Best Website Builders for Photographers

If you are a photographer looking to build a quality website, understand that your website is the most important selling tool you can have. Your website establishes your brand identity and dictates how potential clients see you.

There is no denying that a poorly designed photography website will discourage potential clients from contacting you. 

Photography businesses rely on visual content, so it’s crucial to select a website builder that offers visually compelling layouts and many customization options. You ultimately want to stand out from other photographers in your area. 

The Best Website Builders for Photographers

Gone are the days where building a photography website was expensive and time-consuming. Today, anyone can use a simple drag-and-drop website builder and create an eye-catching and user-friendly site in no time.

The biggest obstacle is deciding which is the best website builder to use.

1. Best Photographer Website Builder Overall: Wix

Wix is our top pick for the best website builder for photographers in 2021. It offers stunning web design, with premade templates designed to highlight your visual content. It also has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and many tools to help you customize your page layouts and personalize your site. Wix also provides its web hosting as well as free and paid domain names.

Pros:

• Premade templates designed to highlight your visual content
• Web hosting included
• Optimized for mobile devices
• Flexible website builder
• Animations available
• App market to allow you to add features to your website
• A smart assistant to help you build your website

Cons: 

• Other options that are less expensive
• Slower loading times than the competition
• Only 50 GB of storage space; not ideal if you’re uploading lots of high-quality images for each client
• eCommerce only included on business plans
• Not great for a website over 30 pages

2. Great Overall Photographer Website Builder: Squarespace

Squarespace is another great photography website builder. It is one of our top picks because it offers exceptional value. For example, even with the most basic Squarespace plan, you get unlimited storage.

Pros:

• Easy drag and drop website builder
• No plugins to deal with
• Professional, image-centric templates
• Ecommerce function on every site
• Users do not have to maintain security or tech updates 
• Good eCommerce support if you are selling images or other products

Cons:

• Can’t handle image uploads larger than 20 MB
• Slower uploading times that can become frustrating
• Limited customization options on templates
• No free options; after a 14-day free trial, you will have to pay for a plan
• Not built for blogging; if you want to blog, need to choose a different website builder 

3. Best Pro Photography Features: Format

Format offers many professional features and markets to photographers as their target customers. It provides superior portfolio creation for showing your work online.

There are 75 templates and an easy-to-use interface that allows you to get your photography website up in little time. 

Pros:

• A complete website builder — can get hosting, custom domains and everything else needed to manage your website
• Modern layouts by award-winning designers
• Templates designed for mobile users
• Clean and easy-to-use interface
• 24/7 customer support

Cons: 

• Limited customization
• Limited e-commerce
• Limited blogging
• Storage limited on all plans except for the most expensive tier
• Navigation confusing at times
• Only suitable for building portfolio sites; not a good choice if you have other options

4. Best for Photographers Using Android: SmugMug

SmugMug has been around since 2002. SmugMug acts as an online gallery space, letting you display your photos quickly and inexpensively. The SmugMug app is excellent for photographers using Android devices.  

Uploading a few or even thousands of photos from your Android phone to your SmugMug account is easy. SmugMug is perfect for someone that is just beginning to market themselves and needs a good client delivery system.

Pros:

• Image quality
• Storage space
• Ease of use

• Wide range of e-commerce options for selling your photos
• Some nice gifting options for clients

Cons: 

• Clients can’t “favorite” images
• No ability to invoice
• 15% fee on everything
• Customization tools aren’t intuitive
• Fewer templates than rival website builders

5. Best for Websites and E-Commerce Platforms: Zenfolio

Zenfolio was created by four friends who wanted to help photographers display, share and sell their images with ease. Zenfolio is one of the best website builders for photographers — it offers unlimited uploads and galleries. Each website includes 10 pages such as About, Blog, Client Access, Contact, Featured and more.

Zenfolio is ideal for more established photographers who rely heavily on e-commerce as it lets you integrate your site with leading print labs. This enables your customers to purchase downloads of your files, custom image packages and physical copies of your images.

Pros:

• Marketing tools such as automated emails and SEO
• Robust shopping cart
• Ability to partner with leading printing labs
• Freedom to add music to your image slideshows
• Optimization for mobile phones and tablets
• Unlimited uploads and galleries

Cons:  

• Confusing user interface and navigation for new users
• Limited font styles
• Limited customer service

6. 30% of all Websites on the Internet: WordPress

WordPress is one of the best website builders for photographers. It is the obvious choice for photographers who want a website that operates as a complete business.

Because 30% of all websites are built using WordPress, there’s lots of online support and integrations for WordPress sites. If you want to share your photos on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or other social media sites, you have plenty of tools to do so.

Pros:

• Complete control and customization due to open-source format
• Thousands of photography themes
• E-commerce functionality that’s easy to integrate into your website

Cons: 

• The number of plugins can get confusing for those new to website building
• More complicated to learn
• More upkeep
• More expensive than other platforms

Picture the Options

There are many great choices for photographers looking to build a quality website. The most important thing to consider is how much storage you will need, if you will be selling products online, and your level of comfort building and customizing your site.

Wix stands out as our favorite website builder for photographers because it suits every type of photographer. It includes both straightforward and professional templates that help take photo hobbyists to experienced photojournalists. 

They also offer a forever free option that is ideal if you’re a photographer just starting your business.