Best Website Builder for Artists

The right picture frame can make a painting truly stand out. In the same way, digital art looks great when it can be seen on a website with a compatible format and color scheme.

However, not every artist is a coder. You don’t want to start from scratch when picking out a website to highlight your strengths as an artist, so opting for a website builder for beginners is the natural move. Most artists are looking for a simple, easy-to-use service that can give them a unique, expressive site to display their work.

That’s what our research team prioritized when ranking these website builders for artists. Read on to find out which providers offer the best design elements, the widest range of templates, and – for those selling art – the right ecommerce tools.

In this guide:

• Best Website Builders for Showcasing and Selling Art
• How to Make a Free Artist Website
• How We Rate the Best Website Builders for Artists
• Verdict: What is the best website builder for artists?
• Frequently Asked Questions

Take our quiz to get tailored matches to the best website builder for your artistic needs

Best Website Builders for Showcasing and Selling Art

To rate these website builders, we focused on their design functionality for our in-depth research, since this functionality impacts how the website actually looks to your visitors. The right design for you is one that highlights your unique art style. So, the right website builder is one that has the design flexibility to do just that.

Here are the top website builders for showcasing and selling art:

• Squarespace – Best for stylish templates
• Wix – Best general purpose website builder
• Shopify – best for selling art online
• GoDaddy – Best for easy set up
• Hostinger – best for businesses on a budget
• Webflow – best for advanced design

1. Squarespace

• Best for stylish templates
• Price range: $16 to $52 per month

According to our research, Squarespace is the best website builder for showcasing art, due to its great design elements and a wide range of 100+ templates to make sure that your art is seen at its best.

Many artists prefer a minimalistic, white-space-heavy website in order to better highlight their art, and you’ll easily find this aesthetic with a Squarespace template. In addition, the service offers design tools that can be used to further tweak a template to create a one-of-a-kind site just for you.

Another reason we rated this provider as the best website builder for artists: A strong user experience built on plenty of accessibility tools and step-by-step tutorials. You won’t need to be an expert to complete the creation of the website itself. Plus, the service has analytics that deliver metrics, such as how many visitors are viewing your art and what sites or Google searches have led them to you.

Squarespace doesn’t offer the speediest websites: It tailed behind providers like Wix and GoDaddy in our site speed analysis. In addition, while it has pretty good ecommerce tools and great marketing features, Wix and Shopify offer more robust options for those focused on selling art. On the whole, though, it’s a great provider for creating a beautiful art-forward website.

Check out our Squarespace pricing guide for more information

Squarespace for Artists

Squarespace has 21 templates within its”Art & Design” template subcategory. You’ll be able to custom-fit any of these templates to your own favorite color palette by heading to your dashboard and navigating to:

• Design > Colors > Edit Palette

Click the “Designer Palettes” button, and you’ll be able to pick from a range of pre-set palettes, as well. This area also allows you to pull a custom color from one of your own artworks or enter a specific Hex color code in the #00000 format.

The Squarespace color editor gives users control over their website color palette. Source: Squarespace

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace offers four different pricing plans, with varying costs and features.

The $16-per-month Personal plan provides all the basics of a paid website builder plan, like custom domain, unlimited bandwidth, SSL security certification, and all the template you could want — although no ecommerce support. The $23-per-month Business plan adds basic ecommerce features with a 3% transaction fee, and more customization and analytics.

The $28-per-month Basic Commerce plan has more ecommerce tools including customer profiles, product reviews, the ability to sell on social channels, and no extra transaction fees. Finally, the $52-per-month Advanced Commerce plan adds abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping, and the ability to sell subscriptions.

2. Wix

• The best general purpose website builder
• Price range: $16 to $159 per month (plus a free plan)

Wix has the best user experience of any builder that our researchers tested, with the most features and more than 1,000 templates that you can customize to fit your needs. All those strengths add up to make it our top pick overall for the average person who needs a website. When it comes to artist-focused sites, we ranked Squarespace at the top for its design elements, but Wix remains one of the most solid overall choices.

