Feature

The hosting clock: stop paying to host every wedding forever

The hosting clock is how Knotflix handles gallery lifetime: every wedding includes 90 days of hosting, couples extend it whenever they want more time, and half of every extension is paid out to your studio. You stop footing the bill for every gallery forever — and a lapsed gallery locks rather than vanishes: we keep your master, and extending reopens the couple’s page.

Every delivery setup forces a bad default

If you’ve been delivering weddings for more than a couple of years, you already know the two options, because you’ve lived one of them.

  • Host everything forever. Thirty weddings a year, every year you’ve been shooting, all online, all on your card. The bill only compounds, and the couples watching in year five aren’t paying a cent of it.
  • Or expire the links. Cheaper — until a couple emails on their anniversary asking where their film went, and you’re the studio that deleted their wedding. That email costs more than the hosting ever did.

How the hosting clock works

Knotflix splits the difference in the only way that’s actually fair: the studio covers the delivery window, and the couples who want the long tail pay for the long tail.

  • Every gallery includes 90 days of hosting — enough for the premiere, the family shares, and the rewatch wave that follows delivery.
  • When a couple wants more time, they extend it themselves. No invoice from you, no awkward email, no account to create — they’re on a private gallery link the whole time.
  • Half of every extension a couple pays is paid out to your studio through Stripe. Delivery stops being a pure cost and starts trickling money back.
  • While a gallery is hosted, the film stays up. Full stop. When it lapses, the gallery locks instead of being wiped — we keep your master, and extending reopens the couple’s page. Your original master files stay downloadable to you either way — hosting is about the couple’s streaming page, never about your archive.

Three ways to handle the long tail

You host foreverLinks just expireThe hosting clock
Who pays for year twoYouNobody — it’s goneThe couple, if they want it
The film at year fiveOnline, on your dimeDead linkOnline if extended; locked, not wiped, if not
Revenue after deliveryNoneNoneHalf of every extension, paid out via Stripe
The awkward conversationNever — you just keep payingThe anniversary emailNever — the gallery handles it

How to charge couples for wedding video hosting without being the bad guy

The reason most filmmakers eat hosting costs forever isn’t economics — it’s that nobody wants to send a couple a bill two years after the wedding. So the fee never gets charged, and the cost quietly becomes yours.

The hosting clock takes you out of that conversation entirely. The gallery is upfront about its included window, and extending is something the couple does for themselves, because they want their film’s home to stay open. The couples who care pay; the ones who’ve moved on cost you nothing. You never write the email.

We built Knotflix at Red Bank Studio and deliver our own weddings on it every week, which is exactly why the split is half — we sit on the studio side of this too. A couple extending their gallery should feel like revenue for the studio that made the film, not a platform skimming the moment.

Where this model isn’t for you

If “lifetime hosting included” is a line item in your premium packages, a 90-day clock cuts against a promise you’ve already sold — price that in before you switch, or stop selling it.

And if you’d honestly rather pay one flat bill and never think about gallery lifetimes again, platforms that bundle open-ended hosting into the subscription exist and that trade is legitimate. Just be clear about what you’re buying: you are the one hosting every gallery, forever, including the ones nobody has opened since the thank-you cards went out.

Common questions

What happens when a gallery’s 90 days run out?

The gallery locks: streaming pauses until the couple extends. They can extend whenever they want more time, and we keep your master the whole while — extending restores the couple’s access (on older galleries the streaming copy is rebuilt from that master, so playback can take a little time to come back). Your original master files stay downloadable to you regardless. A lapsed gallery is dormant, not destroyed.

How much of each extension does the studio get?

Half. Every time a couple pays to extend their gallery, 50% is paid out to your studio via Stripe. The couples who love their film most become the ones funding its home — and delivery stops being a pure cost center.

Do couples need an account to extend their gallery?

No. Couples never create accounts on Knotflix — they get a private gallery link, and watching and extending both happen right there. Fewer steps between “I want this to stay up” and it staying up means more extensions actually happen.

Is 90 days really enough?

For the delivery moment, yes — premiere, family shares, the rewatch wave all land well inside it. The anniversary viewing is exactly what extensions exist for, and because half of that comes back to you, the long tail works in your favor.

Stop hosting every wedding for free

Knotflix is free for 30 days — card required, $0 today, cancel anytime before day 30.

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