7 Best Website Builders for Artists: Get Seen in 2024 (2024)

Painters, Illustrators, Photographers, Graphic Designers, 3D Modelers, etc.

Visual artists need to not only sell their artwork on their website, their website needs to sell them to potential customers. You wouldn’t trust a plumber whose house was leaking, would you?

Top Choice: Squarespace

Starting price: $16 per month
Read our full Squarespace Review

Each of Squarepsace’s award-winning templates is mobile-friendly and immaculately designed, covering a large range of industries and styles from modern gallery sites to streetwear startups. In fact, the Magnum Collection of templates is designed by real artists, featuring the work of iconic photographers like Steve McCurry, Bruce Gilden, and Olivia Arthur.

Better yet, is that Squarespace is also the easiest-to-use builder on this list, scoring 4.6 out of 5 in our research. With a drag-and-drop editor, simply click and drag the elements you want into place, and Squarespace will seamlessly integrate them into the site. When we tested the platform, we actually found it difficult to create a bad-looking site! One small issue is the lack of automated save functions. Make sure to keep saving your design as you go, or you’ll lose it.

With Squarespace’s ecommerce features, you can sell both physical and digital types of art in the same store, as well as offer your services through subscriptions and booking functionality. However, do be aware that its product photos are locked to an aspect ratio, and you may need code to change this.

Squarespace’s great SEO features and marketing functions, let you post to multiple social media feeds and embed it into your website, as well as host videos and galleries. There’s unlimited storage too, so no need to worry about limiting the amount of art you can sell.

What’s The Best Value Plan?

Squarespace’s pricing comes in four premium plans:

• Personal – $16 per month
• Business – $23 per month
• Commerce Basic – $27 per month
• Commerce Advanced – $49 per month

If you want the full use of Squarespace’s features as a visual artist, then the Business plan is your best value-for-money option. You get all of Squarespace’s artistic functions plus the option to sell your art. You get the best of Squarespace for your art with this plan.

We understand that $23 per month can seem like a lot, but there are options. At Website Builder Expert, we’re currently running a 10% discount for our readers if they use the code WBE10 at checkout.

If you’re not ready to decide yet, Squarespace has a 14-day free trial so you can test out its features before you decide.

Further Information:

• 10 Best Artist Website Templates: Get inspired by some of the most aesthetically pleasing artist site themes.
• Artist Website Examples: See how others showcase their creativity in these website examples.
• Interview With Viveca Chow: See first-hand an artist’s website built with Squarespace, as well as some insight into the building process.
• Best Painters Websites: See Squarespace in action in this selection of our favorite painter websites on the web.

Alternative: Pixpa – Best for photographers

Starting price: $4 per month

Pixpa is the only truly art-dedicated platform on this list – even more so than Squarespace. You can only make one type of website with Pixpa: a portfolio site, making it perfect for professional artists and photographers, especially those who need a site to court potential clients and job offers.

Pixpa has the largest variety of options when it comes to galleries, with over 25 layout options and exclusive features like Progressive Image Loading, which allows you to host many high-quality images on your site with no site speed slowdown. You can sell digital and physical items on Pixpa too, with the option to embed prices directly into your galleries – plus use Pixpa’s new watermark feature to protect your images from thieves.

Pixpa does have some shortcomings, however. The starting plan limits you to only three sellable pieces, and lacks features like blogging, a domain name, and custom fonts – there’s even a limit on how many images you can upload (200 on the Basic plan). What makes Pixpa a good alternative to Squarespace for visual artists is how tailored it is to photographers – it is the best website builder for photography, as there’ll be no other as dedicated to your art form. The question is whether you want your site to be more than just a portfolio.

What’s The Best Value Plan?

Pixpa has four premium plans:

• Basic – $4 per month
• Creator – $7.50 per month
• Professional – $10 per month
• Advanced – $12.50 per month

As an alternative to Squarespace, Pixpa really sets itself apart thanks to its low prices – much more manageable for beginning artists.

For visual artists specifically, we recommend the Creator plan. It gives you more features than the Basic plan, such as SEO capabilities and being able to sell up to 10 products. Not a huge amount, but enough to earn a little money if you work primarily as a photographer for hire.

Authors, Poets, Screenwriters, etc.

