6 Best Photography Website Builders: Gain Exposure in 2023
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Our methodology
We conducted our own thorough research into the best photography website builders, placing extra focus on design, SEO, blogging, and ease of use.
Written and researched by:
Comments: 14
Website builders are a great way to build and showcase an awesome digital portfolio of your work for a wider audience to see. With photography in mind, you’ll want a website builder that offers functionality, a variety of design layouts, and ease of use.
According to our research, Squarespace takes the number one spot as the best website builder for photography, because of its stunning, image-focused templates that strike the balance between artsy and professional. It also doesn’t hurt to mention it’s great value for money as well, a 4 out of 5 score in our analysis.
Wix is another strong contender – it’s the easiest photography builder to use, and was our users’ favorite in testing. SmugMug’s status as a specialized photography builder makes it especially adept at safeguarding your pictures – it has the best features out of all the platforms we’ve tested.
Here are our top picks:
The 6 Best Website Builders For Photographers Are:
We got in touch with photographers when researching and writing this article. You’ll find some of their testimonials scattered throughout, alongside a few inspirational photography sites.
Compare the Best 6 Photography Website Builders
Compare our best website creators on key areas using the comparison chart below. Use the arrow at the top of the chart to view other platforms. We’ve started you off with our top three; Squarespace, Wix, and SmugMug.
 | PEOPLE'A CHOICE  |  |  |  |  |
| Squarespace | Wix | SmugMug | GoDaddy | Duda | Jimdo |
For a photography website, the list goes:
1. Design – As a photographer, your website is the single most important part of your brand identity, so a good website needs smart, current templates and deep aesthetic customization. If the design tools available aren’t good enough, it could be the difference in how commercial clients see you and whether they contact you for a quote.
2. Search Engine Optimization – If you’re going to land clients, you need your site to be seen. Therefore, the ability to keyword search and play the search engines to your favor is a must for photographers as it’ll make the difference between you and the competition.
3. Blogging – Regularly publishing new articles and providing an additional glimpse into your photography projects will not only greatly help your SEO but help you keep and maintain clients and fans. These are the lifeblood of any photographer so it’s important you keep your site consistently updated.
4. Ease Of Use – A website builder could make the best photography websites ever but if nobody could use it, what’s the point? Building a website should never drive anyone to tears, so we rate our choices on how accessible and easy it is to use and create.
5. General Features – These are just the other features that website builders include that could be of use to photographers. An important one to take special note of is storage. High-quality images take up a lot of data, so make sure your builder of choice has ample storage to handle it.
Now you know what the best photography builders are, let’s take a closer look at each one, so you can find the perfect photography website builder for your needs.
#1. Squarespace
Best Overall Photography Website Builder
Squarespace
Best overall photography website builder
- Best template designs
- SEO and blogging tools
- Unlimited storage
Free trial available
Paid Plans: $16 - $49 / month
Pros
-
Sleek, minimal template designs - Unlimited storage and bandwidth
- Top-rated for blogging and SEO
Sleek, minimal template designs Cons
- Not the cheapest option (but good value)
- Only one aspect ratio on product pages
Not the cheapest option (but good value) 
Squarespace is a website builder known for creating stunning, mobile responsive websites. It performed consistently well in our research, coming top for both design and customer support, and comes with truly attractive designs.
With a whopping score of 4.6 out of 5 for design, Squarespace is the best platform to choose if you want a website that looks professional and has a polished, high-end feel to it – which is a top priority, considering that 94% of first impressions are design related.
This builder is a popular choice with photographers because its premium plans are inexpensive, and the platform is relatively easy to use. Even on the cheapest monthly plan (the $16 per month ‘Personal plan’), you gain unlimited bandwidth and storage. This immediately removes any concerns you may have about uploading and storing lots of high-resolution photos with large file sizes – not bad for just $16 a month!
Squarespace Gallery
Click the image below to expand “Before joining my current job I was a freelancer, and because of this I had a website as a way to best advertise myself to any future clients. My peers and university lecturers recommended Squarespace because of how good it is at displaying galleries and videos and stuff. And they couldn’t have been more right!” – Alex Greene, Senior Video Editor
Design: 4.6/5
One of Squarespace’s best benefits is the choice of themes on offer – they really are some of the most beautiful photography templates around. In our research, Squarespace received its highest scores for design flexibility, scoring 4.6 out of 5 for this area.
