As photographers, our websites are a potential client’s first look into our business and artistry. It’s important that these websites make a great first impression. A website reflects your work ethic, professionalism, and style. So it should be as chic and impressive as you! But if you’re a busy photographer like me, you know it can be a challenge to find the time to devote to creating a unique, visually appealing website worthy of pulling in new business. Not everyone has web coding knowledge and experience, either. Even if you do, coding and designing from scratch can be time-consuming, taking time away from working behind your lens and doing what you love most! That all starts with choosing the right website platforms for photographers!
Luckily, you don’t have to be a coding professional to build and design a fabulous website. Today, there are dozens of website platforms that exist to make creating a website simple and efficient. Some of them have even been made specifically with creatives and photographers in mind!
Check Out Some Of Our Favorite Website Platforms for Photographers!
If you’re looking to create a new website or even switch from your current platform, we highly recommend you look into these website platforms for photographers. Take some time to figure out which one may work best for you, and then give it a try! Whether you’re simply looking for something to share information and show off your pictures, share client galleries, or even host e-commerce abilities to sell prints and products, these platforms offer something for everyone.
As photographers, we’ve used most of these platforms ourselves, so we know firsthand the pros and cons. There are some great things about each of them, so it’s just a matter of finding the platform that works best for you and your business.
(There are affiliate links in this article that will give you discounts with these website platforms for photographers. But we assure you that any of them will be a great match for your company. We only recommend the best in the business.)
Website Platforms for Photographers
Showit
Showit is all about customizing creativity, and we are here for it! Originally created for photographers, Showit’s ease of use, impressive templates and designs, and total creative freedom have made it a great website platform for businesses spanning a variety of niche and creative industries. Their team knows that as creative business owners, your website should reflect your keen eye for all things stylish and beautiful, but you shouldn’t need to spend all your time learning how to create it. Your website can be everything and anything you want it to be with Showit, so you can be proud to share it with clients, peers, and other professionals.
The editing tools Showit provides are easy to use and fun to learn and don’t involve any coding or intense web design knowledge. Whether you start your design from scratch or use their premade (and totally customizable) templates, you will have total creative control over your website. Most of their design features are drag and drop – and it doesn’t get much simpler than that!
Should you ever need a helping hand, Showit has incredible chat support that has been rated the best in the website builder world. You can get the help you need from someone who is just as invested in your website as you are and is happy to help answer any questions. Showit also has a vibrant Facebook community that is great for less time-sensitive questions from creatives and designers just like you.
Because your website is more than just a digital brochure, Showit allows you to integrate your business tools like Flodesk, WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, MemberPress, and more. Plus, all of their packages include website hosting, so you don’t have to worry about using a third-party system to bring your website to life.
Showit and WordPress
No one knows the importance of a great blog like us, and one of our favorite parts about Showit is its partnership with WordPress. You can use Showit’s drag-and-drop editing tools to design and edit blog templates that coordinate with your customized website. Publish your blog right through their WordPress integration with ease. While some WordPress plugins are compatible with the Showit platform, not all of them are, so be sure to check if the one you have in mind will work with your Showit blog.
Your blog and Showit website are also great for optimizing SEO results! You may need to take the time to learn the best SEO practices for your Showit site, but it will be well worth it with this photographer-approved website platform.
Showit allows you to create a totally customizable mobile design, too! You can opt to translate your desktop site into a mobile format or make any individual edits and tweaks to your mobile site in order to provide your clients with the smoothest mobile experience possible.
As far as pricing is concerned, Showit is pretty cost-effective, especially for what you get. If you are a design pro or already have your website designs in place and are just looking for a hosting platform, then you can probably find a cheaper service. But if you’re starting from scratch and want tools to help make designing your website a breeze, it’s definitely a worthwhile investment.
Website Platform Packages For Photographers
Showit offers three packages with unique features to give you everything you need. They offer both monthly and annual payments, although the annual payments will save you an extra $5 a month.
Their most basic package, Showit, is great for anyone looking for a website without a blog. For $24 a month, you’ll get their website builder and web hosting with up to 20 GB of media storage. Moving on up, the Showit & Basic Starter Blog package is $29 a month and includes your WordPress blog hosting and an additional 20 GB of blog storage (in addition to everything in the Showit package.) Lastly, their Showit & Advanced Blog package is $39 a month. It extends the functionality of your blog with thousands of WordPress plugins (including e-commerce) and offers the ability to migrate blogs from WordPress or Squarespace.
PROS
- Showit offers limitless design opportunities with simplistic and accessible drag-and-drop tools. Every element of your website and the provided templates is totally customizable, making it easy to create a beautiful website from scratch.
- The WordPress partnership makes hosting and designing blogs simple and effective.
