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Self-Service Photobooth

A self-service booth is a fixed unit in a place people already wait or linger: a mall corridor, a café, a campus food court, a cinema lobby. Guests walk up, pay per session, take their photos and leave with a print and a link to their digital copies. Nobody is standing next to it, so the booth has to take payment by itself, lock guests out of its settings, and tell you when it needs paper. This page shows how to set that up in Pixture.

How It Makes Money​

Guests pay per photo session, usually the price of a cup of coffee. Income grows with foot traffic, and the spot matters more than the booth: most operators pay the landlord a fixed rent, a share of sales, or both. Add-ons raise the ticket: a double or group session, extra prints, and repeat visits from guests who come back for a new frame.

The Setup​

1. Put Pix Pro on the computer​

A booth that opens every day runs on Pix Pro, monthly or yearly, on its computer. Pix Starter is free but watermarked and skips the Payment screen, so it cannot charge guests. See Plans & Pricing.

2. Take payment without a person​

  1. Connect a gateway: DOKU for QRIS in Indonesia, Stripe everywhere else. See Create a Payment Gateway.
  2. On the booth's Pricing tab, switch Payment on this booth on, set the Session price, and add Double or Group packages if you want the upsell. Turn on Extra print price so guests can buy more prints on the Sharing screen. See Accept Payments at the Booth.
  3. Set the Payment timeout so an abandoned payment returns the booth to the Start screen.
  4. For guests who would rather pay with a card or cash, add a Stripe Terminal card reader, a coin or note acceptor, or a Nayax reader. See Take Card, Coin and Cash Payments.
  5. Keep Voucher on the Payment screen and share the Online shop link from Vouchers, so a guest whose wallet fails can buy a session on their phone and type the code. See Sell Sessions Online.

3. Lock the booth​

  • Set a Menu PIN on the booth's Settings tab, so guests cannot open the operator menu. See Operator Menu.
  • In the booth's UI project, make sure only the triggers you want can start a session; a paid booth should not start on a tap without paying. See Customise the Booth Screens.

4. Watch it from anywhere​

  • Health shows whether the booth is online and whether the camera, printer, paper and uploads are fine, so you know to refill before a guest finds an empty printer. See Health.
  • Dashboard and Transactions show sessions and money by day, week or month. Export Excel on Transactions gives you the monthly statement for a revenue-share landlord. See Transactions.
  • When the internet drops, the booth keeps taking and printing photos and uploads them when the line comes back. See Offline Mode.

5. Keep guests coming back​

  • Change templates from the dashboard whenever you like; the booth picks them up by itself. A stale frame set is the fastest way to lose repeat guests. See Design a Print Template.
  • Marketing Studio (Pix Pro) asks guests for consent to hear from you, and can give them a Bonus Session or let them design their own frame with Frame Lab. See Marketing Studio and Frame Lab.
  • Pix AI portraits on the share page add a paid extra without any work at the booth. See Sell AI Portraits.

Daily Routine​

Check paper and the printer before opening, glance at Health during the day, and look at the day's sessions at closing. The Booth Operations Checklist has the full list.

Typical Numbers​

From the Pixture Photobooth Playbook (September 2026), for one mall-grade booth at about US$4 a session: 18 sessions a day brings roughly US$2,160 a month, 25 a day about US$3,000, and 40 a day about US$4,800. With around US$7,500 to build the booth and US$1,300 a month in fixed costs, a good spot pays the booth back in about seven months. These are estimates; your rent and prices decide the real figures.