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. Wix – You're a great photographer, so you should use the best website builder on the market to show off your work. Based on our independent testing, we think Wix is the best website builder out there. And it has some great features for photographers looking to get online. It has excellent templates which will make your photos look great. It has a great variety of apps and plugins which can help users find your site, make it easier to sell your photos online or even talk to your customers while they're on your site.
2. Weebly – While it's not quite as stellar as Wix, Weebly is still a great choice and has some features photographers love. For example, Weebly offers you unlimited storage from just $5 per month, meaning that you can host an unlimited amount of photos on your site. Photographers will also love the what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor, which shows you exactly what your site will look like before you publish it. Another great feature is that you're able to change the template of your site whenever you want, meaning that, as your business grows, your site is never left behind.
3. Squarespace – It might not have the all-round capabilities of Wix or Weebly, but Squarespace has a richly-deserved reputation as a great website builder for creatives. Squarespace's templates are the best on the market, and they'll make your photos look incredible. It also offers unlimited storage on all of its packages, meaning you'll never run out of space for photos.
4. 1&1 Ionos – If you want to build a site for a photography business, you could do worse than employing 1&1 Ionos. Its templates don't have the panache of Squarespace, or the wide ranging features of Weebly and Wix, but it's a smart, easy-to-use website which will help you build a site in minutes.
5. WordPress – It might be best known for blogging, but nearly a third of the internet uses WordPress, and it would make a great choice for your photography business. It has a huge user community, constantly turning out custom templates and plugins for other WordPress users to install. And, it has a super-easy editor system making it a piece of cake to update anything on your site.
6. GoDaddy – It's not the best on the market, but it has some useful features for photography businesses. It has lots of very specific website templates which can give you a template perfectly suited to your site and it has an intuitive editor, making it easy to add content and make changes to the site's design.
7. Site123 – Rounding out our list, Site123 isn't the best on the market. However, it allows you to create a site in minutes, with a straightforward setup which helps tailor the site to your needs. This would be helpful if you want to get your photography business online as quickly as possible.

Website Builder Templates for Photographers

As we’ve said above, good-looking templates are important – especially so for people involved in the creative industries. A smart website layout can make your work look even better and even easier to find for users.

Most modern website builders have great templates for photographers. With Wix, Weebly and Squarespace, it’s easy to pick the right template for your site. When you’re going through the initial set up and creation of your site, each website builder will offer you a menu of website builder templates that you can view, select and edit.

These templates will give a broad design framework – think fonts, colour scheme and the general layout of elements on the page. Some, such as Squarespace, will offer you templates designed specifically for photographers. Others might not be so specific, but you will be able to add portfolio apps or galleries that will work in the same way (more on this later).

Of course, it makes sense to find a website template that suits the kind of photography you do: if you’re mainly a portrait photographer, you might want to seek out something clean and super professional looking. If you do a lot of wedding photography, you might want to seek out a template that features warm, positive colours.

Either way, check out our How to Create a Website and What Makes a Good Website? guides, here.

Portfolio Website Builders for Photographers

But what if you’ve already got a portfolio set up? Perhaps you’re storing all your photos on Flickr, or even using your Instagram page as the hub for all your great work? How can you move it all across?

You’ll be pleased to know that while some site templates might feature your photos as one endlessly-scrolling list of photos, other sites will offer you plugins or apps that can create responsive, easy-to-manage galleries and portfolios. You can then add your photos to these – it’s as easy as drag-and-drop.

Wix, for example, has an excellent photo albums app that can be used to store photos in neat, groupable blocks. It’s all completely customizable.

You can even use Wix’s “Right Click Protect” app to add watermarks, and prevent people from downloading your images and reusing them without crediting you.

Some sites will even let you sell your photos as digital downloads, which could be another great revenue stream when it comes to monetizing your site.

Free Websites for Photographers

You’ll have noticed that you need to pay for all of the website builders we 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, and you could even use the unlimited free trials that website builders like Wix or even WordPress offer you.

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

Lack of Storage

One of the main reasons we’d advise against photographers, in particular, from using a free website builder is that you won’t get a 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. This is way less than you’re likely to need as a photographer.

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 – and you’ll be left with something looking like this:

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.

Another potential downside of building a site without a custom URL is that your site will be penalised by Google and other search engines – so when people are searching for “photographers near me”, for example, 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 if you’ve invested time in making your site look as good as possible.

Photo Hosting Websites for Photographers

Of course, what’s the point in building an entire website when you can use a free hosting platform such as Flickr or Google Photos?

Again, there are several key benefits to creating a website of your own over using one of these hosting platforms. That’s particularly true if you’re set on making a living as a photographer.

Firstly, having your photos on your own website will look far more professional than linking through to a Flickr account, for example. Building your own site would more accurately reflect how serious you are about your own work.

Second, with sites such as Flickr and Google Photos, all of your images can be downloaded by anyone at any point, at their original photo quality. If you’re trying to monetise your work, this is a huge downside.

Of course, if you have your images on your website, anyone could screencap them at any time, but having the ability to restrict full resolution downloads to paying customers only is a huge benefit. Plus, a good website builder, such as Wix, will let you add a watermark within the gallery app.

Thirdly, when building your site you’ll be able to add more functionality to your website, for example you could add a contact form so potential customers get in touch with you quickly and effortlessly.

All-in-all, it’s quick and easy to create a custom website to show off your photography to the world, and to attract potential business.