Inside this Article
What We Look For in the Best Website Builders for Photographers1. Wix - The Best Selection of Photography Website Templates2. Squarespace - The Premium Website Choice3. SmugMug – The Best Builder for Selling Your Photos 4. Zenfolio – The Simplest Website Builder for Photography5. SITE123 – The Most Beginner-Friendly Builder6. WordPress.com - The Perfect Stage to Share Your StoryWhich Builder Is the Best for YOUR Website?FAQ
Quick Disclaimer
Several free website builders will let you design a decent site – but the one thing none of these builders will give you is a custom domain. If you want your site to look professional (and keep in tone with your brand), you need a paid plan.
As far as I’m concerned, Squarespace is my absolute favorite. It has the best-looking templates around, and even its cheapest plan includes a free custom domain plus unlimited storage. Squarespace has a 14-day free trial, so you can test all of its features before you buy.
Short on time? Here are the best photography website builders in February 2023:
- Wix – Intuitive drag-and-drop editor with almost 50 professional photography templates to choose from
- Squarespace – Stunning photography templates that capture the imagination
- SmugMug – The best builder for storing and monetizing your portfolio
What We Look For in the Best Website Builders for Photographers
I tested dozens of website builders, but only six made it to this list. Here’s what instructed our choosing process:- Clean, professional, and attractive design: Say no to clutter and large blocks of text. Your photos should be in the spotlight.
- Personalization: Because your website should be a reflection of you and your business. Customize themes, layouts, colors, and fonts for 100% creative freedom.
- Bulk image uploader: Save time by uploading your entire photography portfolio to your website in one go.
- Ease of use: You won’t need to learn how to code. These website builders are drag and drop, with plenty of out-of-the-box theme options.
- Mobile readiness: So that your website and images display beautifully on any type of device.

Wix is my favorite photography website builder for many reasons, but mainly because it really lets you create exactly the site you have in mind. The free plan gives you everything you need to create a fully functional, high-quality website, including almost 50 professionally designed photography website templates to choose from. The template designs are clean and minimalistic, with lots of white space so that your images can do the talking. Any template can be customized, and it’s easy to use the drag-and-drop editor to change colors and fonts, adjust the layout, add animation effects, and much more. You can create a website that really reflects your style, and no one will believe you built it for free! Just keep in mind that once you choose a template and start editing, you won’t be able to switch to a different template without rebuilding your site from scratch. Another great thing about Wix is the App Market. It’s a magical place where you can choose from hundreds of apps to add to your website, and many of them are free. You’ll find customizable photo galleries, online photo editing tools, integrations with Instagram, and tons of other cool features.
Top Features
- Beautiful, full-screen gallery pages. The most effective way to showcase your best work, grab visitors’ attention, and keep them scrolling. You have full design control over your gallery layout and effects.
- Excellent image quality. Wix doesn’t wash out colors like some other platforms do, and will automatically optimize your images for quality and load time. It also offers no-frills image editing tools to sharpen and enhance your photos for the web.
- Eye-catching visual effects. Add advanced design features to your website like scroll effects, animations, and video backgrounds to give it a premium look and feel.
- Built-in contact and booking pages. Complete with online forms to make it easy for clients to reach you. Most of the photography templates come with at least one of these pages already built and ready to be customized with your own text and branding.
Free forever? | Yes, with limitations |
Photography themes and templates? | 40+ |
Mobile-Responsive? | No, but mobile-friendly |
Price of cheapest paid plan | $16.00 |

For a high-end look and feel, Squarespace is the best website builder choice, especially for creatives. The designs are visually stunning and make your images the focal point. Squarespace is not free forever, but you get a 14-day free trial where you can explore, build, and edit your website as much as you want. The personal plan is incredibly affordable, at just $16.00 per month. And you get advanced SEO features along with a custom domain to really get your portfolio off the ground. Similar to WordPress, Squarespace is a slightly more sophisticated website builder with a steeper learning curve. Beginners will need some time to get familiar with the platform (some features take a bit of digging to find), but it’s actually very easy to use once you know where everything is.


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Top Features
- Designer photography templates. Stunning, image-centered designs to put your best work on display. For some added flexibility, you can also switch templates at any time.
- Pre-designed starter layouts. Make your job quicker and easier by choosing one of the beautiful starter layout options. These have About, Portfolio, Contact, and other important pages already built-in and ready for your content.
- Eye-catching image presentation. With multiple gallery effects and even more image editing tools than Weebly, your photography portfolio will always look picture perfect.
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage. Squarespace doesn’t put a cap on your bandwidth or storage, so you can upload and display as many images as you want without slowing down your site.
Free forever? | No, 14-day free trial |
Photography themes and templates? | 20+ |
Mobile-Responsive? | Yes, all templates |
Price of cheapest paid plan | $16.00 |
3. SmugMug – The Best Builder for Selling Your Photos

