Put your collection in the spotlight.
Most of your collection is out of sight. Aetopia eCommerce gives the images you choose a public home where people can browse, license and buy them, straight from the digital asset management system (DAMS) you already use.
Some pictures pay rent. Make sure all of them do.
Publishers, broadcasters, designers and researchers want images from collections like yours. Too often the request gets stuck.
- A licence request arrives by email, then waits while someone checks what the image costs and what it can be used for.
- The answer sits in a spreadsheet, a folder or the memory of someone who has moved on.
- Images are copied into a separate website that drifts out of date with the collection.
By the time the reply goes out, the buyer may have gone elsewhere.
One public portal. Three ways to use it.
Start with the one that fits your goals. You can add selling later.
Share your collection
Publish permanent or changing collections online so the public, press and researchers can search and browse them. Good for building awareness and bringing visitors through the door.
License and sell images
Offer licences for books, advertising, exhibitions and prints. Standard requests are paid for online with the terms attached. Unusual ones come to your team as a negotiated request.
Deliver whole collections
Agree a fee for an entire set and let your partner download it in one click, whether that’s 50 images or 1,000.
One search. Straight from your DAM.
The portal is an add-on to Aetopia DAMS. There’s nothing to copy across and no second system to keep in step. When a record changes in your DAM, the portal changes with it.
- Step 1 Choose what goes public Pick the images and collections you want to share from inside Aetopia DAMS. Everything else stays private.
- Step 2 Set your controls Apply watermarks and decide the thumbnail size and image quality each visitor sees.
- Step 3 Go live in your branding We design the portal to match your website, so you can launch without a separate web project.
- Step 4 Sell or negotiate Buyers pay online for standard licences. Bespoke requests reach your team with the full record attached.
Open to the public. Closed to everything else.
Bots and AI crawlers harvest anything left in the open. Many older systems put the public shop and the internal archive in one place. We keep them apart.
A read-only shop window
The public portal has no admin functions at all, so visitors can look and buy but can’t change anything.
Your archive stays internal
The administration site can sit behind your network, available only to your team.
You decide what people get
Watermarks, preview sizes and quality levels are yours to set, image by image or across a collection.
Aetopia is ISO 27001:2022 certified, Cyber Essentials certified and an HM Government G-Cloud supplier.
“Aetopia were able to provide us with a complete solution, including initial consultancy, software customisation and hosting on the cloud.”
Kerry Negahban, Project Manager, Lee Miller Archives
Lee Miller Archives recently upgraded its online store on Aetopia, with a new payment integration, enhanced image licensing and stronger protection against AI-driven bots. More customer launches are on the way.
Read the Lee Miller Archives case study →
Is your collection ready to sell?
The software is the quick part. These are the questions that decide whether a store pays its way.
- 01Do we have content people want? Is the material buyers ask for digitised and ready?
- 02Do we have a price book? Have we agreed what we charge, for which uses and for how long?
- 03Are our licence terms agreed? Has everyone who needs to sign off done so?
- 04Self-service, negotiated, or both? Which requests can buyers complete alone?
- 05Selling or publishing? Would a public portal without a shop meet our goals for now?
Start with twenty images
Choose the twenty or thirty images you’d most like to license and write their terms properly. The gaps show up fast: an unclear rights holder, an unagreed price, an approver who isn’t sure. Sort those first and the store follows.
Why licence terms belong in your DAM, not a spreadsheet Coming soon
All ten questions to ask before opening a store Coming soon
Questions we get asked
Do we need to be using Aetopia DAMS?
Yes. The portal is a module of Aetopia DAMS. If you already use it, switching the portal on is a small change. If you use another system, you only need to put the material you want to publish into Aetopia DAMS.
How quickly can we be live?
The core portal is quick to set up. Pricing, licence terms and content preparation take longer, and we’ll give you a realistic timeline for all of it at your walkthrough.
Is the web design included?
Yes. We design the portal to match your existing website as part of the package, which keeps costs down and shortens the time to launch.
Can we publish without selling?
Yes. Some organisations use the portal purely to share their collections. You can switch on eCommerce later.
Does it work with our other systems?
Aetopia DAMS links to collections management systems, websites, Microsoft 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud. A guide to how it works with the platforms you already use is coming soon.
What’s coming next?
In the first half of 2027 we’re adding IIIF support, which brings deep zoom and lets other sites display your images without copying them, and secure public uploads for volunteer and community campaigns.
Read more from the series
Introducing Aetopia eCommerce
What the portal is, who it’s for and how it keeps your archive safe.
How Aetopia works with the platforms you already use
Follow one photograph from scanner to website to partner archive.
Why licence terms belong in your DAM, not a spreadsheet
Turn a licence request from a detective job into an afternoon’s decision.
The stage is set. Sell from your collection.
Book a 30-minute walkthrough using images from your own collection. We’ll show you the portal, talk through pricing and licence terms, and tell you honestly whether it’s a fit.
No sales pitch. Just a practical conversation.
Prefer to talk now? Call 028 9099 8767 or email info@aetopia.com.
