Best website builder for artists: Make the World Wide Web work for your art

Do you realize what kind of immense possibilities does the World Wide Web offers to all the artists? For who, if not for the artists’ the world wide web is so beneficial! Arranging your exhibition in real life can be difficult and troublesome business, and only a very limited circle can visit it. But online without any troubles, you can immediately show your masterpiece to the whole world! Isn’t it a very good idea to get new free visitors, to sell more paintings, once again catch the eye of the press...? It’s not even an idea, but a treasure! Are you still thinking that the process of creation is painstaking work, which requires the help of specialists and large cash investments?

We have some good news for you. You don't need a developer or a great amount of money to have your site. Now you can do all this on your own, quickly and at a high level. All you need is a site the builder and some inspiration of course.

Website Builder is a great tool for creating a website without any knowledge of software languages. The website builder allows any artist to create a full-fledged working resource for different tasks as quickly as possible, without the help of developers, depending on your needs and wishes. Still thinking about how to create an artist website? You don’t need to work hard on it, most often, all the artist will need to do is choose a template from the gallery of ready-made templates. Then you just need to fill it with up-to-date information, upload photos, other necessary content. What you get is a fully working resource that will provide users with information about the artist and his art, as well as attract new visitors.

Isn't it great? Of course, it is, because after spending just a few minutes of time and absolutely for free, the artist can create own representation on the Internet. Choose from hundreds of website builders and just do it. To make it easier for you, we did our best. Stand by for our Top 10 most convenient site builders for artists. Now read the article, choose the platform and build your own artist website.

How to Choose a Website Builder for Artist 

One day you will say to yourself: The time has come, I am a matured artist, and I need a personal website for my creative personality.

How to create a top-rated website for the artist? Building an artist website nobody wants it to be just a beautiful picture on the Internet. The website which will really work for the artist is to bring profit and popularity.

The artist doesn’t need to know the language of HTML, does not have to worry about the lack of experience; does not think about the promotion of the site and other unnecessary difficulties that are not related to the main work of the artist. It is enough to choose the correct site builder.

You do not have to pay for anything, because such large servers often give the possibility to create free websites for artists. Everything is already done for you. It’s a huge advantage that the artist doesn’t need to invest a lot of money in something he had never tried before.

Many artists note the complete uselessness of their own site. They will willingly agree that the site does not bring them any fame, no additional sales, that the site’s benefits are the same as those of the business card: to show people what you are, to give artist coordinates to a stranger, to show a friend your new works, etc. Having a website is something prestigious, but no more than that. So choosing a platform for the first site building experience check how much does the platform offer for free. Will that functionality be enough for your project?

To choose the best website builder resource for the artist, let us remember first, why the idea to start a website came to your mind. 

Build your own artist website to place your artworks

A personal site is a tool for artist promotion, but talking about the art we cannot call it just a business project. It is necessary to create a special atmosphere on your site to make it an enjoyable experience for the visitors. The design of the artist website should emphasize in every way your unique artistic style.

The most important part of the artist's site is the gallery. Paintings are the property of the artist, and the sale of paintings – his main source of artist income. Therefore, a personal site is to create all the conditions for a potential buyer could easily find and see all the artworks. Make sure you can find a template to place all your artwork and all the necessary information. Pay attention that customization opportunities can be quite limited.

 Get more visitors

Any site without visitors is an unnecessary set of pages. Every day the art market is expanding more and more, making it harder to promote artist popularity and recognition. Modern search engines are millions of users, complex algorithms and huge amounts of data. When a visitor searches for something, a page with millions of sites is formed. How to make sure that visitors find YOUR resource among the other artist sites? The task of SEO is to bring the site to the top of the list of requests to increase sales, awareness, image, etc. So if you want to attract a new audience - pay attention to the SEO tools offered by website builder platform.

Sell your works

Speaking of sales it is very important to give visitors the opportunity to buy the artist’s works online. Maybe you want to give the possibility of non-cash payment so that the buyer can fill out a special form on the site, and send the money using one of the payment systems. Some sites provided and the possibility of selling paintings through the Internet for cash, if suddenly the buyer is not good with modern means of payment. 

Make sure you can find the most suitable way of payment for you and your buyers. Pay attention to e-commerce tools offered by the platform you are going to use for the artist website.

Stay in touch with your visitors

The contact information block will help interested people to contact the artist and order paintings from him. The more contacts, the better: indicate the phone number, Viber, e-mail and Instagram page.

We know the artist can get too many questions. People may wonder about your ideas, your future exhibitions, the prices, etc. Do not forget to answer the questions sent to the mail in time; get ready that they may be the most unexpected - for example: is it possible to get direct sunlight on the picture; where better to hang it - in the bedroom or living room, and so on. Indicate on the website whether it is possible to return the purchase.

