Best Website Builders for Photographers (2024 Options)

Your photography business is buzzing along, and you are excited to build a website and grow even more. But how do you choose a website builder when there are so many?

I’ve helped a number of photographers get their website online and get found, and I love working with creatives in the photography industry. So with my years of experience, I want to share my thoughts on how to choose the best website platform for your photography business.

Why do photographers need a website builder?

Having a website as a photographer has a lot of benefits, including showing off your work, having a place where clients can book photography sessions, and showing up in Google so you can get more inquiries.

But coding your own website from scratch in 2024 is frankly out of the question, and completely unnecessary for most businesses. There are a sea of options when it comes to website builders that create beautiful photography websites.

Here’s what you should look for as a photographer shopping for a website builder:

• Easy editing: If you’re DIYing your website, it needs to be user-friendly to set up and edit even if you’re not a web pro.

• SEO-friendly: If you care about getting organic website traffic, it needs to be SEO-friendly and have built-in SEO settings.

• Built-in blogging: It needs to have built-in blogging so you can publish new content to share updates and help you rank higher in search engines.

• Scheduling and other features: If you want to take bookings right on your website, you might want to consider if your platform includes a scheduling tool natively. Of course, you can also embed any third-party scheduling software like Acuity (by Squarespace) on any platform.

TL;DR: My Best Recommendations for Photography Websites

Squarespace - If you’re not super techie, and want a website with everything you need and pretty customizable designs that are hard to mess up, Squarespace is my #1 recommendation. If you don’t enjoy the Squarespace editing experience but want similar overall benefits, Wix is a good alternative.

Framer - If you want 100% design control over every single pixel, and are okay with a bit of a design learning curve in exchange for that complete control, Framer is a great choice. Choose Framer if you really wanted the pixel-perfect full-customization of ShowIt, but you want truly optimized SEO without the hassle of integrating third-party blogging software. (Read my ShowIt SEO review here to see why I don’t think it’s great for SEO.)

Comparing Website Platforms for Photographers

With my top recommendations out of the way, here is a full rundown of the website platform options that I think are great for photographers. 

Squarespace - Best for DIY Photographers Who Want a Platform That Just Works

Squarespace is a great choice for building your photography website. You can have your design settings set up in a day, and each page is incredibly easy to build using their Fluid Engine drag and drop builder. It has an ever-improving reputation for ease of use, and has all of the website features a photographer might need, including an easy-to-use page builder, granular SEO settings, built-in blogging, scheduling, and portfolios.

With Squarespace, which is a paid website builder + host all in one, you get built-in support in case anything goes wrong.

It’s true that you lose some customizability compared to self-hosted platforms like WordPress, but with that comes a lot of benefits.

• Your site won’t randomly break from an update.

• You get built-in 24/7 support.

• Everything works natively.

• You don’t have to shop for hours for themes or worry about themes and plugins breaking your site.

If you’re okay with 90% freedom with your website’s design customization, and just want your website to work out of the box without ongoing tech headaches, Squarespace is my #1 recommendation. It’s even great for blogging.

Wix - Best Squarespace Alternative for Photographers

If you love the benefits that come with Squarespace, which include a drag-and-drop editor and fully managed hosting so you don’t have to deal with tech headaches - but you dislike the actual editing experience of it, then Wix is my top recommended Squarespace alternative.

You get the same hosted website builder benefits:

• No updates breaking your site.

• Native platform support included with your hosting plan.

• A website that just works.

• Everything you need to build a beautiful website.

• Built-in support since you’re paying for the platform.

Note that Wix has come a long way since its inception. In years prior, I would never have recommended it as a fully fledged website platform. They have improved so much though, and now they are just as legitimate as other website platforms. 

I personally prefer the Squarespace editing experience, but there is nothing wrong with Wix.

If you’re torn between Squarespace and Wix for your photography website, choose the one which has the website editing experience you enjoy the most.

Framer - Best for Full Design Control

Framer is my most recent love affair. You can view my full Framer SEO review here.

