Pixpa Review 2024 – Is This Portfolio Builder Right for You?

Pixpa at a Glance

A Website Builder for Photographers and Creatives

Pixpa is making waves among creatives who need a website that functions as both an online portfolio and a store.

But first things first: Pixpa is an all-in-one platform for photographers and creators to showcase, sell, and share their work online. It’s specifically designed to make websites for photography and other visual creative industries.

Though the website builder is intuitive and packed with powerful features for showcasing your portfolio, Pixpa isn’t an all-purpose builder.If you’re starting any other type of website, you’re better off looking elsewhere. See our comprehensive comparison of the best website builders for some great alternatives.

However, if you’ve been searching for a website builder with features specifically geared toward visual online portfolios, keep reading.

In order to properly test out the website builder, I created a site to showcase my photos. I’m no professional photographer, but I do have a growing collection of travel photos that I thought would fit nicely into an online portfolio. Compared to other builders I’ve used, Pixpa’s features show that the company really put thought into the needs of photographers and creatives, which was a very pleasant surprise.

But is that really enough, or is Pixpa lacking the flexibility other website builders can easily provide? Read on to find out if Pixpa is the right builder for you.

Themes Made With Photographers in Mind

The first thing you’ll notice on the theme selection page is that images are the main focus of every theme.

There are 150 professional, mobile-friendly templates to choose from. Each one has a different style and offers a different photo grid and layout. You won’t notice a lot of text or a large menu in the original themes, but these are elements you can customize with the easy-to-use, drag-and-drop editor if you decide you want a different look.

Unlike other website builders, like Wix or Squarespace, there isn’t a huge difference between the themes. Sure, the designs vary, but at their core, the themes are mainly photo galleries.

Design and Customization

Let’s talk more about the editor. There are some nice customization options here. You can change your gallery layout, make your images display to scale or at full bleed, and even customize the image hover effect. You can also embed YouTube or Vimeo videos on any theme in place of images, making Pixpa a strong contender for videographers as well.

In addition to the gallery pages, each theme gives you the option to add other pages, such as a blog, an about page, a contact page, an online store, a proofing page (more on that later), and private or public album pages. With the editor, you can easily add sections and move them around the page to get the layout you want.

Pixpa themes are all mobile responsive. You can alter the layout of each page by selecting the number of content columns, to make sure it fits different screen sizes.

If you eventually decide that the theme you chose doesn’t really work for you, all you need to do is select another one and your website content automatically adapts to the new theme. Compared to other builders, which might require you to manually adjust elements of your website content if you want to change templates, this can save you time and effort when updating your website’s design or trying out new themes.

Features You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

Pixpa has a wide selection of integrations that help you track your website’s success and grow your brand, such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, Shopify, and more.

The marketing section in your dashboard is also pretty handy. Thanks to Pixpa’s automatic sitemap, image alt tags, and built-in SEO tools, you have all the tools to get found on search engines. You can also add social media widgets to allow your visitors to easily share your pages and even individual images from a gallery.

But there are a few features that I found especially impressive when it comes to building and monetizing an online portfolio through Pixpa. Let’s take a look:

Unique Proofing System

What really gives Pixpa an advantage over other website builders for creative portfolios is its proofing system.

You can set up a proofing page where your clients can offer feedback and select photos to purchase. This dedicated portal helps you communicate with your clients directly through your website, and saves you time by eliminating the need for third-party apps like Dropbox or WeTransfer.

These proofing pages are mobile responsive as well, so your clients can choose photos on the go. Pixpa protects your work by disabling the right-click feature on proofing pages, so your clients can’t simply go in and download the images they want.

Integrated E-Commerce Functionality

Pixpa’s store pages are simple to use. They have options for selling services and physical or digital products, so if you want to, you can allow visitors to purchase specific images on your website.

Pixpa really shines when it comes to selling digital products, something not all other website builders allow you to do. You can add a lot of details from within the editor. It’s easy to add information about licensing or usage, offer the digital product as a download from within the website or from an external link, and add SEO elements to each product page.

Pixpa’s store builder gives you all the tools you need to run your online store – so you can manage products and inventory, discounts, taxes, shipping rates, abandoned carts, and easily process orders. You can also set sale prices and tax rates, and select which method of payment you’d like to activate.

Pixpa doesn’t charge you any commissions or listing fees on your sales. You can receive payments through PayPal, Stripe, and PayUMoney.

Mobile Gallery Apps

This is another feature that makes Pixpa stand out. You can quickly and easily share a personalized gallery of images with a client and they can add it to their device as a mobile app. This is ideal for sharing previews of a photoshoot with your clients, or even sharing the entire photoshoot as a freebie or as a paid add-on to your services.

You can create unlimited Mobile Gallery Apps with Pixpa, and they can become a key tool in your marketing strategy. Each mobile gallery comes preloaded with your branding information, including your name, contact details, and social media links.

Imagine you send a client a Mobile Gallery App for their engagement photoshoot, and the couple sends the app to their friends and family. Not only can they see the photos, they can also learn about you. Any platform that helps you with free marketing is good in my books.

Galleries With Endless Possibilities

Pixpa offers 20 different gallery layouts, including full image, dynamic grid, fixed grid, and block pattern. Once you’ve settled on a layout, you can upload photos, videos, or HTML slides to your gallery.

There are built-in settings to ensure that your images are being viewed the way you intended. For example, all grid layouts come with a lightbox feature to remove all distractions surrounding your photos. You can also set a focal point for each image, so the focus of the photo is visible no matter what device your visitors are using.