Why did it score so highly for design? Well, not only are its templates all professionally designed, but each and every theme is also mobile-responsive, which ensures that your photos look amazing on any device. Squarespace’s customization and design blocks make it easy to redesign your site if you want to refresh your branding at any point.
In 2022, Squarespace 7.1 was announced along with its new Fluid Engine drag and drop editor. This unleashes your creative capabilities while making it effortless to remain aligned to its new snapping grid system – making beginners feel like professional web designers.
“I used Format originally, but it became rather annoying – when updating my portfolio, it decided to wipe everything or change the layout. So now I use Squarespace, which is easy and works well with no hiccups” – Adam Hoskins, Photographer
Features: 4.5/5
Squarespace has a suite of quality in-house features to choose from. It scored 4.5 out of 5 for its features, making it a reliable, scalable choice. Our favorite feature is Squarespace Scheduling, a calendar tool that lets you book and organize viewings (online or in-person), and even schedule video conferences with prospective buyers – the tool integrates with software like Zoom and JoinMe.
Squarespace’s tools offer all the essentials to support a photography site – great social integration, and strong SEO and blog features (see below). The range is quite small, though – anything more niche or adventurous may require the use of a third party plugin.
Creating a customer login, for example, is not a simple ‘plug and go’ solution, but there’s a fairly simple workaround you can use instead.
SEO
Squarespace provides helpful guides to hold your hand through optimizing your site for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as well as making it easy to add descriptions and alt tags to your images once you’ve uploaded them.
You can also include extra elements on your site, such as creating a blog to engage visitors and promote your work, or adding contact forms to accept enquiries.
Blogging
Squarespace is a great platform for a blog, offering:
- Unlimited pages, even on the cheapest plan
- Ability to create blog categories
- Optional comments
- Ability to add an RSS Feed
It’s actually our top-rated blogging platform, so you know you’ll be in good hands here.
Pricing: 4/5
Squarespace’s four price plans range from $16 to $49 per month, when you pay for the year – three of these plans let you sell through your site, which is perfect if you’re looking to make money selling prints on the side from your photography.
Squarespace scored a very respectable 4 out of 5 for value for money, so you can feel confident that you’re getting a good deal – Squarespace’s cheapest plan includes:
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth
- Up to two contributors
- Access to third-party integrations
- Free domain for one year
- SEO features
- Analytics to track performance
If you upgrade you can also unlock a professional email from Google, customization via CSS, advanced analytics, Squarespace’s Video Studio App, and more.
Squarespace does not have a free plan – instead, you get a two-week free trial.
Most photographers will find the Personal plan ($16/month) a good fit, but first take a look to see our experts top choice template for photography on Squarespace:
Further Information
- Squarespace Review – for more on Squarespace’s overall offerings, see our detailed main review.
- Squarespace Pricing Review – for an in-depth breakdown of Squarespace’s pricing plans.
- Squarespace Ecommerce Review – if you’re selling your photographs online it’s worth looking at our Squarespace Ecommerce review!
#2. Wix
Easiest to Use: Our Users’ Favorite
Wix
Easiest photography builder to use
- 800+ templates available
- Easiest to use
- Most recommended by users
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $16 - $59 / month
Pros
- Free plan is handy for users on a budget
- Platform most recommended by our users
- The easiest builder to create your site
Cons
- Paid plans are a little pricey
- Can't switch templates once site is live
- Limited storage on cheaper plans
Wix is an incredibly easy to use photography website builder, scoring an impressive 4.4 out of 5 for ease of use in our testing. It was also a big win with our users – in fact, it received the highest customer score (alongside SmugMug) with 4.6 out of 5. So you can bet you’ll find building with Wix easy and enjoyable, which is important!
A fun addition is that Wix announced in 2022 that it will be integrating with Semrush’s SEO keyword tool. Making it easier for users to rank in Google’s search results.
You’ll find plenty of helpful features with Wix – its features score of 4.8 is second only to SmugMug – so you can create a truly powerful website quickly and easily. The area Wix scored lowest in is value for money, due to its $16 per month starting price.
