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Best Website Builders for Photographers

Photography is an art that requires one to show what they can do, or rather how talented they are in the art. If you want to get clients as a photographer, chances are that you must have a portfolio to show to potential clients and convince them to hire you. There is no better portfolio than an online one – a website. 

Very few photographers have web development skills to develop their own websites. Furthermore, most of them lack funds to hire a web developer. However, we have website builders that do not require any web development skills for one to build their own website. In this article, we are going to talk about the best website builders for photographers.


Squarespace

Squarespace is a website builder platform designed with special attention to creatives to help them build a website to showcase their work. Photographers, with or without web development skills, can use it to come up with a professional website for their work

Squarespace is easy to use and comes with a drag and drop builder, just like most of the other website builders discussed below. However, unlike the other website builders, you cannot just drag and drop anything to any place of your page. It is more section based. This might make it a little bit difficult for beginners, but it gets very easy to use after using it for some time.

To make it even easier and better for photographers, Squarespace has a mobile app that makes it easy to edit a website from your phone. You can publish blog posts, upload photos and do much more on the go. Further, if you lose internet while on the go, you can still continue working offline and all the un-updated work will be updated when you get back your internet connection.

If you want to add blogging to your photography website, Squarespace comes with several blogging tools for you to use. Being a photographer, chances are that your blog posts will have quite a number of photos. This is where Squarespace excels in. It has excellent visual designs giving your blog posts a stylish and professional look.

Unfortunately, Squarespace does not offer a free plan. It only offers a 14-day trial period, which should be enough for you to know if it is the platform for you. However, your website will not go live until you subscribe to a plan.

Squarespace Pros


  • Beautiful and mobile-friendly designs
  • Although there is no free plan, you get value for money with the features you get
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Comes with a free logo maker
  • Responsive support team via email, live chat and Twitter
  • It has a mobile app that makes it possible to customize your website on the go

Squarespace Cons


  • Might require some learning time for beginners
  • Lacks a free plan
  • It does not offer phone support
  • Lacks an app store for extending website functionality

Squarespace Pricing

PlanPersonalBusinessBasic CommerceAdvanced Commerce
Price Per Month$ 12$ 18$ 26$ 40
BandwidthUnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimited
DomainFreeFreeFreeFree
SSLFreeFreeFreeFree
StorageUnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimited


Wix

Wix is one of the most popular website builders today, and one of the easiest to use. Started in 2006, it was initially based on Flash which has well-known problems. However, this changed in 2012 when they changed their base technology to HTML5, with huge success. Today, Wix boasts of over 37 million websites built using the platform.

Wix is intuitive and user-friendly, especially due to its drag and drop editor that allows users to select, resize and position anything within the builder with a lot of ease. It allows users to place elements anywhere that they want and comes with the ability to animate text as well as most of its elements. This makes it one of the best website builders for those in the creative world such as photographers. Furthermore, its simplicity means that anyone, even those without web development skills can easily use it to come up with an amazing website for their photography business.

Wix also comes with an ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) feature for those that do not have time to design their own website. This feature asks you a couple of questions then designs the website for you based on your answers to those questions. You can also enter an existing website or social profiles for Wix to crawl information from these sources and design a website for you based on the information it has crawled. With this feature, you will have your website within a couple of minutes.

With this website builder, you get features to make sure that you have a website that competes fairly. Some of these features include blogging features, SEO and webstore building, and connection to social networks. You can even get additional features from their own App store, some even for free. On this App store, you will find hundreds of third-party apps to help you add to the functionality of your website.

Wix also comes with a lot of free templates that are well designed, modern and mobile-friendly to give you a head start instead of starting from scratch. This is a website builder that will give any photographer the kind of a website they are looking for. 

Wix Pros


  • Free domain for one year except on the cheapest plan.
  • Amazing and well-designed templates for photographers.
  • Extensive app market to help increase the functionality of a website.
  • Wix’s automatic backup is important in restoring to a previous version when you make mistakes
  • SEO features are well thought compared to most of its competitors
  • Compared to other website builders, it is flexible and allows moving of elements
  • The Wix Artificial Design Intelligence tool is important for those who want a website within no time
  • Generous free plan

Wix Cons


  • There are limits on the bandwidth on the lower plans
  • Wix does not allow customizing of the HTML and CSS code for those looking for further customization
  • You can not change to a new template once you have started working on another one

Wix Pricing

PlanConnect DomainComboUnlimitedVIP
Price Per Month$ 4.50$ 8.50$ 12.50$ 24.50
Storage500 MB 3 GB 10 GB 20 GB
DomainNot FreeFree from 1 yearFree from 1 yearFree from 1 year
Bandwidth1 GB2 GBUnlimitedUnlimited

Weebly

Weebly is another popular but simple website builder owned by an eCommerce company called Square. They claim to power over 50 million websites worldwide, meaning that they are quite popular compared to most of its competitors.

Weebly offers photographers a variety of templates under the Portfolio and Personal categories when choosing a theme to get started. Although these templates are not as beautiful as those offered by competitors such as Wix, they are simple, easy to use and can get you a professional-looking website without writing a single line of code.