Top Features
- Photo lab partnerships. SmugMug has partnerships with some of the world’s top photo labs. This allow you to sell high-quality prints in a variety of materials and ship them all over the world.
- Advanced features for selling prints. If you’re planning on selling prints, you can customize them even further by adding things like watermarks, back-of-prints messages, custom “thank you” cards, and more.
- In-app editing. SmugMug offers native image editing for your site. It’s not the most advanced editor in the world, but it can get you out of a pinch.
- Smart galleries. SmugMug can automatically add any photos you upload to “smart galleries” based on the criteria of your choosing. This makes the process of updating your site even easier.
Free forever? | No, 14-day free trial |
Photography themes and templates? | 26 |
Mobile-Responsive? | Yes |
Price of cheapest paid plan | $7.00 |

Be advised: You can switch templates in Zenfolio if you want, but you’ll lose all your text and SEO settings. Basically, you’ll be starting your site from scratch, so make sure to back up any important content before switching.
Overall, Zenfolio is a great choice for creating a stunning portfolio site without needing to get to grips with the more advanced functionality you get with some of its competitors.
Top Features
- Simple, intuitive galleries. Zenfolio’s gallery options are simple but useful. You add your photos to galleries, and you can sort your galleries into folders. Inside a gallery, you can edit settings like expiration dates, download permissions, watermarking, and more.
- BookMe add-on. BookMe helps you streamline your booking process by giving you a centralized dashboard for handling things like shooting locations, calendar availability, and payment methods.
- Find photos by model. Zenfolio uses face recognition technology to let you sort your pictures by the people that appear in them.
- Lightroom plugin. If you’re an Adobe Lightroom user, you can install the Zenfolio plugin that lets you upload your finished products directly to your site, no middleman involved.
Free forever? | No, 14-day free trial |
Photography themes and templates? | 11 |
Mobile-Responsive? | Yes |
Price of cheapest paid plan | $5.00 |



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Top Features
- Eight gallery layouts. You’re not limited when it comes to displaying your photographs, as SITE123 gives you multiple gallery options, including a rounded gallery grid that really breaks from the “ordinary” square grid layouts you commonly find in website builders.
- Full-size image display. Every time someone clicks on one of your portfolio images, it opens in a full-screen format to allow your visitors to fully appreciate your photographs. The full-size display works for all gallery types except carousel.
- Bulk image upload. To make putting your photography online faster than ever, SITE123 supports bulk uploading of your images, so you can upload your whole portfolio in one go and then organize and add titles and descriptions later.
- Custom image categories. Keep your portfolio neatly organized by creating custom categories for your images. You can easily create gallery pages for each category so your visitors can easily find the types of image they’re looking for.
Free forever? | Yes, with limitations |
Photography themes and templates? | 80+ |
Mobile-Responsive? | Yes, all templates |
Price of cheapest paid plan | $12.80 |

WordPress is one of the most widely-used website builders in the world, and when you see the level of customization it offers, you’ll understand why. Not only does it have the largest theme library for photography and portfolio websites, but it’s also one of very few site builders to give you total control over your source code. So if you have some coding knowledge, know someone who does, or don’t mind learning some basics, then the sky’s the limit with what your site can do. The platform is a little more complicated than beginner website builders like SITE123 and Wix, as it’s designed to cater to advanced users as well. But once you get used to navigating around the dashboard, tweaking and managing your site is a breeze! WordPress is totally free to set up and use, but your website will automatically have a WordPress.com domain name. You’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan if you want a personalized domain name, to use premium themes or to add plugins to your site. However, it’s entirely possible to create a simple yet beautiful photography website with free options alone.


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Top Features
- 100+ stunning photography and portfolio themes. And that’s just in the WordPress theme library. You can also find hundreds of free WordPress themes on the web from independent developers.
- Worldwide support from the community. The WordPress support network is unlike any other. It’s entirely community-run with over 500,000 active members around the world, covering more than two million topics on the official support forum.
- Thousands of plugins and widgets for extra functionality. Countless ways to make your photography website stand out. Add advanced gallery effects, professional watermarks, an e-commerce store to sell your photos online, and so much more.
- Built-in SEO to help your website rank higher on Google. Better search engine visibility means more traffic to your website and more potential clients for you. WordPress is an SEO-friendly platform that lets you optimize your content and fine-tune the technical details.
Free forever? | Yes, with limitations |
Photography themes and templates? | 100+ |
Mobile-Responsive? | Yes, but not all themes |
Price of cheapest paid plan | $45.00 |
Which Builder Is the Best for YOUR Website?
You can use any of the builders on my list to create a professional photography website. Each one has its own strong points, and the best choice for you will depend on your individual needs. If you want the freedom to design your website exactly how you like, then you can’t do better than Wix with its endless customization options. If you don’t mind paying a small monthly fee, you may prefer Squarespace for its clean and professional template designs. If you’re looking to monetize your work and store large amounts of data, go for SmugMug. Its advanced e-store features and partnerships with professional print labs make it ideal for shipping high-quality custom photo prints all over the world.For more details, check this handy comparison table:
Photography Website Templates | Image Editing Capabilities | Storage on Free Plan | ||
Wix | 40+ | Intermediate | 500 MB | |
Squarespace | 20+ | Advanced | Unlimited (on cheapest plan) | |
SmugMug | 25+ | Basic | Unlimited (on cheapest plan) | |
Zenfolio | 10+ | Basic | 15 GB (on cheapest plan) | |
SITE123 | 80+ | Basic | 500 MB | |
WordPress | 100+ | Basic | 3 GB |