Wix Gallery
Click the image below to expand Design: 4.3/5
Wix has over 800 templates to choose from, with around 35 specifically designed for photography websites. Wix’s templates are all professionally designed, and come in plenty of different styles so that you can pick the one you like most.
The best part about Wix’s templates is how easy they are to customize – and how much creative freedom you’re given, even as a total beginner. You can drag and drop elements like text boxes around your pages, add new features, change the styling, all with a simple click of your mouse.
This type of easy customization means you can create a truly unique and personalized website without needing any coding skills.
Features: 4.8/5
Wix scored particularly well for its features, with 4.8 out of 5. It has tons of handy tools, including ecommerce, in-house email marketing, social media integration, and member areas. It also has a huge app store where you can install third-party features in a few simple clicks.
SEO
One of Wix’s standout features is its Wix SEO Wiz, which makes optimizing your photography website super easy, even if you have no experience of SEO. Its interactive SEO tool walks you through adding keywords, and creates a tailored checklist for you to follow.
Alongside having Semrush at your disposal, Wix also offers a new Wix SEO settings page where you can manage your whole sites SEO in one convenient place. These features make SEO much more beginner-friendly than Squarespace’s detailed, but “do it yourself” support guides.
Blogging
Wix is a good choice for blogging, although not quite as good as Squarespace. It comes with all the core features you need to run a successful photography blog, with analytics, comments, and even a search feature to help readers find the content they’re looking for!
Pricing: 3.7/5
Wix has a pretty poor value for money score compared to its competitors, with 3.7 out of 5. Although Wix has a free plan, which is great for trying out its editor and getting your site ready to publish, to remove Wix adverts you need to sign up to a paid plan, which start at $16 per month when you pay annually.
Wix’s paid plans range from $16 to $500 per month, so there’s plenty of room to scale up your photography site. Wix’s cheaper plans are perfect for hobbyists, portfolios, and small businesses, while its more expensive plans are ideal for growing a photography store.
It’s worth noting that you also get a free domain included in your plan if you choose an annual subscription!
Further Information
- Read our full Wix Review for a deep-dive into its features, designs, pros, and cons
- Check out our Wix Pricing Review to discover which Wix plan is best for you
#3. SmugMug
Best for Photography-Specific Features
SmugMug
Best for photography-specific features
- Great security features
- Simple client login
- Good for selling images
Free trial available
Paid Plans: $7 - $42 / month
Pros
- Loads of monetization options
- Custom watermarks and password protect
- Syncs with Lightroom
Cons
- Ecommerce plans are expensive
- Designs could be more modern
SmugMug is a photography website builder that provides an easy way to showcase and sell your photographs. As a specialized builder, SmugMug is superb at what it does, but can feel limited in comparison to a more versatile builder like Squarespace.
The real advantage SmugMug has over competitors is that it’s ready to help you sell straight out of the box! You can charge per photo download, create custom price lists for clients, and sell prints and gifts directly with no need for extra integrations.
SmugMug Gallery
Click the image below to expand Design: 3.3/5
While SmugMug shone with its photography-specific features, it received much more average scores for its designs. Its offerings are pretty limited, especially if you’re on a cheap plan – and even on more expensive plans, you only get to choose from around 20 templates.
It’s not just the quantity that’s limited, either. SmugMug’s designs focus totally on your images, which is great – however, it means you lose out on extra features such as contact forms and maps. These aren’t essential, but they do add an extra dollop of professionalism to your website.
You’ll find customization is fairly basic, and even rigid at times – for example, when adjusting the height and width of image boxes. This isn’t the builder to choose if you want tons of creative control – instead, it’s best for letting your photos speak for themselves.
Features: 5/5
Because SmugMug is a specialized photography builder, it comes with certain perks and features that the other builders on our list don’t. In fact, it scored a full 5 out of 5 for its features, outperforming all other builders!
One of our favorite features is the ability to protect your photos from third-party downloads.
The more you pay for your plan, the more options you get over the security of your photos:
- Enable right-click protect, which displays a personalized copyright notice when visitors right-click on your site
- Add custom watermarks to your images
- Password protect pages, folders, galleries, or even your whole site
What other features does SmugMug offer to set it apart from more all-around platforms?