Be sure to post on the site your e-mail and phone number or maybe you want to place a feedback form?

There are plenty of tools and advanced options on how the artist can keep in touch with site visitors. Choose which social network works for you and make sure the website builder platform will not limit communication between the artist and the site visitors.

Choosing The Best Website Builder for Artists – What to Look for? 

1.   Create your artist website with Wix

Wix is a well known and super popular site constructor. It was released by Israel company in 2006. Wix is number 1 in the list of the best artist website builders. Wix is all you need to create something really inspiring. It offers wide customization opportunities. If you have no time for customization – no worries its Wix who has the best templates you can find. All templates offered by the Wix team are of high quality and well designed. You will definitely find the one for yourself. Right after registration, you get a free Wix plan. It offers hundreds of templates for free. So if you don’t need premium advanced option it can be the best free website builder for artists.  Any element on the site can be customized in order to create the best websites for artists. In this regard, the service gives to the real artist a feeling of freedom, similar to what the artist experiences when he paints a picture. There are a lot of opportunities here, and they are waiting for you. In Wix, you can work as in Photoshop - quickly and efficiently, if you know what, where and how to do it. Wix includes hosting, provides with a mobile version and has a basic set of features for building a site with free Wix domain. It is really worth trying.

Pros:

•    International trustworthy project;

•    Template customization;

•    Best website templates for artists;

•    Wide range of functionality;

•    Wix Art to show, sell and print your art;

•    Clear and user-friendly drag-and-drop interface;

•    All options and widgets are explained;

•    Good knowledge base;

•    Wix Blog to connect your blog to the site;

•    Wix logo maker – if you want to create your logo;

•    SEO-master for website promotion;

•    Visual editor;

•    Detailed FAQ.

Cons:

•    The overloaded interface may be the problem for beginners;

•    You can spoil the template using unlimited customization opportunities;

•    You can’t switch template after the site was published;

•    Expensive and incomprehensible division of premium plans;

•    The Support answers are not helpful.

Pricing:

•    Connect Domain - $3.75-5.95 / mo;

•    Combo - $7.58-10.95 / mo;

•    Unlimited - $11.41-15.95 / mo;

•    eCommerce - $14.79-19.90 / mo;

•    VIP - $23-30 / mo.

2. Enjoy creating the artist website with Squarespace

We looked at about 30 site builders for artists, and Squarespace is the second of 10 best website platforms for artists that claim to be perfect (after the Wix). Squarespace is a powerful and beautiful system and is definitely worth your attention. SquareSpace is an American website builder focused on creating artist websites such as blogs and portfolios. It is also a commercial platform for the sale of goods and services, including digital. The platform does not require special knowledge in website building and is intuitive. To get acquainted with the functionality of the system SquareSpace offers a trial period of two weeks.

Pros:

●    Free Google and Typekit fonts;

●    Sale of digital goods (can be your photos or digital artworks);

●    Beautiful layouts wilt look equally good on any devices;

●    Free domain in the zone. Com;

●    Good technical support.

Cons:

●    Customization restrictions;

●    The visual editor and previews of galleries are very slow. 

Pricing:

●    Personal - from $12

●    Business - from $18

●    BASIC Commerce - from $26

●    ADVANCED Commerce - $40

3. Why Weebly is one of the best website platforms for artists

Weebly is a website building service launched by the American team in 2007. The platform allows you to create an artist website with a few clicks only. Designers offer a great number of quality layouts that look attractive and really up-to-date. You get access to the whole screen

Images, carefully selected fonts, nice colors are the key features of templates kindly offered

by the Weebly team to their creative customers. It’s easy to edit them in the visual editor if you need an individual design. It is a convenient and simple tool for creating an artist website portfolio or an art shop.

Pros:

•    Template preview;

•    The template can be changed at any time;

•    Enough customization settings;

•    Good online store functionality;

•    Tools to export and import goods, setting;

•    Built-in promotion tools;

•    Statistics on automatic mailing results.

Cons:

•    A limited selection of themes;

•    Full online store functionality available for the Business plan only;

•    Starter and Pro Weebly charge a commission of 3% from each transaction;

•    Minimal SEO tools.

Pricing:

•    Free plan - $0;

•    Connect - $5-7; 

•    Pro - $12-18;

•    Business - $25-35;

•    Business Plus - $38-46.

4.    Sell your artworks with free Shopify website builder platform

Shopify is a highly promoted e-commerce brand in the west. The company's headquarters is located in Ontario, Canada. The site builder was launched in 2004 and became one of the most successful startups in its niche at that time. According to the developers, more than 200,000 clients use their platform. So if you want a site to sell your artworks it’s probably exactly what you looking for – a trustworthy international platform for e-commerce. 

