The Best Website Builders for Photographers
#1 Weblium
#2 Wix
Easy to use editor, excellent price, awesome features.
#3 Site123
#4 Weebly
#5 Strikingly
#6 WordPress
#7 uKit
Comparison Reviews by Industry Experts
For the effectiveness of websites for photographers, it is necessary that they most closely match the target audience, which has no boundaries by age and gender. For the productive and successful promotion of their works, as well as the regular customers flow, photographers need advertising. It is the best way to provide it through your online resource. With it, you can familiarize potential customers with your portfolio, pricing, list of services offered. If you have a talent to capture exciting moments with the camera, then launching a website with photos is probably one of the best things you can do. Let’s consider the best websites for photographers with their pros and cons:
- Wix
- Squarespace
- SmugMug
- Weebly
Wix
When it comes to demonstrate your work on the Internet, everyone thinks that the photographers were lucky: while others are buying pictures on drains, photographers don’t need breathtaking photos, they can add to the site as many of them, as they deem necessary. However, it’s a delusion, and photographers also have difficulty with submitting their work on the Internet. Therefore, they place very high demands on the quality of online platforms. Fortunately, there is Wix, which offers a whole package of solutions so that each of you can independently make a professional portfolio.
Firstly, it’s one of the most popular site builders, which has continuously been updating and offering new features. The users are offered a variety of templates grouped by topic. So, if you catch the moments of a happy couple on camera or your lens aims at capturing the beauty of the landscapes, choose a Wix template or create your design from scratch.
Secondly, there’s a specially developed application by Wix for photographers – Wix Pro Gallery. With its help, the talented specialists can show their work in the best quality and find the examples for inspiration. With this application, they can also protect works from copying. The gallery is where the real art gets on with the author’s style.
Thirdly, there are share buttons available on this kind of platform. So, you can connect the Instagram and Facebook feed to easily and quickly upload all the latest photos to your site.
However, there are some disadvantages. The two out of five most affordable tariff plans offer limited functionality, the premium tarifs cost a lot. At the same time, the cheapest version doesn’t allow to remove the Wix ads. It’s also impossible to choose a short and memorable domain, as well as to connect your mailbox at a free rate.
#8 Wix
Easy to use editor, excellent price, awesome features.Squarespace
Squarespace sees its target audience as photographers and representatives of any small business who need a cool and inexpensive blog or website for photography. Depending on what are you specialized in, the service offers a list of page templates, among which you need to select the one you like and click the ‘Create a similar website’ button.
Firstly, Squarespace has everything you need to create the best website builder for a photographer. It has an intuitive interface, so it is great for photographers with a minimal set of technical knowledge.
Secondly, Squarespace allows you to create a calendar or a list of events on your site and share events in social network profiles. So if you’re planning to conduct a master class or to find new models willing to choose, this option would be suitable for you.
Thirdly, Squarespace provides you with a complete set of marketing tools for searching for new customers and interacting with your audience. This particular website builder helps million of websites to appear at the top of search results.
Last, but not least, collecting information from your visitors through contact and registration forms, applications, and surveys allow you not to lose customers.
However, there are some disadvantages:
- The tariff plans are not cheap;
- If you are accustomed to developing websites by yourself, then you will find a lot of restrictions on the platform;
- The visual editor and previews of galleries are loading very slowly.
#9 Squarespace
SmugMug
SmugMug is a cloud service that provides virtual space for storing photos and videos. The service is designed for professional photographers and provides the ability to create a portfolio site for selling photos.
The main functionality in SmugMug is implemented in the same way as in any other services. Photos are uploaded to albums and, if desired, supplied with keywords and titles. The power of SmugMug is in the wealth of its settings. SmugMug – is a tool for those who shoot professionally or who are very attentive to photos.
Firstly, SmugMug allows you to create ‘smart’ galleries that will be automatically replenished with newly uploaded photos that meet certain conditions – for example, taken in specific periods or particular places. It has a straightforward and convenient photo cataloging system, as the same photo can be stored in several albums divided by subject. An arbitrary number of keywords can describe the gallery.
Secondly, you can select one of a dozen styles of displaying the gallery, show or hide information about the camera or location of the picture, choose one out of the five ways of the sort.
Thirdly, it is possible to secure photos from being copied, or vice versa, either to allow or to prohibit the display of pictures on third-party sites, to give or not to enable the photo print. You can make access to the album only to friends or family, to everyone or selected users. In case of an unexpected situation, you can always recover the lost files – SmugMug automatically creates backup copies of all hosted photo content.
However, the service is entirely unsuitable for those who are looking for a free resource for their images. There are no free tariff plans here. SmugMug also has its problems with processing the video. And what’s more, you can’t ‘favorite’ the pictures as on any other websites for photography.
Weebly
Over the past couple of years, everything has changed so much that even the least technically gifted of us can open a browser and find a website builder that will allow small businesses to set online, where the photo business is not an exception. There are also a number of tutorials on the Youtube on how to start a photography website. Weebly – is one of the most accessible options for making a photography website and quickly develop an excellent page for placing photos there.
Firstly, there’s a grouping of styles and colors. Any photographer can select any color range for each template. There’re up to 10 options, the change of which is immediately displayed in preview. All the templates please with a modern and stylish design. Each of them can be customized at its discretion.
Secondly, the page editing mode supports simple drag-and-drop, which makes it much easier to add new forms and reposition the existing ones. It is also a good option for photographers who like to experiment with their own photography website builder’s interface.
Thirdly, The built-in application store offers several different plug-ins, including convenient tables for the site, counters, picture galleries from social networks, and many other useful tools.
Nevertheless, Weebly is the Western developers’ product. In connection with the dollar rate, the Weebly’s tariff plans are costly for the Russian speaking segment. Despite the built-in application store, there’s a reduced range of apps, and according to reviews on the Web, the majority of them is useless. Though all Weebly templates have an adaptive design, you can’t edit the mobile version separately from the desktop one.
Nowadays, it’s necessary to apply to resources that allow creating a simple photography website spending minimum time. Any of the site builders listed above are perfect both for professional photographers and amateurs, so if you’ve once interested in how to make a photography website, take your chance! All the minor flaws of the platforms given fade against the background of the overall power and convenience in usage. You’ll pay for the quality of the site and pleasant impressions from the self-developing of the platform. Moreover, all the site builders are adopted for a further promotion that increases your chances to outrun the competitors and to succeed in your photography business. In case you’re very concerned about keeping control over the development of your website then photography website builders are better than all-round website builders.