- The freedom to build a coordinating or entirely unique mobile site allows current and potential clients to experience your website exactly how you want them to!
- Showit’s fabulous chat support and active Facebook community make problem-solving easy and pleasant.
CONS
- With great power comes great responsibility, and with the ability to create a separate, customized mobile website comes the time needed to edit and update a second site. (you can still easily convert your desktop website to mobile to keep things straightforward, though.)
- If your blog features additional plugins, you’ll need to opt for their most inclusive package. There’s also no guarantee that the plugin you want to use is compatible with Showit, so if there is a plugin dealbreaker for you, be sure to double-check that you can use it with Showit.
- While your website is gorgeous and totally unique, it doesn’t include branded email addresses—those you’ll have to source from an external service.
Bottom Line
We LOVE using Showit for the creative control and super accessible design features. Plus, its integration with WordPress allows us to host all of our blogs, driving traffic to our website easily and impressing clients with our unique, elegant, and brand-appropriate website! All of our websites are built with Showit, and we can’t say enough good things. Get a free month of Showit by using this link!
Squarespace
Squarespace is one of the most recognizable names in website building and for a good reason! They are a great platform for photographers looking for a simple and user-friendly website platform. It’s known for its accessibility, especially for people with little to no web-building experience. Using customizable templates, anyone can create a gorgeous, eye-catching website.
Photographers will love Squarespace’s reputation for beautifully displaying photo portfolios. It’s known for its beautiful templates that effectively highlight and display photography collections, showcasing your work in a flattering way. Squarespace has even been recognized by Forbes as the best website builder for creating photography portfolios.
Squarespace was definitely created with creatives in mind, and their platform is great for image-heavy sites with high-quality visuals. It also allows for unique video backgrounds and other attention-grabbing features. Most of their design tools are drag-and-drop, making it simple for anyone not acquainted with code and true technological know-how. However, you can’t just drag and drop every feature, and their templates, while beautiful, can be limited in their customization.
Every Squarespace plan comes with a custom domain (only when you pay annually), unlimited bandwidth, website metrics, and the Squarespace Video Studio App. With the exception of the Personal plan, all of their packages also include fully integrated e-commerce, gift cards, and unlimited product listings.
Squarespace is also a great platform for blogs, including those that are more image-heavy (helloooo photography blog posts!) They’ve even been touted as a close second to WordPress when it comes to blog-friendly websites, and that’s big praise. There are also some SEO tools integrated into their platform, though it’s fairly limited and better for beginning websites.
Website Platform Packages For Photographers
Squarespace packages range from $23 – $65 a month when paying monthly, though you can save significantly by paying once annually. For $23 a month, their Personal plan is great for a simple website with access to their templates and a mobile-optimized website. Their Business plan is offered for $33 a month and includes extra perks like e-commerce, where customers can check out from your website (although with a 3% transaction fee.) Their two remaining packages are the Basic Commerce ($36 a month) and Advanced Commerce ($65 a month) plans, both of which are ideal for businesses focused on selling products and services.
PROS
- Gorgeous templates make it easy to create a stunning website and display beautiful photography portfolios.
- Their web design features are fairly user-friendly, though they may require a bit of a learning curve until you get the hang of it.
- Built-in e-commerce software makes it easy to sell products and services directly from your website.
- Strong blogging abilities mean that you can feature image-heavy posts.
CONS
- Some people consider Squarespace to be one of the pricier website platforms available, though it depends on what you need out of a website.
- Their templates are beautiful, though they sometimes lack design flexibility for a truly customized look.
- While they do have some SEO tools available, they are better for beginners and leave a lot of room for growth.
Bottom Line
Squarespace is a great option for photographers who really want to showcase their photography portfolio without needing to know coding or pay an arm and a leg. It’s also great for anyone looking to sell products and services directly from their website.
Elementor
Elementor is a fabulous website platform for photographers, designed to help you create your online portfolio to serve as your “shop window” for your business! Their team knows you don’t have the time to learn computer coding and web design as a busy professional, so they’ve created a platform to make your life easier.
Design your personal website with one of their website kits, which is kind of like a template for your entire website. You don’t have to worry about individual page elements like headers, footers, color palettes, etc., because you can just select a kit, fill in your info, and be up and running!
If you do want a little more control over your website, you can choose from sleek and stylish templates, including photography portfolio templates. Elementor makes designing your website a breeze with drag-and-drop functions and has hundreds of widgets that you can include for an even more attractive look that engages clients!
One of the biggest draws of Elementor is that it’s WordPress-based, meaning they’ve found a way to make all of WordPress’s tools and perks even more accessible. By harnessing the power of WordPress, Elementor reduces the need for multiple plugins. They basically make using WordPress a breeze for those who are new to website creation, so you can still have the website of your dreams.
