Best Website Builders for Photographers

After several rounds of extensive testing, we found that Squarespace is the best service that any photographer could use, with Wix a close second. Both providers will let you build a stunning site to host photos on.

Squarespace has the best website templates in the game, is incredibly easy to use and no coding knowledge is required, and the customer support offered is unmatched in the industry – plus, unlimited storage means you can upload tons of photos without an issue.

However, Wix is a brilliant alternative – it has a huge selection of templates and website features, plus loads of discounts to take advantage of.

In this guide, we'll cover:

• Best Website Builders for Photographers – We round up the best online tools for creatives
• Free Website Builders for Photographers – You can build a site for free, but there are a number of reasons you shouldn't
• FAQs – We answer all your most pressing questions about photography website builders

Best Website Builders for Photographers

These are the best website builder tools we recommend if you’re looking to display your photography portfolio. Each one has great templates and brilliant gallery options.

1. Squarespace – The go-to website builder for creatives, with beautiful designs and unlimited storage for all your projects.
2. Wix – The best website builder overall, and it has some brilliant photographer-specific features as well – it's just not quite as good as Squarespace for this task.
3. Smugmug – A less well-known provider with some fantastic photography-focused features.
4. GoDaddy – Has a range of brilliant photography-specific features, and is super simple to use.
5. Duda –  Makes it super easy to make a well-polished website, but costs a fair amount.

Squarespace

Best For: Modern design, advanced customization
Pricing From: $12/month (billed annually)
Free Plan: No
Free Trial: Yes

Squarespace Overview

Squarespace 113 templates – which might seem low compared to a provider like Wix – but they're gorgeous, well-crafted and in turn ideal for photographers who want a stunning backdrop for their pictures.

All the templates Squarespace offers are developed in-house by the provider. This means that you won't experience any coding or compatibility issues with the templates, unlike with some third-party created templates. They'll work seamlessly with any apps or plugins you install and, what's more, all of Squarespace's templates are mobile-optimized, meaning that they'll look great on phones, tablets, or computers.

Squarespace's scored higher than any other website builder we tested when it came to providing genuinely useful customer support.

Squarespace is a top-tier website builder when it comes to being easy to use. It's a functional and straightforward website builder and the fact it takes a minimalist approach.

“I felt like the page still looked good, no matter what I added to it, which was vastly different to Wix” one person that took part in our website builder user testing remarked.

Storage and bandwidth

Squarespace offers unlimited storage on all of its plans. This means that you won't be restricted on the number of photos or other content you put on your site.

The unlimited bandwidth, on the other hand, is perhaps even more important. Bandwidth is the amount of data your website can send to users in a given amount of time. With limited bandwidth, there's a chance that, if you exceed your monthly limit, your site might be suspended until the next month rolls along, or be inaccessible to some users. With Squarespace's unlimited bandwidth, however, this simply won't happen.

Squarespace pricing

If you're comparing Wix to Squarespace, Wix's free plan does give it the upper hand for photographers on a budget. With Squarespace though, you get a 14-day free trial, after which you’ll have to choose a package to sign up to. This might sound like a distinct disadvantage, but as Wix's free plan is severely limited, you're always better off signing up for a paid-for plan.

Squarespace's paid plans are priced slightly lower than what Wix offers– the cheapest Squarespace plan is $12 per month – but they do offer unlimited storage for your photos (Wix limits you to 20GB). However, Squarespace only has four pricing plans (two of which are reserved for online stores). Choosing the right plan for you is therefore pretty straightforward.

We'd recommend the Personal Plan to anyone who is looking for a page to just host their photos, as it doesn't really have many features to help you sell them. However, bear in mind that the maximum website contributors you can have on this plan is two, so if you're working with other photographers on this website, the Business plan would be better.

This Business plan would also be better be the ideal option if you're looking to sell your photos, or if you're planning to take bookings for events – you'll need the Business (or commerce) plan to embed a third-party calendar or booking widget. You could use Squarespace Scheduling on any plan, but for a fee.

Wix

Best For: Overall website features
Pricing From: $14/month (billed annually)
Free Plan: Yes
Free Trial: No

Wix Overview

As a photographer, you know that time is money – and Wix will certainly save you both. Constructing a website with Wix is super-quick, from signing up and picking a template to editing and publishing your site.

Wix has a fantastic range of templates to provide the bones and structure of your site. There are more than 800 to choose from, and 37 dedicated to different types of photography businesses at the time of writing. For example, there are templates designed for artistic photographers, as well as wedding and family photographers – there's even a template specifically for drone photography.

“I love that you can drag literally anything in to literally any position, and it doesn't snap into the nearest grid position” – User who tested Wix for Tech.co.

Whilst they may not be quite as stunning as Squarespace, Wix's templates are clean and stylish, meaning that the quality of your site's design will match the quality of your photography. Naturally, having a great-looking site is important when you're in a creative industry, so Wix will be able to give you the upper hand.

However, you’re not stuck with a set formula. You’ll be able to change almost every aspect of the template, thanks to Wix’s simple drag-and-drop editor. You can add text, forms, clickable buttons, image galleries – almost everything you'd see on any professionally designed website.

