in one place, and reuse the same location on future shoots without re-entering anything.

No. You only pay for operators — the people who run production day to day. Freelancers and talent you book onto shoots never count toward your bill and don't need a paid seat, however many of them you work with.

Yes. The organization owner gets a dashboard covering shoot volume, days on set, planned versus actual spend, and what needs attention — shoots missing a producer or budget, unconfirmed crew, unsigned releases, work stuck in post, and overdue payments. It's built from the shoots and budgets you already track, so there's no separate reporting to keep up.

Yes. Releases, contracts, and NDAs are full documents in their own right, not files bolted onto a shoot. You can build templates per locale and usage, send for parallel or sequential e-signature, and attach signed documents directly to the shoot they belong to.

Yes. Send a release, contract, or NDA to one or more people and collect signatures in the browser — in parallel when everyone can sign at once, or in a set order when one signature has to follow another. Signers open a scoped link and don't need a ShootHive account.

Yes. Build your own document templates and reuse them across shoots. A template can be prepared per locale and per usage, so the right wording reaches the right person without rebuilding the document each time.

Signed documents attach to the shoot they belong to and stay there as part of its record. Because a release is tied to its shoot, ShootHive can tell you when a shoot still has unsigned paperwork — and it blocks archiving a shoot until its documents are in order, so nothing ships half-signed.

Access is controlled by granular permissions, not job titles. Permissions are defined by domain — projects, shoots, budgets, documents — and by scope: own, project, shoot, or organization. So a producer can have organization-wide access while a freelancer sees only the shoots they're booked on. The server enforces every check; the limits hold even if someone bypasses the interface.

Yes. Scope a person's role to a single shoot or project and that's all they can reach — no other clients, shoots, budgets, or documents. It's how you bring in a freelancer or external collaborator for one job without opening up your whole workspace.

Yes. Anyone can turn on two-factor authentication with an authenticator app (TOTP), backed by one-time recovery codes. Once it's on, it's required to reach the workspace, admin, and account settings, and the secret is stored encrypted rather than in plain text.

Access is pulled quickly. Removing a member, suspending an account, or changing a password takes effect within about 30 seconds across active sessions — there's no long-lived token that keeps working after access is revoked. Each person can also see their active sessions and sign out a device they no longer use.

Yes. Security-relevant events — sign-ins, password and two-factor changes, session activity, and data exports — are recorded in an append-only log each person can review for their own account. Inside an organization, changes are captured in an audit trail, and any administrative access to an account is attributed to both the account and the administrator, never anonymously.

You sign in with email and password or with Google, and you can add two-factor authentication on top. On the foundation: ShootHive is built to the OWASP ASVS Level 2 baseline, secrets such as access tokens are encrypted at rest, traffic uses standard security headers, and uploads are validated by content rather than file name. If a specific control matters for your team, ask us on the contact page.

You do. The projects, shoots, people, and documents you put into ShootHive are yours, and you can take them with you at any time. ShootHive's business is the per-operator subscription, not reselling your data, and how we handle personal data is set out in the Privacy Policy.

Yes. From your account you can export your personal data as a structured, readable file, on your own — no support ticket required. It's built to satisfy the GDPR right of access and data portability, and it's the same data whether you're checking what's held or moving it elsewhere.

Yes. You can delete your own account from your settings. Deletion anonymizes your personal details and ends your access — it's permanent, in line with the GDPR right to erasure. If you're the only owner of an organization, ShootHive asks you to transfer ownership first, so the workspace and your colleagues aren't left stranded.

Everyday deletion is reversible by design. ShootHive archives rather than hard-deletes, so an archived shoot or document can be restored and the audit trail stays intact — which matters when releases and signatures have to hold up later. True erasure is separate and deliberate: when you exercise the right to be forgotten, your personal data is anonymized rather than left in place.

ShootHive is built around GDPR principles — data minimization, a clear lawful basis for personal data, export, and erasure. The processors we rely on and how we handle personal data are listed in the Privacy Policy. If your organization has specific data-handling requirements, tell us on the contact page.

