Demo walkthrough
The demo is a throwaway studio you can use without signing up or entering a card. This page explains what you get, what is switched off, and a short tour. It is for reading before or instead of trying the demo. Once you are inside a demo, the in-app guided tour walks you through the same steps.
What the demo is
A demo is a private copy of a sample photography studio, created for you when you choose Try it now on the Tobren website. It is yours for up to 48 hours. Nobody else sees what you do in it, and nothing you do in it touches a real studio or a real person.
You sign in with an email and password the demo gives you. Both are shown in the Demo workspace panel at the top of the app, along with the address of your demo and a countdown to when it ends. Copy them if you want to come back on another device.
What is already in it
The demo studio comes filled in so there is something to look at straight away:
- Three sample shoots with sample photos (and one short video): a wedding, a corporate headshots session and a family reunion. Prices are set on the photos so you can see priced, free and not-for-sale items.
- Three packages: a full-gallery download, a pick-ten package and a prepaid contract package.
- Five sample customers: Amara Okonkwo, Tomas Lindqvist, Priya Haddad, Owen Castellanos and Ingrid Moreau. Each can open the shoots assigned to them. Their sign-in addresses are listed in the demo panel, and they all use the same password as the demo itself.
- A text watermark, so the photos you upload yourself are watermarked the way a real studio’s are.
The sample photos are placeholders. They are not real clients’ work.
What is switched off, and why
A demo can build a studio, but it cannot spend money, reach a real person or publish anything. When you try one of these, the app tells you it is not available in a demo. That is expected, not a fault.
| Area | In a demo |
|---|---|
| Nothing is sent. Invitations, receipts, password resets and notifications are all blocked, so an email that never arrives is not a bug. | |
| Inviting people | You cannot invite team members or customers, add or import customers, or change your sign-in email. |
| Payments | Stripe and Square cannot be connected. Checkout is simulated: it completes without charging anything. |
| Billing and plans | Subscription, plan changes and billing settings are unavailable. |
| Publishing | Public portfolio galleries, share links and calendar feeds cannot be created. |
| Custom domains | Cannot be added or verified. |
| Google Drive | Cannot be connected or imported from. |
| Security settings | Password changes and two-step sign-in set-up are unavailable. |
| Data export | Account exports are unavailable. |
You can still change your studio’s own settings, such as branding, packages, prices and your tagline.
Upload limits
So that the demo stays quick for everyone, it holds up to 3 videos (500 MB each) and 20 photos (10 MB each), and no more than 1.5 GB in total. Over its whole life a demo also accepts at most 6 video uploads and 60 photo uploads, including ones you deleted. Only your own uploads count toward these limits, not the sample media.
The walkthrough
The demo panel has a five-step guided tour. You can also follow these steps on your own.
- Sign in. Use the email and password in the demo panel, or the link the website gave you.
- Upload. Open Shoots, create a shoot, and add a few of your own photos or a short video. They go through the same watermarking a real studio uses.
- Set a price. Open Packages & Pricing and change what a photo or a package costs. Your clients see the new price straight away.
- View it as your client. In the demo panel, choose View as client. A new tab opens signed in as one of the sample customers while you stay signed in as the studio. You can also sign in as any of them in a private window.
- Heart a photo and buy it. In the client tab, heart a few favourites and check out. This is the simulated checkout: no card is asked for and nothing is charged.
- See the order. Back in your own view, open Orders. The purchase you just made is listed there.
Sending feedback
The feedback button works in a demo. What you write, and any screenshots you attach, go to the Tobren team’s Demos view, where they read it. It is never posted publicly or sent to a public issue tracker. Each demo can send up to three notes, so make them count.
When the demo ends
The countdown in the demo panel shows how long is left. When it reaches zero, the sign-in stops working and the demo studio, everything you uploaded, its orders and its sample customers are deleted. Nothing is kept unless you turn the demo into a real workspace first.
The panel’s Create your real workspace button is the way to do that: your logo, colors and prices come with you. If it still shows as unavailable when you read this, it is on its way.