Website Platform Packages For Photographers
Elementor offers four plans that range from $14.99 a month to $59.99 a month (again, with discounts for paying once annually.) Their Basic package hosts one website with 10 GB of storage, 25k monthly website visits, and 30 GB per month of bandwidth. The Business package is $29.99 per month, hosts one website, and has 20 GB storage, 50k monthly visits, and 50 GB per month of bandwidth. Their final two plans, Grow and Scale, are really for organizations with multiple websites that need a lot of additional storage and bandwidth and are likely more than a photographer needs for their business.
PROS
- Elementor is simple to use, and their design kits make creating a cohesive, attractive website even easier.
- Known for their functionality, working with WordPress helps eliminate the need for additional plugins, saving you money and headaches.
- Customize the look of your website with attractive templates and comprehensive designs that will make your site a reflection of your style and professionalism.
- Make your website even more engaging and dynamic with built-in widgets.
CONS
- According to some users, Elementor websites can run a little slower, which is a headache in the day and age of lightning-fast internet.
- Elementor’s team is constantly working on new big ideas and rolling out improvements, but that can sometimes come with growing pains and learning curves, like any new features.
Bottom Line
Elementor makes having a WordPress-based website so much simpler and easier. You can still create a beautiful, customized website without all the additional plug-ins and add-ons, taking advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Pixieset
From the start, Pixieset was created by photographers for photographers. Realizing they needed a place to share photos with friends and clients, a group of amateur and professional photographers came together to create a design-centric, hassle-free gallery and website platform. Today, Pixieset offers a variety of tools and features to help photographers with the professional aspects of their businesses, always with style, ease, and flexibility in mind.
Pixieset has made it easy to create a website that showcases your portfolio of beautiful pictures, putting your artistry at the forefront of your site. You can use any of their gorgeous themes created by world-class designers that are easy to customize and will still use your photos as the focus.
Blogging and SEO are huge parts of driving traffic to your business, and Pixieset makes it easy to do both. Use their blogging tools to share your photo stories, using text, photos, and videos to engage your clients. Their easy-to-use SEO tools help your business rank higher in search engine results so your website is more visible to potential clients.
While your website is your business’s critical first impression, as a photographer, your job doesn’t end with booking a photoshoot. Being able to deliver your clients’ photos in sleek, sophisticated galleries is an important part of the job. Pixieset makes it so easy to deliver gorgeous photo galleries to every one of your clients. There’s also an online store where clients can order photo prints directly from your website, and Pixieset takes zero commission!
If you’re unsure about whether Pixieset is the right platform for you, or even if you’re just starting out and don’t need all the bells and whistles, Pixieset offers a free plan. It’s a great perk but very limited, so you’ll likely outgrow the plan pretty quickly.
Website Platform Packages For Photographers
Pixieset offers a variety of packages and products to ensure that you can get whatever your business needs. You can sign up for a Client Gallery package or a Website package, or if you need something more comprehensive, you can look into the Pixieset Suite. The Suite includes client galleries, a website, a studio manager (to help you with booking and contracts), the store, and a mobile gallery app.
We’re here to talk about websites, so let’s review their website packages first. Pixieset offers two paid website plans, the Plus and the Pro. The Plus is $15 a month and offers unlimited photos, blog posts, web pages, and bandwidth. The Pro costs $24 a month and has the same unlimited perks, in addition to some advanced design options when it comes to colors and fonts.
However, for what it’s worth, the Suite packages that feature all of their amazing photographer-inspired products and services don’t cost considerably more. For example, the Pro Suite package (their “middle” offering) features over 2,000 GB of gallery storage and all of their other perks for only $50 a month, or $26 more per month than the Pro website package. Your budget is your budget, and it may or may not offer that extra flexibility, but in my opinion, it’s totally worth it to have everything your business needs to succeed in one convenient space.
PROS
- Pixieset was made for photographers by photographers, so they know what you need in order to succeed!
- Use their convenient plugin that allows you to upload photos directly from Lightroom.
- Try Pixieset before you commit with a FREE account that will give you a taste of their platform.
- With a client gallery, studio manager, e-commerce, and website services, you can run your entire business through one company.
CONS
- Pixieset doesn’t offer marketing tools, so any promotions and mass communications will need to be handled through an external service.
Bottom Line
Pixieset is a fabulous one-stop shop for setting up your photography business for success. Host your website, deliver gorgeous, customized client galleries, manage contracts and payments, sell prints, and more, all from one photographer-centric system.
ProPhoto
ProPhoto is another great website platform that was created for creative photographers by creatives! They allow you a simple, accessible way to create a WordPress website without needing to know absolutely any coding and let you spend more time focusing on the important things in life.