Sensitive details — for example a model's appearance attributes or ethnicity captured for a release — are treated as a separate, higher tier. Reading them takes an explicit permission, not the everyday access to view people, and this category of data is kept out of logs and analytics. The people who need it for paperwork can use it; it stays out of everyone else's view.

In your own cloud. ShootHive connects to your Google Drive, Dropbox, or Microsoft OneDrive and indexes the metadata — names, folders, who uploaded what — while the original files stay in the storage you already run. You're never locked into ShootHive to reach your footage.

No. ShootHive doesn't host your originals. You connect your own Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, and ShootHive indexes the metadata — so your files stay where you already trust them and you never get locked in.

Your files don't move. Because they live in your cloud storage the whole time, disconnecting a provider or canceling your plan doesn't touch them — ShootHive only stops indexing. You keep every original exactly where it was, in the account you control.

Your storage provider does. Since the originals live in your Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, their encryption, access rules, and retention follow that provider and your settings there. ShootHive holds the links and metadata that let your team find and organize the work, secured by the same access controls as the rest of your workspace.

Yes. Build a budget at the level that fits — organization, project, or shoot — with cost categories and line items, then track planned against actual. ShootHive rolls expenses and income into a profit-and-loss view, so you can see whether a shoot or project actually made money, not just what it was meant to cost.

Yes. Crew and freelancer rates live on the shoot's budget as line items, and a person's day rate flows in when you book them. Salaried staff time can be costed too, so a budget reflects what the work really costs rather than only out-of-pocket invoices.

Yes. Record payments against a budget — incoming from clients, outgoing to crew and suppliers — and tie a payment to the document it relates to, such as an invoice. The financial picture and the paperwork stay connected instead of living in separate tools.

Only the people you choose. Budgets, payments, and profit-and-loss sit behind their own permissions, separate from the rest of a shoot. A producer can plan a shoot and brief the crew without seeing the money, while finance roles get the full picture — you decide who sees rates and totals.

Yes. You upload the earnings report you download from each agency, and ShootHive reads it into one revenue view — how much each agency paid you, by month. Re-uploading an overlapping export is safe; already-imported rows are skipped so totals stay correct. ShootHive keeps only the figures it reads — it does not store your report file, so keep your original exports.

A solo operator uses the full product free, forever — no limits, no card. When you add a second operator it's a flat €15 per operator per month; the first operator is always free, and talent and freelancers never count. Pay yearly and get two months free.

Yes, genuinely. One operator gets the entire product — every feature, no row limits, no trial clock, no card on file. It only becomes paid when you add a second operator, and even then the first one stays free. A solo photographer or a one-person studio can run their whole business on the free plan indefinitely.

An operator is a paid member who runs production in your workspace — you, your producers, your coordinators. Talent and freelancers you book onto shoots are not operators: they never count toward your bill, however many you work with. You only pay for the people doing the day-to-day running.

Payments are handled securely by Paddle, our Merchant of Record, with applicable taxes included. You can cancel anytime — your plan stays active until the end of the billing period, then returns to the free solo plan. Your data is never deleted.

Nothing is deleted. When you cancel, your workspace returns to the free solo plan at the end of the period — your projects, shoots, documents, and history stay exactly as they were. If you add an operator again later, you pick up right where you left off.

Yes. Ownership of a workspace can be handed to another member, which is also the path when an owner wants to leave or close their account. ShootHive won't let the last owner delete their account without transferring the workspace first, so an organization is never left without an owner.

Each account belongs to one organization. ShootHive is built around a single workspace per person rather than juggling many — it keeps access, billing, and the audit trail clean. If your situation genuinely needs more than one, tell us on the contact page and we'll talk it through.

From your account settings you can delete your account yourself. It anonymizes your personal data and ends your access, and it's permanent — so if you own a workspace, transfer it first. If you only need a break, you don't have to delete anything: a canceled plan drops back to the free solo tier and your data stays put.