Wix’s wealth of features include tools for handling common website needs: SEO, marketing, and support for blogging and booking, among others. It offers a lot of integrations as well, with over 300 options available in its online App Market.

Selling your art through Wix is also easy and cost-effective, with basic ecommerce tools available starting at the $29 per month plan.

There’s one drawback to the service. Once you’ve locked in your template, you won’t be able to update to a different one without the hassle of reassigning your domain. For artists, this may be a challenge, since the right template is a key element in drawing attention to your artwork. That’s really the only downside compared to the likes of Squarespace, though, so if you’re surefooted when it comes to these kinds of decisions, we highly recommend Wix.

Check out our Wix review for more information, or see our Wix vs. Squarespace comparion.

Wix for Artists

Wix offers 60 different templates within its “Creative Arts” category, and even includes templates specific to magicians, acting schools and theater companies. The builder’s support for blog posts is flexible, allowing each post to serve as a showcase for a specific visual artwork, or you could go for quality over quantity and opt for a single giant artwork to serve as your landing page instead.

Wix for Artists

Wix offers 60 different templates within its “Creative Arts” category, and even includes templates specific to magicians, acting schools and theater companies. The builder’s support for blog posts is flexible, allowing each post to serve as a showcase for a specific visual artwork, or you could go for quality over quantity and opt for a single giant artwork to serve as your landing page instead.

The Wix drag and drop editor is one big reason why the builder is so easy to use. Source: Wix

3. Shopify

• Best for selling art online
• Price range: $29 to $299 per month

Some artists just need a website to serve as an internet welcome mat that makes them easy to contact. However, other artists are hoping to sell prints, original canvases, or coffee mugs with their illustrations on them. Those artists should opt for Shopify.

Shopify stands out in our research as the best website builder for selling art for its impressive sales features and its multichannel integrations. With these features, artists can make their product catalog available at online marketplaces including Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, and eBay.

The service also lets you reach customers through social channels like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, and you can integrate your website sales with in-person sales at a store or market stall.

Shopify’s design customization tools aren’t as complex as Wix or Squarespace, so artists won’t have quite as much control over the look of their website. Still, the ecommerce networks that Shopify opens up to users with the right integrations can serve to bring in plenty of customers.

Shopify for Artists

Artists can fine-tune their website colors, white space, or other layout settings from within their Shopify admin dashboard. More advanced options are also available. Users can fiddle with their website code by heading to:

• Actions > Edit code > Assets

You won’t need to be a coder to figure out the system, however, and there are plenty of online tutorials to help you figure out anything that isn’t immediately obvious. The real draw for artists, however, are all the ecommerce integrations, which can boost SEO and audiences to the customers you need.

Third-party integrations like this Instagram sale extension help you reach new audiences and direction them to your Shopify site. Source: Shopify

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers five different pricing plans with a range of varying features and functionalities for your online store. One of the primary differences between the pricing plans — Starter, Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Plus — is that the transaction rates differ from plan to plan. This could end up saving you money in the long run, if you take note of how they affect your business.

The standard Shopify plan is our most recommended option, as it comes with a lot of features and discounts while keeping the price relatively low for your business.

Check out our full Shopify review.

4. GoDaddy

• Best for easy setup
• Price range: $10.99 to $20.99 per month (plus a free plan)

GoDaddy prioritizes simplicity and low starting costs, making it great for artists that need keep it simple. It’s one of the most affordable options on this list with a $10.99-per-month starting cost, although you’ll have to pay at least $20.99 per month if you want access to ecommerce features to sell your art.

Compared to the likes of Squarespace, GoDaddy templates lack a lot of customization. You can pick a template, but you won’t be able to modify much about it, and there’s no option for easily adding any custom code. Even the templates themselves are fairly similar, with one large splash image for the homepage. Plus, they’re not mobile-responsive.

GoDaddy’s appeal lies in how easy it is to get started with. If you want to set up a simple website with little to no further investment required for operating it, GoDaddy is a great builder for you.