Unlike other website editing platforms, where you’ll start with somewhat of an existing site structure and pre-existing elements like buttons that you then style, you can build a website on Framer from a completely blank canvas. You start with a blank page and build everything from there, exactly how you want to see it.

This is a pro for some people and a con for others.

If you love having absolute, complete design control over every element and pixel on your website, similar to ShowIt, then Framer is a great platform for you. However it does have quite a large design-tool learning curve. If you are familiar with Figma, another design tool, this learning curve might be pretty easy for you to overcome.

Framer has everything you need, including:

• Pixel-perfect design control over every aspect, with the downside that this can be overwhelming for some,

• Granular SEO settings,

• CMS capabilities so you can build your blog exactly how you want it, natively,

• Full SEO-friendliness,

• Amazing loading times so you’ll have the best page speed scores of any website builder out there.

I don’t recommend Framer for the faint of heart though. I personally love it because I’m a web pro, but I would only recommend Framer to someone who is comfortable with the from-scratch design workflows you experience in Figma or ShowIt. Or, if you have the budget to hire someone to build your website the first time around.

WordPress - Best if You Just Love WordPress

I honestly don’t recommend WordPress as a great platform to start off with anymore for most business owners, unless you are just determined to use WordPress because of all of the good things you’ve heard about it. Other web pros look down on me for saying this, but WordPress is not the end-all-be-all of website builders anymore. Of the features you’ll need for your photography website, there are easier platforms to use now that do just as much as WordPress, without all of the tech headaches.

Yes, it has everything you need, but the “free” WordPress software can actually come with a lot of hidden costs and headaches.

WordPress cons include:

• No built-in support - your support will come from the WordPress host you choose.

• Unexpected costs like hiring a developer when something breaks, paying for premium themes and plugins, unpredictable hosting costs.

• A large learning curve.

• Slow pagespeeds if you don’t know exactly how to build and optimize a WordPress website as you are building it.

• Unpredictable integration compatibility. You’ll have to make your own hosting and your own combination of plugins and themes all work together. There can be incompatibitilies.

• Not necessary easy for a non-developer/non-web-pro to troubleshoot. And there WILL be things to troubleshoot.

WordPress pros include:

• Pretty good design customization depending on the theme, page builder, and plugins you are choosing to use.

• Ability to blog natively.

• Ability to build custom CMS items with custom fields and layouts.

Who is WordPress right for?

The only people I truly recommend WordPress for these days are people who have advanced custom CMS needs for their website, and are building a project with a lot of dynamic pieces that need to be custom built or that need to take advantage of WordPress CMS customization capabilities. And even that, other platforms are catching up with (platforms like Framer and Webflow.) Nowadays, Webflow and Framer are better, more stable choices for those who have advanced custom CMS needs.

If you’re a photographer determined to use WordPress because it has a theme and community you love, then it could be the right choice for you. After all, the best website platform for any business owner is the one they experience the least friction in using.

But I encourage you to ask yourself: Are you ready to self-host your website, and have all of the responsibilities that come with that? If your website breaks or your tech has an incompatibility, are you prepared to keep backups, to fix it yourself, see if your host can help you fix it, or find and pay a WordPress pro to fix it? If the answer is no, you might be better off on another platform that handles all of that for you.

If you're stuck on the decision, I wrote an in-depth review of Squarespace vs WP specifically for photographers.

Builders I don’t recommend for any photographer:

• ShowIt - This platform is beautiful, yes - but ShowIt lacks some basics like semantic HTML and built-in blogging.

• Zenfolio - Zenfolio is not SEO-friendly. This could be a fine choice for you if you don’t care about getting found in search engines. 

Honorable mentions:

• Smugmug - I don’t have enough personal experience with Smugmug to recommend it as a website builder. My preference is to lean towards a non-industry-specific website builder, because with builders anyone can use, you’ll have a bigger community of professionals, tech-troubleshooting experience, and more company support.