Here’s a quick look at just a few of our favorites:
- Unlimited photo and video uploads
- Syncing your photo library with Lightroom
- Partnerships with professional printers so visitors can order prints/products directly from your site, with no need for additional integrations
- Extensive social media integration so you can stay connected with you audience
- Snap on the go and upload your image straight from your phone to your website whilst on the move
- Upload image albums from multiple locations, from Dropbox to Apple
SEO
Business growth is supported by SEO features that let you tag your images with descriptions and keywords, amend meta data for individual pages (a description of a webpage similar to a blurb on the back of a book), and create sitemaps to submit to Google that act as a directory for your site. You have SmugMug’s own SEO guide to help you here, packed with lots of practical advice. Ranking with a SmugMug site shouldn’t be a problem.
Blogging
The main drawback of SmugMug’s features is that there’s no built-in blogging option – just something to be aware of when putting your photography site together.
Pricing: 4/5
Like Squarespace, SmugMug does not offer a free plan. You get a 14-day free trial, and then have to subscribe to one of SmugMug’s four premium plans, which range from just $8 per month for the Basic plan to $50 per month for the Pro plan. You can save between 29% and 38% on the price by paying annually, meaning the cheapest plan costs $66 per year (or $5.50 per month).
Further Information
- SmugMug Review – looking to find out more about SmugMug? read our full review and see what you think.
- Website Builder Comparison Chart – alternatively, head to our comparison chart and look at the other platforms on the market.
#4. GoDaddy
Most Time Efficient
GoDaddy
Most time efficient
- Fastest way to build
- Good value plans
- Handy SEO Wiz tool
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $6.99 - $469.99 / month
Pros
- ADI offers a fast way to get online
- Quick and easy to use
- AI SEO tool is perfect for beginners
Cons
- Hard to create something truly unique
- Basic blog tools only good for hobbyists
- Cheap plan is pretty limited
GoDaddy is a website builder built to help out entrepreneurs get online fast – and it does this with its handy ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) setup. You enter information about the site you want to build – such as name, industry, and so on – and GoDaddy does the rest, creating a template just for you in a matter of minutes.
While GoDaddy isn’t the best for any of our research areas, it is the quickest way to create your photography website – perfect if you need a site live fast.
GoDaddy Gallery
Click the image below to expand Design: 4.2/5
GoDaddy works differently to website builders like Squarespace and Wix. While you can choose a design from the template library if you want to, the best way to use GoDaddy is to let its ADI builder create your website design for you.
Although GoDaddy creates your template for you, you can preview different layouts and pick the one you like the most, and then continue to customize it until you’re ready to publish. That said, GoDaddy doesn’t give you as much creative freedom as Wix, so it can be harder to create something truly unique.
Features: 2.8/5
GoDaddy has some pretty neat built-in features, including email marketing, social media integration, as well as a wide range of other services. Rather than just being a website builder, GoDaddy also provides hosting, security, marketing, and is a popular domain name registrar. This makes it super useful if you’re looking for add-ons to build out your website!
SEO
While GoDaddy doesn’t have the same advanced features that Wix and Squarespace offer – such as canonical tags – we were impressed by its SEO Wiz. This AI SEO tool is perfect for SEO newbies because it walks you through the optimization process.
So, how does it work? GoDaddy’s tool analyzes your website, then walks you through each stage of optimizing it for search engines, and helps you track your site’s progress after you’ve published your site.
Blogging
GoDaddy offers basic blogging tools – enough to keep a small hobby blog running, but not enough to sustain a photography business blog long-term. You won’t find blogging analytics or writer profiles, for example, and there’s no archive or search features either.
That said, you can schedule posts and enjoy the benefits of blog-specific SEO, to help your content get found online, so there are perks!
Pricing: 4.4/5
GoDaddy offers better value than Squarespace, Wix, and SmugMug, with a value for money score of 4.4 out of 5.
There’s a free plan for you to try risk-free, then four price plans ranging from $6.99 to $29.99 per month, when paid annually. We recommend the $13.99 per month Premium plan to start out on, as it gives you better SEO tools and more social integrations than the cheapest plan.
