If you’re picking between these three, this article is the comparison we wish existed when we started researching the category last year. We’ll tell you exactly what each app does well, what its weaknesses are, and which kinds of stores each one suits best.
One disclosure up front: we’re A1 Image Gallery. We’re writing this comparison ourselves. That obviously raises a fair question about objectivity, so we’ve tried to handle it by being equally critical of all three apps including our own, and by recommending a competitor in the cases where they’re genuinely a better fit.
If you read the article and feel any single section reads as a sales pitch dressed as a review, we’ve failed at this and we’d genuinely like to know. Email us at [email protected].
Why these three
The Shopify App Store has dozens of gallery apps. We picked these three because they represent three distinct approaches to the same problem:
Cozy Image Gallery is the long-standing incumbent that defined what merchants expect from a Shopify gallery app for the better part of a decade. As of 2026, Cozy is in trouble (more on that below), but its design choices set the template the rest of the category competes against.
Robin PRO Photo Gallery is the most polished current paid option, built by Klimo.io. It does what Cozy did, reliably, with better mobile UX and active maintenance.
A1 Image Gallery is our app. We built it specifically in response to Cozy’s recent reliability problems, with a deliberately different architecture.
Comparing these three is useful because the differences are real and structural, not just feature checklists. Each of them represents a real decision about how a gallery app should work.
The current state of each app
Before features, the actual operational state matters — and it varies wildly across these three.
Cozy Image Gallery in 2026
We need to address this directly because it changes everything about whether you’d choose Cozy today.
Since approximately late August 2025, Cozy Image Gallery has been experiencing major operational problems. SSL certificate failures on Cozy’s servers have caused galleries to stop rendering on customer storefronts. Support has been largely unresponsive. The current Shopify App Store rating is 2.8 stars, with recent 1-star reviews from merchants who’ve used the app reliably for 4-7 years describing the same pattern: app stops working, support doesn’t reply.
We don’t have insider knowledge about why this is happening. We’re reporting publicly available information from the App Store. But the practical implication is clear: we cannot in good conscience recommend installing Cozy Image Gallery in 2026. If you’re already using it, the question isn’t whether to leave but when and how.
We’ve covered the specifics in two related articles: what’s actually happening with Cozy and how to recover your photos if you’re affected.
The rest of this comparison treats Cozy as an exit candidate, not an install candidate.
Robin PRO in 2026
Robin PRO is healthy and active. The developer (Klimo.io) ships regular updates, responds to support requests, and has a 5-star rating across 65+ reviews. Their app store description explicitly offers help importing existing Cozy galleries, suggesting they’ve seen the displacement opportunity and are actively recruiting Cozy refugees.
Klimo also operates other Shopify apps (Cozy YouTube Videos Gallery — confusingly similar name but different developer — Product Page Slider, Lookbook Shop), suggesting a multi-product business with reasonable financial stability.
A1 Image Gallery in 2026
A1 Image Gallery is new. We launched in 2026 in direct response to the Cozy collapse. We’re a small independent studio (A1 Local, based in Perth, Australia), not a venture-backed business or a one-person side project. We’re not going anywhere, but we don’t have years of merchant track record yet either.
If “established and proven” matters most to you, Robin PRO has more track record than we do, and we’ll be honest about that.
How the three apps actually differ
Beyond the operational state, there are three real structural differences worth understanding.
Difference 1: where your images live
This is the biggest one, and it’s the difference most merchants don’t think about until something goes wrong.
Cozy stored your images on Cozy’s own servers. When you uploaded a photo to Cozy, the original went to their infrastructure. The version your customers saw was served from Cozy’s CDN. Your Shopify account never had a copy.
Robin PRO does essentially the same thing. Images are uploaded to Klimo’s servers and served from Klimo’s CDN. Your Shopify account doesn’t store the originals.
A1 Image Gallery does the opposite. When you upload an image to A1, we route it directly into your Shopify Files (your own Shopify-hosted storage). It’s served from Shopify’s CDN, not ours. Your images live in your Shopify account, not ours.
The practical consequence: if Cozy or Klimo ever has prolonged technical problems, every gallery on every customer storefront breaks at once. That’s exactly what happened to Cozy customers in August 2025. With A1, the same scenario can’t happen — even if our entire company disappears tomorrow, your images are still in your Shopify Files and your galleries continue to render.