Images in your gallery can be optimized for SEO, and your galleries are always mobile responsive. I looked into this and it turns out that Pixpa generates different versions of your gallery based on a visitor’s device and screen resolution. If you already have all your photos uploaded to Instagram, you can simply connect your account and Pixpa will create a gallery from your Instagram feed.

While Pixpa’s galleries are intuitive overall, I had issues with the image uploading process. There isn’t a centralized media storage file. Say, for example, you want to use one image in both your gallery and a blog post. You’ll need to upload it on each individual page.

Is Pixpa’s Drag-and-Drop Editor as Easy To Use as Other Website Builders’?

Personally, I found Pixpa’s editor to be mostly intuitive, but a bit lacking compared to other website builders I’ve tested. Though it has some drag-and-drop functionalities (such as dragging images within a gallery to rearrange them), there are limitations. You mostly edit your site by adding and rearranging content sections within a page, with the option to drag-and-drop widgets into specific sections.

Though it’s clear that Pixpa places a lot of emphasis on user experience, it has some kinks that prevent it from being completely user-friendly. For example, I had trouble simply locating the correct option for editing a page’s content, though the editor itself is decent.

Another drawback is that the themes come preloaded with different pages, images, and blog posts. You have to delete each stock image, page, and post one by one, which can be a little tedious. On the bright side, having content there does make it easier to see what your finished website can look like, and adding new images and pages can be done in just a few clicks.

All that said, Pixpa is by no means difficult to use, and I was comfortable with the editor after a few minutes. If you go to the Pixpa website and start playing around, you can have a basic website layout to work on in less than an hour.

Integrated Help Center

Though Pixpa doesn’t offer the traditional getting-started walkthroughs of other builders, I easily found all the information I needed in the Help section.

On the left-hand menu, you can click on “Help” to access Pixpa’s help center, where you’ll find ample information on how to build your website. Here, I found answers to my questions about the design, galleries, marketing tools, and e-commerce features.

I really appreciated that the help center opens in a pop-up within the actual editor. It made it simple to learn how to edit my site without needing to constantly move between tabs.

Hundreds of Pre-Made, Useful Sections

As previously mentioned, Pixpa isn’t a true drag-and-drop editor (in the sense that you can’t add any widget you want anywhere on the page). Though this reduces your opportunities for customization a little, adding pre-made sections can also save you lots of wasted time and effort.

While other builders with similar approaches might offer a limited selection, Pixpa offers hundreds of different sections categorized by functionality. The wide availability of well-categorized, pre-made sections make it so you’re never overwhelmed trying to add something new to your site. While it may sound limiting, I found this design still provides plenty of room for creative freedom.

Easy Ways for Potential Clients To Get in Touch

Though an impressive portfolio site is definitively important for photographers, it’s not worth much if it doesn’t provide options for potential clients to get in touch. Fortunately, Pixpa offers useful and intuitive tools to acquire new client information and generate leads.

These include email subscriber and custom forms, the aforementioned SEO tools, and even contact management features (with the Creator plan and onwards). Pixpa makes it easy to collect important information about potential new clients and keep in touch with old clients to ensure they come to you first with their photography needs.

A Small but Efficient Support Team

Pixpa only offers two customer support channels: Live chat and email. To test the quality of both properly, I got into contact with customer support and asked some questions I believed would be pertinent to a real photographer considering Pixpa for building their portfolio.

In general, the quality of the support I received from Pixpa’s agent (notice the singular here) was good, though I did feel like they could have gotten more detailed with each answer. As it stands, the agent resolved my doubts, but didn’t try to bring up alternatives when I asked about a feature and got a simple negative.

Usually, I like to go into a lot more detail for each support channel, but my experience with live chat and email was remarkably similar. Once again, all the responses came from the same person. In fact, I think the only significant difference is that the email response took longer.

I will say that the live-chat pop-up was a little annoying, but not too much of a hindrance. What worries me more, however, is the possibility that Pixpa’s support team consists entirely of one person. What happens when they take a sick day?

Perhaps as Pixpa grows, its team will grow as well. But until then, I wouldn’t rely too heavily on a one-man customer service.

All-Inclusive Pricing With No Surprises

Pixpa offers four different plans that cater to a wide variety of needs and budgets All plans come with a 15-day free trial, so you can test out all their available features before committing to a plan.

Unlike many other website builders, Pixpa does not offer a free plan. After your trial period, you’ll need to decide if you want to stick with it. However, the base plan is affordable and comes with the basic features you’ll probably want if you’re just getting started.

The pricing plans range from $4.00 per month for the Basic package to $7.50 per month for the Creator package, $10.00 per month for the Professional package, and $12.50 per month for the Advanced package. You can pay monthly, annually, or every two years, and as with most website builders, your month-to-month bill goes down the longer your billing period. All plans offer generous resources, unlimited bandwidth, SSL certificates, and 24/7 support.

The Basic plan is the most affordable option and is suitable for those who only need a basic online portfolio, while the Creator, Professional, and Advanced plans offer more features, storage, and support for those who need more advanced functionalities.

Every plan includes web hosting via Amazon Web Service (AWS). If you sign up for the annual plan, you also get one year of free domain registration.

At the moment, Pixpa only accepts payment with major credit cards: Mastercard, Visa, and American Express. You can’t pay for your plan with PayPal. It’s also worth noting that if you’re a student, you get 50% off all Pixpa plans. All you need to do is sign up for the free trial and email the support team with your student ID, and they’ll send you a promotional code.

All of the plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 customer support. You can upgrade or downgrade your Pixpa subscription plan anytime.

To cancel your plan, simply go to My Account in the editor and click on Billing and Subscription, and you can cancel your website subscription plan from there. Once your plan is canceled, Pixpa claims to process your refund within five to eight business days.