Further Information
- Read our GoDaddy Website Builder Review to find out if this platform has everything you need to succeed
#5. Duda
Best for Polished Web Design
Duda
Best for polished web design
- Ideal for designers
- Plans for multiple sites
- Pricey for what it is
Free trial available
Paid Plans: $14 - $59 / month
Pros
- Impressive responsive designs
- Agency plan for 4 sites
Cons
- Expensive plans and ecom add-on
- No in-built customer login area
- Only a couple of photography templates
Duda is a website builder that was created to make web designers’ lives easier. With this in mind, it’s no surprise it comes with some pretty cool templates with handy features pre-installed.
Duda’s strengths lie in its attractive designs and its ease of use – in fact, it was the only website builder to match Wix’s ease of use score of 4.4 out of 5 in our testing! Duda’s downfall comes with its poor value score – at just 1.4 out of 5, it’s the worst value photography website builder on our list.
If you want a stylish photography portfolio that’s simple to put together – and you don’t mind paying extra for it – then Duda is a good choice. It gives you a good balance between looks and power, but isn’t suitable for photographers on a budget!
Duda Gallery
Click the image below to expand Design: 3.9/5
While there are over 90 templates to choose from in Duda’s library (and every single one is both professionally designed and mobile responsive), there are only three that we identified as a really natural fit for photographers – you can find those in the portfolio section.
You can customize your design, but you don’t get total creative freedom. This reliance on your template can save you time and effort – simply upload your own images, add text, make a few tweaks here and there, and Duda’s designs do the rest of the work for you.
Features: 2.5/5
Duda lets you customize your photography site with widgets. These are like apps that add extra functions to your site – for example, pop-ups, contact forms, and downloadable files are all available for you to install.
Other features include:
- A free image library
- A photo editor
- A mobile editor (so you can manage your portfolio on the go)
Blogging
Duda makes blogging an option, but not a priority – it lacks the powerful features that a blog-centred website needs, but it’s fine for the occasional post.
SEO
Again, Duda nails the SEO basics, but doesn’t go much beyond them. It won’t hold you back from ranking well, but it’s not going to hold your hand to make it a reality, either.
Pricing: 1.4/5
Duda fell down in our research for value for money. In fact, it came bottom of the pile in this department, scoring only 1.4 out of 5. Duda is one of the most expensive builders on our list, with prices starting at $14 per month (billed annually).
- Basic – $14/month (billed annually)
- Team – $22/month (billed annually)
- Agency – $44/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise – custom price
The Basic plan will be fine for a simple photography portfolio, but you unlock extra help and support/marketing features with the more expensive plans.
Further Information
- Duda Review – learn more about Duda’s pros, cons, features, and pricing to find out if it’s the right photography builder for you.
#6. Jimdo
Best Value for Money
Jimdo
Best value for money
- Best value plans
- Helpful ADI setup
- Poor quality features
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $9 - $24 / month
Pros
- Best value photography website builder
- User-friendly, with useful ADI setup
- Dedicated mobile editor
Cons
- Very limited features; not very scalable
- No blogging features provided
- Lack of creative freedom
Jimdo is the best value photography website builder – it has a free plan, and an affordable starting price of just $9 per month (billed annually). Combine this with its user-friendly editor, ADI functionality, and dedicated mobile editor, and you’re looking at a great package!
Although Jimdo won’t give you the most powerful or sleek photography website, it’s perfect for beginners who want a simple site, and value usability and help with branding.
Jimdo Gallery
Click the image below to expand Design: 3/5
Jimdo sits in the middle of the road with its 3 out of 5 score for design functionality. Its ADI setup is similar to GoDaddy’s, making it a quick and easy way to create your site – without the pressure of designing it all yourself.
Our users loved the usability of Jimdo’s editor, which surpassed that of its competitors, and the fact Jimdo helps you build your brand is a great perk for nervous first-time builders.
However, Jimdo’s customization options are extremely limited, which can make trying to create a unique website frustrating rather than enjoyable. With this in mind, we recommend Jimdo if you want to stick closely to your design, rather than trying to personalize it too much yourself.
One last thing to mention is Jimdo’s dedicated mobile editor view, which helps to make your photography look good on all devices!
Features: 1.9/5
Jimdo’s lowest scoring category is its features – if you’re after power or scalability, this isn’t the right photography builder for you.
You won’t find blogging tools or email marketing features, and you can only integrate with Facebook and Instagram. There’s not even an app store for you to add third-party integrations, to make up for Jimdo’s lack of in-house features.