Even a very beginner can easily create a store and start to sell with Shopify.

Pros:

•    Supports augmented reality, which looks impressive;

•    Works with Google Pay and sales through social networks;

•    Beautiful templates,

•    Wide design customization opportunities;

•    Shopify POS to sell offline;

•    Unlimited products for all plans;

•    Powerful analytical and marketing tools;

•    Rich built-in application store;

•    Effective marketing tools: discount codes and gift certificates etc.

Cons:

•    The commission is charged when making sales;

•    All advanced features come with the high price;

•    No phone support for non-English speaking countries.

Pricing:

•    Basic Shopify - $29 / mo;

•    Shopify - $79 / mo;

•     Advanced Shopify - $299 / mo.

5.    Create a mobile-friendly artist website with Duda

Duda is a website editor that focuses on responsive design for mobile phones and is particularly suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. In 2010, Itai Sadan and Amir Glatt, entrepreneurs and fans of "The Dude" movie founded Duda, The main idea was to create a mobile web-friendly solution for everyone. Today the company doesn’t focus only on a mobile solution, but a full-fledged site builder for various devices. Even your mom could make a website easy and simple now it’s your turn.

Based in Palo Alto, Duda hosts over five million websites and ranked 185th in the fastest-growing annual US private companies. Duda, on the other hand, is a breath of fresh air. The service truly deserves a chance, especially for the advanced e-commerce and website customization features, which are also available for the free plan. 

Pros:

•    Good tools for working with customers;

•    Personalize the site for each site visitor;

•    Multilingual site;

•    Mobile-friendly layouts;

•    Special widgets: reviews, analytics, gallery, image effects, etc;

•    A library of over 1000 icons;

•    Customer Support via phone, email, chat;

•    Valid e-commerce;

•    Excellent options for SEO management;

•    The quantity and quality of the provided features.

Cons:

•    Noticeable delay in the preview of the templates;

•    Some experience working with site builders is necessary;

•    The editor is a bit slow.

Pricing:

•    Basic - $14 / mo;

•    Team - $22 / mo

•    Agency - $74 / mo;

•    Custom plan - for customers with hundreds or thousands of websites under management

6.    Use Jimdo creator to build websites for artists

We also recommend Jimdo to build an artist website. «Pages for the People!» - say the founders of Jimbo Matthias Henze, Christian Springub and Fridtjof Detzner. The story is pretty simple 3 friends developers decided to create a platform where everybody would be able to create a site. The process of mastering Jimdo is quite simple. For a quick understanding of the principles of the system, it is enough to go to the Online Help tab, where the important points of working with the platform are presented. You can create an artist personal blog, business card, portfolio, business portal, online store.

Pros:

•   Work on your artist site from a phone on iOS or Android platform also offline;

•    Set the custom domain name;

•    Installation of ad units for earnings;

•    Promotion recommendations;

•    Email address with a domain name;

•    Unlimited choice of templates on different topics;

•    Good for the creation of photo galleries;

•    Built-in statistics, SEO-program for search engines;

•    Good Technical support;

•    Installation of several languages on the site;

•    Add Youtube videos, Flicks images and RSS news feeds;

•    Forum;

•    Send invitations to friends to other network accounts;

•    Informing via Newsfeed about changes to the page.

•    Adv free.

Cons:

•    Limited free plan options;

•    No mobile-friendly site design in the free plan;

•    No Search Engine Optimization features for the free plan;

•    Only yearly payment;

•    Poorly designed templates with a limited choice;

•    No restore options.

Pricing

•    PLAY - $0 / mo;

•    START - $9 / mo;

•    GROW - $15 / mo;

•    eCommerce - $19 / mo;

•    UNLIMITED - $39 / mo.

 

7. Create artist’s online gallery on SmugMug 

If you want to create just a nice photo gallery for an artist then the best solution for you is SmugMug. SmugMug is not really a site builder but a kind of online photo storage, something like Tumblr, but for authoring photos. The SmugMug gives a great opportunity for artists - the ability to sell photos right through the site. You need to select the option For Professionals, and then put up the price of the photo. The service promises to take on all legal aspects, take care of protecting artist copyright and provide around the clock support, if, selling photos for you is a new thing.

Pros:

•    Unlimited photo and video uploads;

•    Responsive design;

•    Free mobile app;

•    Fully hosted;

•    No limits for traffic;

•    The ability to sell photos directly through the site;

•    SEO tools.

Cons:

•    Good for creating a gallery only.