Check out our GoDaddy review for more information

GoDaddy for Artists

GoDaddy’s restrictive templates don’t give artists a lot of leeway to get creative.

For those selling art, GoDaddy ecommerce plans are a double-edged sword: On one hand, they are quite affordable compared to other options on this list, but on the other hand, they barely offer the basics. Email recipts can’t be customized, and GoDaddy’s ecommerce websites shuttle users to a third-party website for the checkout process.

GoDaddy’s website editor in action on a live website. Source: GoDaddy

GoDaddy Pricing

GoDaddy has three plans, starting with Basic for $10.99 per month. This plan gives users a custom domain, SSL security certification, and marketing analytics, but just 100 email sends per month.

The $14.99-per-month Premium expands email sends to 25,000 a month, and adds support for Facebook ads and online payments. Finally, the $20.99-per-month Commerce plan adds ecommerce tools, including an online store with unlimited products, gift cards, and auto-calculated sales taxes.

You can get a free plan with GoDaddy as well: If you try a free trial of Basic, you can keep using the features after your trial is up. The big downside is a banner ad for GoDaddy that you won’t be able to get rid off without upgrading to a paid plan.

There’s a “hidden fee” worth mentioning, however: When you renew your annual GoDaddy plan after the first year, you’ll be paying higher prices. Basic renews for the equivalent of $12.99 per month, Premium will be $22.99 per month, and Commerce will be $26.99 per month.

5. Hostinger

• Best for businesses on a budget
• Price range: $2.99 to $9.99 per month

With the most affordable starting costs in this guide, Hostinger is clearly the budget choice on the list. Unfortunately, what it has in affordability it makes up for with limited functionality, with a feature catalog that can’t match website builders like Wix and Squarespace.

Still, from an artist’s perspective, Hostinger offers more templates than you’d expect and ecommerce features are available at the low starting point, so you really can’t ask for a more affordable option. In addition, storage space starts at 100GB, which is far higher than any similarly priced plans, and SSL certificates are included.

However, if you want to scale down the line, it’s going to be a lot easier with other providers, as Hostinger is pretty limiting for larger site.

Check out our Hostinger review for more information

Hostinger for Artists

Hostinger offers simple websites that work well for an artist’s personal blogs or a small artwork showcase. As long as you aren’t invested in adding the latest widgets and extras, and you just want an inexpensive “storefront” style website to display your artwork, Hostinger will fit the bill.

That said, Hostinger offers AI tools for building new websites and an AI logo generator that can create your company branding from scratch. It’s a good pick for those who want a guiding hand while putting together a design that’s all their own.

The Hostinger editor can be accessed on the web, desktop, tablet, or mobile device. Source: Hostinger

Hostinger Pricing

Hostinger has two shared hosting plans. Premium costs $2.99 per month, and includes a free domain, more than 100 templates, an SSL certificate, ecommerce tools, and storage capped at an impressive 100GB. The other plan, Business, costs $3.99 per month, and adds faster performance, daily data backups, and a 200GB storage cap. Both plans come with 24/7 customer support.

You can buy 48 months of hosting for the intial prices listed above, but when you renew, prices will rise: You’ll pay $7.99 per month when renewing Premium, and $8.99 per month when renewing Business.

Check out our comparison page pitting Hostinger vs Wix.

6. Webflow

• Best for advanced design
• Price range: $14 to $39 per month (plus a free plan)

Webflow is a popular website builder for artists that know web design, since it offers a highly customizable editor that can serve to create a beautiful, artistic website – but one that requires design knowledge.

The platform is a great fit for artists that refuse to reduce themselves to the one-size-fits-all demands of a builder like GoDaddy. However, all those tailor-made options can make Webflow overwhelming for those with less patience for the learning curve that comes with constructing their own designs.

If you have a lot of ideas about the design of your website and analysis paralysis won’t bug you, Webflow is the website builder to go for.