It comes with an easy to use drag and drop editor, with the page elements on the left sidebar. When adding elements to your page, you can drag the elements anywhere on the page where you want them. This shows you how easy it is to use Weebly.

Weebly also comes with an app store with features that you can use to add the functionality of your website. Some of the features include Facebook Like buttons, event calendars. Tabbing, display tables and Social Media grids. You will also get custom on-site apps made by Weebly specifically such as Custom accordions for FAQs or compressing content, Content tabs for packing thousands of words of content, Team cards for build team pages and Google Apps to integrate Google applications ( this costs $49/month).

Weebly gives you full control over the SEO of your photography website. You can edit meta descriptions, title tags, and keywords for every web page. You can even use its blogging feature to create blogs for your photography website.

Weebly Pros


  • Allows the addition of collaborators for those who work as a team in building the website
  • Has a drag and drop editor that is very easy to use. Weebly is also very easy to use and does not have any learning curve.
  • Weebly has mobile-friendly and modern themes that are well designed
  • Its App center allows you to add more applications to your website extending its functionality.
  • It has a generous free plan compared to most of its competitors
  • You can set up an eCommerce website with the free plan
  • Weebly does not limit its bandwidth on all of its plans

Weebly Cons


  • It lacks a feature for the creation of multilingual websites
  • Lacks a backup and restore feature
  • You can only use up to three payment gateways

Weebly Pricing

PlanFreeConnectProBusiness
Price Per Month$ 0$ 5$ 12$ 25
DomainDomain with Weebly BrandingConnect a Custom DomainConnect a Custom DomainConnect a Custom Domain
SSLFreeFreeFreeFree
Storage500 MB500 MBUnlimitedUnlimted

Format

Format is one of the very few website builders that are focussed on building websites for a specific niche. It focusses solely on building portfolio based websites, or websites for people to showcase their work. Photographers will love this website builder due to its dedication in making sure that they get exactly what they are looking for.

Format is easy to use and comes with up to 23 templates for you to choose from. The templates are mobile-friendly and well designed. However, four of the templates are considered premium and will cost you a few extra dollars each month. Customizing these themes is very easy, you can do it on a desktop or use Format’s iPhone app. 

If you are a web developer and would like to modify the CSS and HTML code, you get an advanced editor. However, Format does not offer support for these changes, you will be on your own doing this. 

Sometimes you might have done all the work customizing a theme but then realize that it does not meet all your requirements. Format allows you to switch between themes even when you have already customized a certain theme. This is something that most website builders lack.

Customer support is very important especially when you are stuck. Format offers a message center at the bottom of the builder that you can use to ask any questions. However, even though this is good, sometimes they take a few hours or even a day to respond. You can also send them an email which, like the message center, will respond to in a number of hours.

Format Pros


  • Modern mobile-friendly templates
  • Excellent SEO features
  • Ability to switch themes even after customization
  • Content import and export features

Format Cons


  • It is almost entirely portfolio based website builder
  • The user interface can be confusing to some people

Format Pricing  

PlanProPro PlusUnlimited
Pricing Per Month$ 12$ 18$ 25
Max Images1,500UnlimitedUnlimited
SSLFreeFreeFree

SmugMug

SmugMug is a website builder specially designed for creating custom photo and video websites. It gives photographers a way to have a website through which they can host unlimited photos and videos, though with size restrictions.

SmugMug is easy and straightforward to use. It comes with well-designed templates for you to choose from. After choosing a template, you will be required to upload a number of photos to continue, you can not go beyond this step before uploading a couple of them. After the upload, you will get to an intuitive interface through which you can now customize your website. 

Here, you get only four menu options – Upload, Organise, Customise, and Sell. These options will give you a way to do everything that you need to get your website up and running. SmugMug also offers you a mobile app that you can use to edit and customize your website on the go. 

Unfortunately, this website builder does not offer a free plan, but offers a 14-day trial period. After that, you will have to subscribe to one of the paid plans, which range from $ 5.99 per month for the cheapest plan.

As a photography website builder, SmugMug offers some cool security features for photos on your website, although some of them depend on the plan you are subscribed to. Some of these features include the ability to restrict third-party downloads, password protect folders, galleries, pages, or even your whole site, enabling right-click protection and even adding watermarks to all your images. This is one website builder that will ensure that you have a beautiful photography website.

SmugMug Pros


  • You can host unlimited photos and videos
  • SmugMug supports guest uploads and comments
  • Excellent photography specific features
  • Easy to use to monetize your photos

SmugMug Cons


  • Has a restricted basic plan
  • It is portfolio based which could make it feel limited
  • It is quite expensive for a beginner

SmugMug Pricing

PlanBasicPowerPortfolioPro
Price Per Month$ 5.99$ 8.99$ 23.99$ 41.99
Max Photo Size150 MB150 MB150 MB150 MB
Max Video Size3 GB3 GB3 GB3 GB

Dunked

Dunked is a website builder that is built specifically for creatives such as photographers, artists, and illustrators. It is easy to use and comes with a number of features that makes it stand out from its competitors.