“It was easy to drag in images and video, and the more I used it, the easier it became,” one user who tested Wix for us said.

Storage and bandwidth

However, there are some drawbacks to Wix – namely its limited storage. Even on the most expensive plans, you get 20GB of storage to host photos. That should be enough to store several thousand photos, so it's unlikely that you'll run out. But given that other sites let you have unlimited storage, it feels a bit stingy.

In terms of bandwidth, Wix's Combo plan has a 2GB limit. This should be fine for the vast majority of photographers, but if your website really takes off and you're getting 3,000/4,000 (or more) visitors a month – and

Wix Pricing

Wix's pricing model starts with a free plan, which is great if you don't want to spend anything at all – but of course, as most free plans are, it's a pretty limited product. For instance, you'll be stuck with Wix adverts on your page – but it could still be a viable option if you don't mind that and just want a simple space to host your pictures.

Wix is more expensive than Squarespace and one of the priciest providers on this list, but you do get an awful lot for what you pay for from its paid plans. Wix's cheapest paid plan, the Combo, lets you remove Wix ads and grants you a custom domain, which will go a long way to making your site look professional.

The Unlimited Plan has over three times as much storage space (10GB) as Wix's first paid plan, so this will be a better option if you're planning on uploading several galleries-worth of images.

If you going to be hosting thousands upon thousands of photographs – or expect to in the future and need space to scale – then we'd suggest the Unlimited plan. It has over three times as much storage space (10GB) as Wix's first paid plan, so you're much less likely to reach the upper limit.

If you're a full-time photographer living the freelance life, you'll probably enjoy some of the more advanced features that come with the Pro Plan, such as a calendar of events on your site. This will be the better option if you also film video content and want to upload that too – you get 2 hours of video hours on this plan, double that of the Unlimited plan (one hour), and four times the amount you'd have at your disposal on the Combo plan (30 mins).

Smugmug

Best For: Photography-specific features
Price From: $11/month (billed monthly)
Free Plan: No
Free Trial: Yes

SmugMug Overview

Unlike Wix and Squarespace, SmugMug is a website builder that's built for photographers in the first instance. It's certainly more restrictive than Wix and Squarespace though, but arguably that's ok – if you're here for a website builder for photographers, then SmugMug is up there with the best.

Smugmug has 20 templates, which is far, far less than Squarespace and Wix, the latter of which has almost double the amount of just photography-specific templates – which does water down Smugmug's claim to be the website builder for photographers.

The fact SmugMug sees itself as so too means that other valuable features that aren't necessarily photography-related (yet useful to running a website, like contact forms) are cast to the side.

However, what Smugmug does have is excellent features specifically for photographers. For instance, the social media integrations SmugMug offer will let you show off your work on loads of different channels, and promote yourself in the process.

Getting even more photography-focused, SmugMug's most eye-catching features include the capacity to watermark your images, throw up copyright notices if people click on your content, and the ability to upload photos from your phone straight onto the site – something you'd probably have to do at your laptop or desktop with Squarespace and Wix.

Storage and Bandwidth

SmugMug puts a maximum limit on how big a single photo can be – 200MB – but sets no limit at all on the number of sub-200MB photos you can upload to the website.

If you're planning to be snapping away for the next 20 years, selecting SmugMug may save you the hassle of having to switch to a provider with more storage later on.

SmugMug Pricing

SmugMug's Basic plan is available for around $11 /month, or $90/year if you pay annually, which will save you almost a third. The Power plan, SmugMug's second paid plan, is $16/month or $132/year.

Portfolio, is SmugMug's third plan, is the plan you'll need if you want integrated sales tools and that handy watermark protection so no one can pinch your photos. If you want the higher quality marketing features, on the other hand, you'll have to go for the Pro plan, $50/month or $432 for the whole year.

GoDaddy

Best for: Setting up smoothly, getting going quickly
Price From: $9.99/month (billed annually)
Free Plan: Yes
Free Trial: Yes

GoDaddy overview

GoDaddy is more commonly known as a hosting provider. However, its website builder platform has become significantly better in recent months, making it a very solid choice for any photography site.

As you'd expect from such a large company, GoDaddy's website builder is beautifully simple. Getting started is straightforward, and its simple approach to design means that you won't get lost in the details when editing your site.

GoDaddy prides itself on offering 24/7 customer support and a super-easy platform.

Sure, you don't get as much creative freedom with a GoDaddy site as you would with, say Wix or WordPress, but this means that you can get down to business quickly and easily.

This makes it perfect for beginners who want a website to showcase their photography, but aren't sure of the best place to start. What's more, you even get industry-specific features when you create your site – no hunting around for the photo gallery or contact form!

GoDaddy pricing

You can use GoDaddy for free thanks to the provider's free plan, but there are several paid plan options too that are well worth a look.