Similarly to other simplistic web design platforms, they feature a drag-and-drop feature that allows you to customize the aesthetic of your website quickly and easily. Use one of their provided layouts or templates as a starting point for your design, although keep in mind their free templates are pretty limited. As a result, your website may end up being not as wholly unique as some other hosting platforms. You can opt to pay for one of their premium templates but plan on shelling out a couple hundred bucks for a design.
One of the biggest draws of ProPhoto is their amazing support team. Typically, when you write in with a question, you’ll get a kind and helpful human response within a few hours. Having an amazing tech support team is so important when it comes to running a website, particularly if it’s not among your strengths, and that’s one area where ProPhoto delivers.
Website Platform Packages For Photographers
ProPhoto keeps things simple by offering only one package for a simple $39 a month. The plan includes optimized WordPress hosting, blogging tools, free migration of any existing sites you may have, and a ProPhoto theme that comes pre-installed. You can add on or change premium template designs at any time for an additional fee.
PROS
- There is no need for prior knowledge of coding; you can customize your website with a simple drag-and-drop feature.
- Their incredible support team is hands-on and happy to help in any way they can.
- All the perks of a WordPress website are simple.
CONS
- There are limited free template designs, making it a challenge to create a one-of-a-kind website unique to your brand.
- Only one package is available, so you get what you get for one flat rate price.
Zenfolio
Zenfolio isn’t just a website platform; it’s a business partner. They offer everything a photographer needs to offer the best experience for their clients while being able to showcase their own unique artistry. After all, your clients are the heart of your business, and your photos are the soul!
You can use one of their templates as a starting point to customize your website or create your own design from scratch! They have a limited number of templates available (about a dozen), but if you are confident in designing your own site, the opportunities are endless.
In addition to hosting your website, Zenfolio offers plenty of ways to share your gorgeous albums with your clients, giving them easy access to their photos. With Zenfolio, they can also buy prints and products directly through your website, and orders will be handled by a third party, so you never have to worry about fulfillment.
Zenfolio also has workflow tools to help you manage the administrative side of things, almost like a virtual studio assistant. Your clients can use your website to schedule a photoshoot, put down a deposit, and sign a contract, making your life simpler and allowing you to spend more time behind the lens.
With a network of over 500,000 photographers, Zenfolio was created specifically to help photographers in every stage of their career. They offer 24/7 support and training, so you’ll never feel isolated or alone when it comes to figuring out your business and website.
Website Platform Packages For Photographers
There are three levels of packages with Zenfolio, allowing you to pick the one with the features that best suit your business needs. The Portfolio is their most basic package that offers 15 GB of storage, the ability to use your own domain, and allows social media integrations with basic marketing features. It does not, however, use the ecommerce features. The Portfolio currently costs a low $9 per month. PortfolioPlus offers a major storage upgrade with 150 GB, e-commerce, and products, including custom-designed greeting cards and collages. This plan runs $23 per month. Lastly, their ProSuite package includes unlimited storage, automated client marketing campaigns, e-commerce, client bookings, and more. For $40 a month, you can take advantage of every feature Zenfolio offers for a complete website and business experience.
PROS
- With everything Zenfolio offers, it’s actually a really great bang for your buck.
- Features like watermarking, printing and selling, and marketing tools make it a comprehensive program, not just website hosting.
- It’s fairly simple to set up and has a great support team available 24/7 for even more ease.
CONS
- There aren’t many templates from which to choose, so unless you are comfortable building your own design from scratch, it’s not a wholly customizable experience.
- As with a lot of platforms that allow you to host high volumes of pictures and video, the performance and speed aren’t always the most impressive.
- While not really a con per se, Zenfolio includes a lot of services above and beyond website hosting, so if you don’t need all the additional perks, your money may be better invested elsewhere.
Bottom Line
Zenfolio is a great comprehensive website platform for photographers who are looking for additional assistance with their business, not just website hosting. It has great value for everything it includes, and while not the most customizable, it will help you make a great first impression with clients. To save 50% on an annual plan, click this link!
Website Platforms for Photographers
Your website is your storefront, so you want to make sure it’s eye-catching, professional, and a reflection of your unique style and artistry. It can be a place to showcase your portfolio or offer clients more functional services, like easily booking a photoshoot or ordering high-quality prints. A great website should make your life easier, and with the exception of taking a little time to create and design it initially, it should be easy to maintain and manageable to update.
These website platforms for photographers are the most widely recognized for offering features that can help make your photography business run smoothly and effectively. As we said before, we’ve used most of these platforms as a photographer myself and truly appreciated them all for different reasons. Finding the right website platform is about assessing what you need for your business to thrive and then trying a company that delivers what you need.
If you have questions about the useability of any of these website platforms, we are happy to connect and chat! After all, Rokee & Co. is all about making your life as a photographer easier in whatever way we can.