Dunked has an easy to use drag and drop editor, just like most of the other website builders, making it easy to use even for those without web development skills. To make sure that photographers will get what they are looking for, Dunked makes it even simple to upload images from your computer and embed any videos from other platforms such as Vimeo, YouTube, SoundCloud and Flickr.

The editing tool also makes it very easy to change the typography, layout and colors of your website to match your requirements. If you have web development skills, you can further customize your photography website by tweaking the HTML and CSS code. Dunked promises to make it your way when building your photography website.

Just like most of its competitors, Dunked offers fully responsive and retina ready templates. You get to choose the template of your choice, customize it using the drag and drop editor, and upload images from your computer. Furthermore, if you are not happy with the template you initially chose, you can easily switch to another template without losing all the work you had done. Dunked is one website builder that will give you full control over your website and make sure that you get exactly what you are looking for.

Dunked Pros


  • Easy to use
  • Mobile-friendly and well-designed templates
  • Ability to switch between templates even after starting development
  • You can twerk to CSS and HTML code for further customization

Dunked Cons


  • It lacks a free plan
  • The builder is only focussed to portfolio based websites

Dunked Pricing

PlanProfessionalAgency
Price Per Month$ 8 (Billed annually or$12 month-to-month)$ 19 (Billed annually or$29 month-to-month)
Max Images10005000
Projects100Unlimited

CarbonMade

CarbonMade was started in 2005 and has so far served over 2 million live portfolios. In 2019, the portfolio builder was completely rebuilt with new features and re-launched as CarbonMade 4. It offers photographers and other creatives an easy way to create an online portfolio to showcase their work.

CarbonMade comes with an easy to use drag and drop functionality, making it very good for beginners. The editor makes it very easy when rearranging the page layout, moving elements or even adding new ones. Initially, you could not connect your own domain but that has since changed with the rebuild. 

When getting started with CarbonMade, you will be asked to choose your portfolio, photography among those on the list, and then you will be provided with templates to choose the one that you like. These templates are responsive, retina ready and beautifully designed to give you a modern photography website.

You can easily customize the template you choose, from its layout, design and general settings. You get all the page blocks on the editor’s sidebar – sliders, galleries, About Me sections, full-screen images, project details sections among others. Since CarbonMade is block-based, you can edit a block or move a block around to the required places on your page.

Although CarbonMade has done quite some work in giving you SEO optimization options, it lacks a lot compared to some of its competitors. You can only modify the meta description and connect your website to Google Analytics. You can also integrate social sharing buttons using the block section. 

CarbonMade Pros


  • Easy to use especially for beginners
  • Responsive and retina ready templates
  • Exclusive photography features including private portfolios
  • It does not have hidden prices – pricing is straightforward.

CarbonMade Cons


  • Templates a very few compared to competitors
  • The basic plan has limited features
  • It lacks a free plan

CarbonMade Pricing

PlanBeginnerProExpert
Pricing Per Month$ 8$ 12$ 18
Max ImagesUnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimited
Max VideosUnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimited
Max Projects850Unlimited

Pixpa

Pixpa is an amazing photography website builder that not only offers photographers a way to showcase their work but also allows them to offer their photographs for sale in a simple and elegant website.

Pixpa does not promise to help you build a business website like most of the other website builders, but it promises to give you an amazing online portfolio to showcase your work and even make a living from it.

When getting started, this builder offers you with up to 38 templates to choose from. You can easily customize these templates to match your requirements. Unlike most of the other builders, you can even switch between templates anytime you want to make sure that you get exactly what you are looking for. 

Since photographers need to show their photos, Pixpa allows you to add galleries anywhere they want on their website. However, it lacks a central image library, meaning that you will have to re-upload or duplicate an image if you want to show it in different galleries. The image editing capabilities are, however, limited. You can only add keywords, descriptions, captions and rotate an image.

If you want to sell your photos or any other merchandise, this builder gives you a well thought online store that allows you to sell both physical and digital products. You can set up offline payments while online payments can be made through PayPal or Stripe. Customers in India can also use PayUmoney.

Pixpa Pros


  • Easy to use even for a complete beginner
  • Excellent customer support team
  • Well thought galleries even though they lack a central image library
  • Responsive and well designed templates

Pixpa Cons


  • It lacks a media library
  • You cannot publish anything online while on the trial period
  • The base plan – basic plan – is has limited features

Pixpa Pricing

PlanBaseProBizUltimate
Price Per Month$ 6$ 9$ 15$ 25
Max Images200UnlimitedUnlimitedUnlimited
Domain nameFree for one yearFree for one yearFree for one yearFree for one year
SSLFreeFreeFreeFree

Conclusion

Are you a photographer looking for a way to create an online portfolio to showcase their work and probably have limited resources to hire a developer? Then worry no more! You can use one of these website builders to get yourself a professionally designed photography website.

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