You take great photos, but if no one can find them, how can you hope to build a career as a photographer? With a proper photography website, you can show off the best of your work in style and attract new business.
One of the easiest ways to get your work noticed is by building a first-class photography portfolio website and the easiest way to do that is with a website builder. You might worry that a website builder could leave you with a dull, identikit site that no one will take seriously, let alone commission the site’s owner for work.
However, website builders are so advanced nowadays that you can create a stunning website in a matter of minutes. A great site will help get your name out there and grow your photography business.
Below, we run through which is the best website builder for you, and why building your own site is a better choice than using Flickr or Google Photos.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Wix | Weebly | Squarespace | 1&1 Ionos | WordPress | GoDaddy | Site123 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |  |  | |
| Test score | |||||||
| Verdict | Comfortably the best website builder we've tested, and brilliantly simple, even for beginners | Another great website builder that's also very approachable for first-timers | Stands out with its attractive templates, though not quite as well-rated as Wix | A great system for producing an e-commerce website | Perfect for blogs, but can be fiddly for other types of site | Some big improvements to templates in the past year, but a little light on features | Can help you build a website, but the options are more limited compared to rival website tools |
| Number of templates | Over 500 | 56 | 91 | 433 | 290 | 8 | 188 |
| Blogging | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Portfolio sites | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✗ | ✔ | ✗ | ✔ |
| Business sites | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Ecommerce sites | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✗ | ✔ |
| Features | |||||||
| Design Flexibility | |||||||
| Value for Money | |||||||
| Help and Support | |||||||
| Customer Score | |||||||
| Ease of Use | |||||||
| Free plan | ✔ | ✔ | 14-day free trial | ✗ | ✔ | 30-day free trial | ✔ |
| Paid plan (monthly) | Starts from $8.50 | Starts from $5 | Starts from $12 | Starts from $5 | Starts from $4 | Starts from $5.99 | Starts from $10.80 |
| Try it Today | Visit Wix | Visit Weebly | Visit Squarespace* | Visit 1&1 Ionos | Visit WordPress | Visit GoDaddy | Visit Site123 |
*Get 10% off with code ‘TECH10'
Wix Website Builder for Photographers
As a photographer, you know that time is money. And Wix will certainly save you on both. Constructing a website with Wix is super-quick, from signing up to picking a template to editing and publishing your site.
Wix also has fantastic website templates that give you the bones and structure of your site. The templates look clean and modern, too – having a great-looking site is important when you’re in a creative industry.
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.
One downside with Wix, however, is that you only get 20GB of storage to host photos. This should be enough to store several thousand photos, but given that other sites let you have unlimited storage, it’s not ideal.
Kick-start Your Photography Career with a Wix Website Now
- Incredibly simple to use
- Great value plans
- Easy to preview as you go
- No expertise needed
- Great range of templates
- Free plan leaves you with a poor URL and Wix adverts
- After publishing with a template, you can't change to another one
Weebly Website Builder for Photographers
Like Wix, setting up with Weebly is quick and painless – you can be ready to publish in under 20 minutes, in most cases.
You’ll also find that Weebly offers fantastic-looking templates that you can swap back-and-forth between on a whim. It offers a remarkable selection of over 300 different apps and plugins, which can help add functionality to your site – making it seem more professional and helpful to potential clients.
However, Weebly is quite expensive – especially when compared to Wix. The cheapest plan starts at $8, compared to Wix’s $5. The most expensive Weebly plan comes in at $38 per month compared to Wix’s $25.
Create Your Dream Photography Website with Weebly
- Great selection of templates
- Lots of tools you can add to your site
- Good customization options
- No editor for mobile version of your site
- Expensive for creating an ecommerce site
Squarespace Website Builder for Photographers
If you want to build a brilliant-looking website above everything else, then Squarespace is ideal.
It only offers 90 or so templates, but they are all, without exception, fantastic-looking. They’re all developed in-house by Squarespace. They work seamlessly with any apps you add or any visual changes you make. They’re also all mobile-optimized, meaning that they will look great on a phone, tablet or a regular old PC.
Squarespace doesn’t offer a free plan, unlike Wix or Weebly. Instead you get a 14-day free trial, after which you’ll have to choose a package to sign up to.
These are a little bit pricier than Wix – the cheapest is $12 per month – but it does offer unlimited storage for your photos (Wix limits you to 20GB).
Squarespace's Great Templates Make Your Photos Pop
- The best-looking templates around
- Great ecommerce functions
- Simple to customize
- Not quite as easy as Wix for first-timers
- Small range of apps
- No free version
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.
Get the perfect site for your photography business with Wix in under 20 minutes
Tech.co is reader-supported. If you make a purchase through the links on our site, we may earn a commission from the retailers of the products we have reviewed. This helps Tech.co to provide free advice and reviews for our readers. It has no additional cost to you, and never affects the editorial independence of our reviews.