Difference 2: where the gallery code runs
This sounds technical but has practical consequences.
Cozy renders galleries by loading JavaScript from Cozy’s servers on every page view. When a customer visits a product page with a Cozy gallery, their browser downloads Cozy’s JS, which then loads the gallery configuration and images from Cozy’s servers.
Robin PRO uses a similar pattern, with code loaded from Klimo’s CDN at page render time.
A1 Image Gallery ships its gallery code as a Shopify Theme App Extension. The JavaScript and CSS for the gallery is baked into your theme on save, served from Shopify’s CDN, and runs without any network calls back to our servers. When a customer views a page with an A1 gallery, the gallery code comes from Shopify’s CDN (same as the rest of your theme), and the images come from your Shopify Files.
The practical consequence: A1’s galleries don’t depend on our infrastructure being healthy to render on your storefront. Robin PRO’s do depend on Klimo’s infrastructure (which has been reliable historically). Cozy’s depend on Pasilobus’s infrastructure (which has not been reliable recently).
Difference 3: feature polish vs feature breadth
Robin PRO has been refining one gallery app for years. Their lightbox is exceptional, their mobile gestures feel native, their image-size optimisation is sophisticated. There are small details (smart thumbnails that crop to the focal point of an image, configurable hover effects, animated transitions) that they’ve polished over multiple iterations.
A1 Image Gallery is newer. Our feature set covers the essentials (masonry, grid, justified-rows, lightbox, mobile gestures, product linking, watermarks, alt text), and we’ve optimised the storefront JavaScript to be small and fast. But we don’t yet have the same level of detail polish that Robin PRO has across every interaction.
This is a genuine trade-off, and we’d tell you to use Robin PRO if “the gallery is the entire product experience” for your store — a fine art print shop, a photography portfolio, a designer fashion lookbook. The marginal polish matters more in those contexts.
For most ecommerce stores where the gallery supports the product rather than being the product, the difference isn’t visible to customers.
Feature-by-feature comparison
We’ve tried to be precise here rather than ticking generic checkboxes.
| Feature | Cozy (broken) | Robin PRO | A1 Image Gallery |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $4.99/mo (was) | $5/mo or $50/yr | $4/mo or $40/yr |
| Free tier | Limited | 12 images | 12 images |
| Grid layout | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Masonry layout | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Justified rows | No | Yes | Yes |
| Lightbox | Yes (when working) | Yes (excellent) | Yes (good) |
| Mobile swipe gestures | Basic | Excellent | Yes |
| Pinch to zoom | No | Yes | Yes |
| Smart thumbnails (face/focal detection) | No | Yes | No (v2 roadmap) |
| Product linking | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Watermarks | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Right-click protection | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Alt text per image | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bulk image upload | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Drag-to-reorder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Images stored on your Shopify CDN | No | No | Yes |
| Renders if developer disappears | No | No | Yes |
| One-click Cozy migration | N/A | Manual support offered | Automatic |
| Theme App Extension (Online Store 2.0) | No | Partial | Yes |
| Storefront JS size | ~25KB | ~18KB | ~15KB |
| Free trial | N/A | Free plan available | Free plan available |
| Annual pricing discount | N/A | 17% off | 17% off |
| Active development | No (apparently) | Yes | Yes |
A few things on this table are worth noting because they look like even comparisons but aren’t:
Watermarks. All three apps “have” watermarks. Robin PRO and A1 implement them as overlays applied at render time. Cozy applied them when serving images from their CDN — which means if Cozy is offline, the watermarks are also gone, along with the rest of the gallery. The implementation matters as much as the feature box.
Mobile gestures. Robin PRO’s are excellent — we’re not going to pretend we’ve matched them in v1. Our gestures work and feel responsive but lack some of the small details (rubber-band animations at boundaries, two-finger rotation on lightbox images) that make Robin PRO’s feel polished. If you care about this, demo both before deciding.
Theme App Extension support. This is the technical feature that enables A1’s architecture. Robin PRO supports Online Store 2.0 themes (modern Shopify themes) but doesn’t ship as a pure Theme App Extension — they use the older App Embed model, which still requires their servers to be reachable for galleries to render.
Pricing in detail
All three apps are inexpensive by Shopify standards, but the pricing structures differ meaningfully.
Cozy: Was $4.99/month. We can’t recommend paying this currently.