Pricing

•    Basic - $48 / year or $5.99 monthly;

•    Power - $72 / year or $8.99 monthly;

•    Portfolio - $180 /year or $23.99 monthly;

•    Pro - $360 /year or $41.99 monthly.

8. Build your artist website with Wordpress

If you ask people how to build an artist website, most of them will probably answer-  Wordpress.  WordPress is the most popular content management system. According to Web Technology Surveys, as of November 2018, 32.3% of the total number of existing sites are working on this engine. WordPress is distributed under an open license agreement. You are free to use this product for any purpose, including commercial. WordPress is often about blogging. However, the engine is much more powerful than you think - with its help the artist can create anything - an online store, personal blog, website, information portal, multimedia gallery. Even big brands use WordPress.  

Wordpress has a good content management functionality. You add multimedia content using the drag-and-drop interface, create image galleries, set up a schedule for posting at certain times of the day, and add cool widgets to change the sidebar. And it's all is possible without a single intervention in the code.

Pros:

•    Trustworthy;

•    Unlimited possibilities;

•    Flexible customization of design and functionality;

•    Free templates;

•    Easy administration;

•    Many templates.

Cons:

•    Can be hard for beginners to set advanced functionality;

•    Plugins needed for advanced options;

•    Good for blogs mostly.

Pricing:

•    Blogger - $3/ month, billed yearly;

•    Personal - $5 per month, billed yearly;

•    Premium - $8 per month, billed yearly;

•    Business - $25 per month, billed yearly;

•    eCommerce - $45 per month, billed yearly.

9. Make the best artist website on Pixpa

Pixpa – is exactly what you can call “Website builder for artists”. It’s a platform founded in 2013 in India The system is something special created for creatives and artists – those, who need beautiful and inspiring portfolios, personal and business websites, blogs, online stores to present their works to potential customers.

Many photographers, artists, painters, sculptors, illustrators choose Pixpa as an artist website builder to promote their artworks.

Pros:

•    Created for creatives and artists;

•    Easy to use a visual editor;

•    A powerful eCommerce engine;

•    Good build-in blogging tools;

•    Customizable Contact form builder;

•    Social media friendly;

•    30-day money-back guarantee.

Cons:

•    Limited design customization opportunities;

•    No image editing options.

Pricing:

•    START - $ 6 /month billed Annually

•    GROW - $ 9 /month billed Annually

10. Build your own artist website with Gator

Gator is an American site builder for those who have never done coding and is not going to do it. It offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor and a nice template to create an artist website.

Pros:

•    User-friendly interface;

•    Good editing tools;

•    Mobile-friendly templates;

•    e-commerce tools;

•    Customer support via phone, LiveChat, or Email 24/7/365;

•    Priority support for the Premium and eCommerce;

•    45 days money back refund;

•    Preview;

•    Good social media integration.

Cons:

•    No trial period;

•    Not suitable for big websites;

•    Limited variety of template designs.

Pricing

•    Starter - Starting at $3.84 / month;

•    Premium - Starting at $5.99 / month;

•    eCommerce - Starting at $9.22 / month.

Conclusion 

Need an artist gallery? – Create it!

It is very expensive to organize your own art gallery or rent it, so many artists, and especially beginners, cannot afford that kind of thing. The artist's site can become his personal gallery, which is inexpensive and, moreover - available day and night, anywhere in the world! Just a few minutes of using the service - and you will have a professional resource ready for work and business. All you have to do is fill it with all the text information, photos and other content you need. Over time, your site should grow, traffic will increase, and the number of customers and

then you may need even more features that you can get by switching to a premium rate. But note that most site builders provide the opportunity to use all the functionality for free during the trial period or limited functionality for free for an unlimited time. A well-known artist site

will be useful for presenting artworks, informing about future exhibitions. And for an artist who has not yet earned a "loud" name, the site will be an additional way to declare itself, as it is known that on the Internet a huge number of people from around the world are looking for the goods and services they need.

Invest in art, not in code

Usually hiring a developer to make an artist website using HTML can cost from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. Add expenses for hosting and site maintenance and you will have to spend a great sum. Spend this money better on marketing or invest in your art. Hiring developers to create a large HTML website can make sense if you have a really serious business, where functionality is important. If you really need something that any site builder resource cannot give without additional investments - site builders are suitable for everything else the artist needs.

World Wide Web is waiting for your artworks

Creating the artist website on-site builder platform is an opportunity to quickly and free of charge organize sales of artworks and services on the Internet, to tell the world about yourself.

Try to create an artist's website and perhaps this will be a new stage of your creative career.

The main thing - remember that the presence of the artist on the Internet these days is not a fashion, but a vital need to promote their creativity and to sell artworks.