• Basic plan:  $6.99/month (billed annually) – this is the cheapest paid plan any provider featured in this article offers. Included in the package are a custom domain and some useful marketing features like subscriber forms and the ability to post to social.
• Premium plan: $13.99/month(billed annually) – this is the package you'll want to go for if you want your site's visitors to be able to book appointments for your photography services. On this deal, you'll have the ability to book one-time or recurring events and send out email and text appointment reminders.

The other two plans are ecommerce-focused plans (Commerce and Commerce Plus) – which cost $14.99/month and $29.99/month respectively. These are only really relevant if you're going to be selling your photos en masse – but if you are, you'll have features like online auto inventory and product syncing, abandoned cart recovery, and real-time shipping rates.

Duda

Best for: Ease of use (for photographers)
Price From: $14/month (billed annually)
Free Trial: Yes
Free Plan: No

Duda Overview

Duda has over 100 high-quality website templates to choose from and focuses heavily on the user experience. With Duda, you'll be able to build a more well-rounded website in a lot less time than you would with Wix or Squarespace.

Although GoDaddy is the king of smooth website builder setup processes, Duda runs it a close – if you're  more about snapping photos and less concerned with having granular creative control over every aspect of your website, Duda is a great option.

Duda is a great choice for anyone that hasn't built a website before – there are few website builders you're going to find that are as easy to use.

Duda is one of the best websites for beginners you can currently get your hands on – there are few website builders you're going to find that are as easy to use. In fact, Duda scored an impressive 87% on our user testing for ‘ease of use', which was better than Squarespace and GoDaddy.

The glaring downside to Duda is that it's incredibly pricey, especially for what you get. Duda doesn't offer as many features as Wix despite being the same price, for example. Its templates aren't quite as impressive as Squarespace (and there are fewer of them) and it's a lot more expensive than GoDaddy. Duda, therefore, scored quite poorly when it came to value for money.

Storage and Bandwidth

One thing Duda does have in its favor over providers like Wix is that it puts no limit on both storage and bandwidth.

“Unlike other web design platforms, we believe you should be able to build whatever websites you need without bandwidth or storage restrictions.

This makes Duda an attractive option for photographers who either has a lot of photos to upload or plan to snap continuously for many years.

Duda Pricing

Duda has four pricing plans, some of which are geared to agencies and offer multiple websites per package (but this won't be that useful for most photographers out there).

• Basic: $14/month (billed annually) – this plan includes 1 website, sites hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services), and email support.
• Team: $22/month (billed annually) – 1 website included, phone/chat/email support, custom branding, access to client management features.
• Agency: $44/month (billed annually) – 4 websites included, priority customer support, vast widget builder, client management features.
• Custom: bespoke. Duda's custom plan will grant you access to tiered discount pricing and Duda’s robust API, a Single Sign-On (SSO) feature, Integration with “external datasets”, Onboarding assistance & account management, and unlimited access to team & client management features.

Best Free Website Builder for Photographers

You’ll have noticed that you need to pay for all of the website builders mentioned above. Naturally, you might be wondering whether there are any viable free alternatives.

There are certainly free options out there that you could make use of. Wix's free plan, for instance, is quite a good option if you don't want to spend any money at all, as is GoDaddy's. If you just need somewhere to hose your photos and you're not particularly concerned with selling them or booking appointments, then one of these two free plans could end up working for you.

Generally, though, there are a few key reasons why we wouldn’t recommend a free website builder over a paid-for alternative, which could be surprisingly cheap.

Lack of Storage

One of the main reasons we’d advise photographers, in particular, against using a free website builder is that you won’t get much in the way of storage.

This means that you won’t be able to store all of your photos and images on your site. Some sites won’t offer much more than 500MB of storage on a free plan, which is way less than you’re likely to need as a photographer.

You'll need to provide potential clients with a rich portfolio to convince them that you're the right person for their job. Paid-for website builders, such as Squarespace, offer unlimited storage so you'll have plenty of room to upload your photos.

No Custom URL

Another reason to steer clear of free website builders is that you won’t get a proper, custom URL for your site.

This means you'll be given a URL that features the name of the website builder, and possibly a random string of numbers at the end. Needless to say, this will make your site seem less professional from the outset. It might put off some customers from buying your photos or commissioning you for work – after all, you wouldn't choose a photographer who can't set up their own website properly to shoot your next big campaign.

Another potential downside of building a site without a custom URL is that your site will be penalized by Google and other search engines. For example, when people are searching for “photographers near me”,  your site won’t appear on the first page of Google’s results.

Adverts

Using a free website builder will likely cover your site in adverts for the website builder you’ve used. This, again, will make your site look amateurish – particularly frustrating if you’ve invested time in making your site look as good as possible.

It's unlikely that someone looking to photograph their wedding, arguably the most important day of their life, would commission a photographer whose site was strewn with adverts.

Going ad-free will also speed up your site's loading speed. This might not sound like a big deal, but a faster-loading website will give you an uplift on Google rankings and make potential clients less likely to close your site in a hurry. By paying a small amount to remove adverts, you might see a corresponding uplift in your revenue.

FAQs

Here are some quick and simple answers to your most-asked questions about website builders for photographers.