Robin PRO: Free tier with 12 images. Pro tier is $5/month or $50/year (17% annual discount). No per-image fees, no per-gallery fees, no usage caps beyond the free tier image limit.
A1 Image Gallery: Free tier with 12 images. Pro tier is $4/month or $40/year. Same structure as Robin PRO, $1/month cheaper.
We’re not trying to win on price — $1/month is unlikely to be the deciding factor for any serious merchant. But it’s worth being transparent that we chose this price because we have lower operational costs than Robin PRO (we don’t operate a CDN), so we can sustain it without losing money. It’s not a loss-leader; it’s our actual unit economics.
Who each app suits
This is the honest “which one should I pick” section.
You should use Robin PRO if:
- You want the most polished gallery UX available today
- Galleries are central to your store experience (photography portfolio, fine art, fashion lookbook)
- You care about specific advanced features (smart focal-point thumbnails, sophisticated animations)
- You prefer an app with multi-year track record over a newer one
- The risk of Klimo having an outage feels acceptable to you (their record suggests it should)
Robin PRO is genuinely excellent and we won’t pretend otherwise.
You should use A1 Image Gallery if:
- You’ve been burned by Cozy’s collapse and specifically want to avoid the same failure mode
- “Your store keeps working even if the gallery app developer disappears” is a feature you’d pay for
- You’re cost-sensitive and the $1/month difference matters at scale
- You want the easiest possible migration path off Cozy (our one-click tool is the only automated migration we know of)
- You’re an agency or freelancer recommending apps to clients, and reliability matters more than maximum polish
- You’re building a multi-store business and consolidated risk is a factor
You should use neither, and use native Shopify theme sections instead, if:
- Your gallery needs are simple (a basic image grid on a couple of pages)
- You want zero ongoing app dependencies of any kind
- You’re optimising for page speed above all else
- You’re comfortable working in theme code if you need customisation
This is a legitimate option and we’d recommend it for the right merchant. Native theme galleries can’t match the polish of either Robin PRO or A1, but they’re free and unbreakable.
A specific recommendation for the most common case
If you’re currently using Cozy and trying to decide between Robin PRO and A1 Image Gallery as a replacement, here’s how we’d think about it:
Default recommendation: A1 Image Gallery, because the migration is automatic, the architecture specifically addresses the problem you just experienced, and the pricing is slightly cheaper. The track-record gap matters but is offset by being the only app architecturally designed not to put you in this situation again.
Switch to “Robin PRO” recommendation if: You demo both apps side by side, and the polish difference in Robin PRO’s lightbox feels significant for your specific use case. Photography-first stores in particular should not skip this comparison.
Switch to “native sections” recommendation if: When you look at your needs honestly, you only have one or two gallery placements, you don’t use the lightbox much, and you can live with whatever your theme provides.
There’s no wrong answer among these three options. All three are better than continuing with Cozy.
What this comparison doesn’t cover
A few things we deliberately left out because they’re either too specific to individual merchants or too speculative to be useful:
Long-term company viability. We’re a healthy small business but we’re not as established as Klimo. Klimo is a healthy small business but isn’t a venture-backed giant like Shopify itself. None of us is risk-free at that level. If you want absolute permanence, native Shopify sections are your only option.
Acquisitions. Klimo could be acquired. We could be acquired. Predicting either is impossible. The relevant question is “does the app still work if the company changes hands or shuts down” — and that’s what our architectural difference is designed to address.
Specific theme compatibility. All three apps work with the major Shopify themes. Edge cases exist with custom themes. We’d recommend testing on a duplicate of your live theme before committing.
Custom feature requests. All three developers will likely accept custom feature requests; how seriously each takes them is unknowable from outside.
Final thoughts
We wrote this article because the existing Shopify gallery comparison content online is either out-of-date (still treats Cozy as a viable choice), self-promotional (each developer talking only about their own app), or unhelpfully vague (generic feature lists without honest trade-off analysis).
Whatever you decide, decide quickly. If you’re on Cozy currently, every day of broken galleries is sales you’re losing. The cost of a “wrong” choice between Robin PRO and A1 is small — you can switch again in six months if you need to. The cost of staying on Cozy and hoping it comes back is much larger.
Questions? Email [email protected]. If you’ve tried both Robin PRO and A1 and have feedback on either, we’d genuinely like to hear it.
A1 Image Gallery is built by A1 Local, an independent Shopify development studio based in Perth, Australia.