Webflow for Artists

The service leans heavily on third-party integrations, thanks to a wide community of web designers who are interest in generating their own widgets. That’s a benefit if you trust the community, but a potential downside if you’re concerned about potential security risks from unknown third party code. Either way, you won’t need to learn any code yourself to take advantage of the builder’s impressive visual editor.

Here’s a look at the Webflow design dashboard. Complex enough? Source: Webflow

Webflow Pricing

Webflow has three paid non-ecommerce plans, and three more paid options for ecommerce.

The $14-per-month Basic plan includes a custom domain and supports a decent 50 GB bandwidth, but does not offer a website search bar. You’ll get the search bar with the $23-per-month CMS plan, along with the CMS access needed to support blogging, API access, and a 200 GB bandwidth cap. The $39-per-month Business plan raises the bandwidth cap to 400 GB along with some more advanced tools.

The eCommerce plans start with the $29-per-month Standard plan, which supports up to 500 products sold with a 2% transaction fee. The $74-per-month Plus plan removes the transaction fee and allows up to 5,000 products, while the $212-per-month Advanced plan suports 15,000 products.

Along with Wix, Webflow is one of the few top website builders to offer a permanent free plan, although it comes with limitations that seem aimed at turning away anyone hoping for a professional image online: The free plan only supports a website with two webpages and will only accept 1,000 visitors per month.

What’s the Best Free Website for Artists?

Three of the website builders listed in this guide offer permanent free plans: Wix, Godaddy, and Webflow. However, as with any free website service, both of these plans come with feature limitations.

Wix is likely the best free option for most artists, but it comes with two big downsides. First, it displays Wix ads on your website, which undermines a professional image, and second, it won’t support a custom URL, which will make it more difficult for those using search engines to find your website in the first place.

Webflow’s free plan also lacks custom URLs, but includes even more restrictions: Website visitors are capped at just 1,000 per month and the site itself can only have two webpages. Meanwhile, GoDaddy’s free plan limits email sends to 100 per month and includes an unreplaceable banner ad.

Other cheap website builders we’ve reviewed also provide free options. You’ll see similar limitations for them, however: Some lack custom URLs, while others have very limited options for templates or designs.

How to Choose a Website Builder to Sell or Showcase Art

Artists looking for a website builder should take a look at this list and identify which elements are most important to them:

• Ease of Use vs. Customizability: Some website builders are easy because they offer limited options, like GoDaddy. Others are difficult to use, but support the made-to-order website you envision, like Webflow. Where are your needs on this sliding scale? If they’re in the middle, Wix or Squarespace might be best.
• Ecommerce vs. Showcase: Some artists are just trying to establish a presence on the internet, while others have an audience hoping to buy their prints and tote bags. If you don’t yet have that audience, opt for a non-ecommerce website, because you can always switch to a pricier ecommerce option down the road.
• Budget Range: No one wants to pay more than they have to. Are you happiest with a simple, static website that shows off your work? Or do you want to make sure you make the best impression possible, even if it costs an extra $20 a month?

Those are the most divisive issues, but there are a few remaining odds and ends worth mentioning. First, you may need to consider what types of integrations will be most helpful for you, from social media plugins to SEO tools. Your customer support needs might vary as well.

Finally, you might want to keep an eye on scalability, which refers to how large an audience the website builder will support, should your website vistors keep increasing.

How do artists get noticed online?

Building an online audience is a challenge with no clear answer. Some artists find success on Instagram or TikTok, either by steadily building a small following, or by riding the wave of a few viral posts. Others get their name out with paid gigs first, with online success following later. Whatever the case, you’ll eventually want a professional website to serve as a showcase for your art.

Methodology – How We Rate the Best Website Builders

Tech.co’s in-house team of impartial researchers and analysts put ten website builder products to the test across 251 areas of investigation. To do so, we established a website builder testing methodology that scores each product in six main categories of investigation and 33 subcategories, covering everything from customer feedback to design, ease of use, and more.

Those six core research categories, in a nutshell, cover: Website features, website design, customer opinions, ease of use, value for money, and help and support.

When it comes to calculating a product’s final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are simply “nice to have.” After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs.

Frequently Asked Questions