Blogging
There’s not too much to say here , because Jimdo doesn’t provide blogging features. This means it’s unsuitable if you’re looking to run a blog as part of your photography website, or use content marketing to attract more visitors to your website. If blogging is important to you, we don’t recommend Jimdo – you should try Squarespace instead!
SEO
Jimdo covers the basics of SEO to help your photography website rank in search engine results. However, its offering is more limited than competitors such as Wix and Squarespace – for example, it doesn’t have an SEO-specific app or any keyword support.
Pricing: 4.7/5
Jimdo’s standout strength by far is its value for money – it scored 4.7 out of 5 in our research, making it the best value photography builder!
Jimdo has a free plan that you can stay on for as long as you like, as well as two paid plans:
- Start plan: $9 per month, billed annually
- Grow plan: $15 per month, billed annually
Although this doesn’t give you much choice, it does give you great value and a really affordable starting price.
Further Information
- Read our Jimdo Review to find out more about its strengths and weaknesses
What Are Photographers Recommending?
Producing these rankings isn’t a quick process. Here’s how it works:
- We consult with those in the industry to determine what factors are most important to them when building a website
- We give these factors extra ‘weight’ in the scores we’ve created for website builders which have gone through the full research process (including user testing).
By the time we have our final list, we can be confident that each of these platforms will help you develop a website you’re proud of, while each bringing their own strengths to the table.
But we don’t just stop there. As well as continually reviewing the builders we’ve included (looking for shifts in pricing, new features etc.), we want to keep in touch with you, your industry, and what’s working well within it right now.
So before updating this article, I wanted to go back to basics and check in on which platforms photographers like you are using in 2023, and see whether they’re happy with them.
Photographer QnA
My website is my portfolio, helps to land me new clients, and is a place that I can send anyone interested in hiring me to see my prices and services offered. It works as my digital storefront and is invaluable to my photography business.
Other Photography Website Builder Options
While we don’t believe you have to choose a website builder specific to your industry (and in fact, that you may lose out on a high standard of other features when you do!), it’s clear there are some photography-specific platforms worth keeping on our radar. These platforms haven’t been through our full research process yet – many platforms, not so many people! – but it’s on the cards. Watch this space.
1. Format
Format is definitely built with photography portfolios in mind. With plans starting at just $7/month, it’s an affordable option, and the focus on copyrighting and privacy makes it a popular one. It’s clear that photographers feel the small size of this platform makes for a more supportive experience, and we’re very impressed by the template selection. It’s still a little buggy for our liking, but it’s certainly one to watch!
2. Adobe Portfolio
Shout out to Bater & Street for putting this platform firmly on our radar! Free with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, Adobe Portfolio‘s designs can be a bit limiting, but it hooks up seamlessly with your Behance account.
3. Cargo
A small platform with a fresh look, Cargo is best suited to designers, but also comes with some fun photography templates. At $13/month, however, it’s a little pricey.
4. Pixpa
Pixpa is designed exclusively for photographers, comes with slick templates, and starts at just $7/month. We think it still has a way to go before it challenges the likes of Squarespace and Wix, but it has generally positive reviews.
5. Zenfolio
Zenfolio is best-suited to event photographers as it has the option for client logins, and a vast amount of storage. If you’re trying to get new traffic, however, Zenfolio isn’t up to scratch – the SEO functionality is poor, and users complain that the design is unintuitive, too.
How to Pick the Best Photography Website Builder for You
The very best photography builders will:
- Help you showcase your photography
- Provide you with an affordable and scalable professional website
- Be easy to pick up and use
- Be able to store and display hi-resolution photography
- Help you gain more clients and make more money
Use Square Online Checkout Links to make money through your photography website
Do you want to sell pieces of your work through your photography website? If so, Square Online Checkout Links are a cost-effective way of selling a small number of items, rather than setting up a whole online store.
All you do is set up a free Square Online account, which lets you create, then copy and paste checkout buttons onto your photography website. These buttons allow you to take direct payment from visitors, with no costs involved other than a 2.5% transaction fee.
Free, easy, and with minimal hassle, these checkout buttons are the perfect way to monetize your photography website!
Ensure the Builder Brings Out the Best In Your Photography
Website builders make it easy to show off your work and promote your website, so that others can find it to browse and enjoy.
Anyone with a camera and a Flickr account can call themselves a photographer, so it’s really important that your work stands out in a very crowded market.
Our recommended builders provide time-saving templates designed specifically for photographers, which come pre-loaded with great features you can use straight away, such as display galleries or contact pages, or edit as you see fit!
Think of templates as like a recipe. You can use the ingredients exactly as it recommends, or you can make it your own by adding your own creative additions to the mix.
Add Apps
You can also integrate apps that add extra features to your website – just like on your smartphone! These can include additional gallery styles for HD photos, or even social feed integrations for promoting your images across different platforms.
Improve Your SEO
As you know, exposure breeds success (excuse the pun!), which makes building your own website a great way promoting your work. However, if people cannot find you online then you will struggle to generate as much traffic or attention as you might like.
The best website builders for photographers can also help you improve the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your website. This can be super handy for adding ‘meta data’ to your webpages as well as ‘tags’ and ‘alt text’ to images – both of which are important for ranking on Google and improving your visibility in search engine results.
Use an Eye-Catching Template
Using an eye-catching template is an excellent way of creating a professional-looking website in no time at all – combine this with powerful SEO boosting features and you’ll have a website that is more likely to be found by users and ensures that your work grabs attention!
Key Terms
Tags – On-site labels added to photographs that help to sort your images and are useful for visitors who are interested in a certain type of photograph (e.g. mountains, cars, or lightning strikes).
Alt Text – Labels that describe an image to search engines and are handy for SEO indexing of a website (also useful for visually impaired users who are using a screen reader to hear a website aloud).
Meta Data – Descriptive information about your website that helps Search Engines sort, categorize and index it for the relevant search terms.
Best Photography Website Builders: The Verdict
There you have it folks. To recap: we took the most important areas for a photography builder and put each one through our rigorous research process. The areas we paid special attention to were design, SEO, blogging, and ease of use.
Alongside other important areas, such as help and support, value for money, and customer scores, we tested every builder and ranked them.
The 6 Best Website Builders For Photographers Are:
Squarespace is our number one photography website builder, scoring 4.8 out of 5 overall, because it combines stunning designs with powerful features, from SEO to blogging and beyond.
You want your photography to look its best, and Squarespace outperformed its competitors in design, coming in first with an impressive 4.6 out of 5! It also comes top for help and support, which is good to know if you ever need a helping hand.
You get unlimited space and bandwidth (which allows more people to visit your site!) on all Squarespace’s premium plans, and photograph upload speeds are among the quickest we’ve seen, which maintains quality and doesn’t diminish your work.
If you find you love Squarespace’s free trial, we’ve got a treat especially for our readers. Instead of paying full price when you sign up, enter the code WBE at the checkout and enjoy an exclusive 10% off your plan!
Best Website Builders For Photographers: FAQs
Some photographers use sites like WordPress due to their open-source nature but it can have quite a large barrier to entry. There are additionally many photography-focused website builders like SmugMug or Format.
At WBE, we would recommend Squarespace, because it has all of the design-focused qualities and customization you could want from other builders without the unnecessary hassle.
Pick your perfect design template and start uploading your own photos, as well as writing your own text and adding any features you need. For example, you could include a contact form and social media feeds to engage with your visitors!
You’ll then need to sign up to a paid plan for a truly professional photography website, and you’ll be good to click Publish! For a more detailed breakdown, check out our guide on How to Create a Photography Website!
However, WordPress is better for running a photography blog, so if you want a photography portfolio then it’s worth checking out Weebly.
Weebly is another great value option — it has a free plan which comes with stylish templates, strong SEO, and the ability to sell through your website. When it comes to upgrading, Weebly has a cheap starting price of $6 per month. This won’t remove adverts, but it does let you connect a custom domain to your site.
Squarespace lets you sell online from $23 per month, while Weebly actually lets you sell on its free plan, which is pretty rare!
- Use an ecommerce website builder and begin selling your photographs.
- Create a print on demand business, printing your images on various products.
- Sell your images as stock photography on websites like SmugMug Pro and Shutterstock, and you can direct website visitors there too.
- Use Google AdSense to monetize your website traffic with ads.
- Get photography related affiliate links to add to your website content, make sure to only promote products you actually use in your photography work.
- Create an online photography course or membership that can help starting photographers.
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