For writers, a website needs to be the beacon of their professional presence – this is where people are most likely to land upon to get updates and news. Blogs are great for regularly sharing your writing and are the best way to post content in between actual releases. Many authors have memberships with exclusive content, sharing upcoming snippets and first drafts for a monthly subscription. For all these features and more, Wix is our recommended builder, as it has the most (and best quality) features of any on this list.

Top Choice: Wix

Starting price: $16 per month
Read our full Wix Review

Wix is a great all-rounder website builder: it quite literally does everything superbly, from ecommerce to booking and scheduling. As a writer, it’s a great blogging platform for launching your career, with how good its blog functionality is – it gives you social bookmarking, analytics, plus comment sections for fostering a community of your readers. You can even create membership-only areas for your most dedicated fans.

Wix also has excellent SEO plus marketing capabilities, meaning you can advertise yourself across a number of social platforms. Wix also provides over 800 templates across every industry you can think of – including ones specifically for writers. Like GoDaddy, Wix can also build you a custom template based on your answer to a short questionnaire – the option is yours.

Like Squarespace, Wix has a drag-and-drop editor which gives you a lot of freedom when designing your site. We’d even argue that Wix’s editor has even greater design flexibility than Squarespace, giving you the most creative freedom in website design on this list with 3.9 out of 5 in our research. Its new Wix Studio even allows its features to be used by professional web designers, perfect for really showing off your graphic capabilities.

What’s The Best Value Plan?

Wix’s pricing comes in four premium plans, as well as its free plan:

• Light – $16 per month
• Core – $27 per month
• Business – $32 per month
• Business Elite – $159 per month

We’d recommend the Core plan, as you won’t be able to get ecommerce, scheduling, booking, or streaming music and video on the Light plan. It’s one of the more expensive plans on this list, so only commit if you can afford it.

Like Squarespace, we have a unique 10% off at checkout offer for our readers if they use TAKE10 at checkout. There’s also the free plan you can play around with infinitely, meaning you can get to grips with your site’s design and then upgrade later.

Further Information:

• Want to sell online? OurWix Ecommerce Reviewtells you all you need to know about creating an online store with Wix
• Interview With Vicky Weber: See a writer’s website built with Wix, and how you an achieve the same amount of succcess.

Ceramic Artists, Woodworkers, Metalworkers, Sculptors, Jewelers, etc.

Visual artists need to not only sell their artwork on their website, their website needs to sell them to potential customers. You wouldn’t trust a plumber whose house was leaking, would you? Our best overall builder for artists, Squarespace keeps design and creativity at the forefront and is the best builder for allowing artists to show – not tell – their ability through design.

Top Choice: Shopify

Starting price: $29 per month
Read our full Shopify Review

Shopify is an ecommerce platform – meaning it is designed principally for selling products online (including art!). Its sales features are truly phenomenal, giving you unlimited products to sell plus all the options and variables you could ask for. If you mainly sell your art in person at art fairs or galleries, Shopify has POS products like card readers that sync all your sales, meaning you can sell with Shopify in the way that suits you and your art best.

To send your customers the art they’ve bought, you can turn to Shopify’s in-house shipping tool, Shopify Shipping, which is available for free on any of Shopify’s paid plans. It has partnerships with various carrier services including USPS, UPS, Canada Post, and DHL Express, plus offers discounted Shopify shipping rates of around 20%-50%. Shopify has integrations with just about everything, including Instagram and Etsy, meaning people will be able to buy your art from wherever you post it – and they’ll receive it wherever they are in the world!

You may think that being commerce-focused means skimping on design. Well, Shopify has the joint highest score for design functionality in our research with 3.9 out of 5! Shopify has over 100 themes to choose from, each one professionally designed and perfected for selling online. However, we should mention that many of these themes are not free, costing a one-time payment of around $70. There are 15 free themes to choose from if you can’t stretch to that price.

Like Wix, a downside to Shopify is its expensive nature. From its starting price of $29 per month to its paid themes and plugin subscriptions, the bills quickly rack up. However, Shopify has a social media-only plan called Shopify Starter – with this plan, you can connect a Shopify store to a social media account for only $5 per month – no website creation needed. This is perfect for artists who already have an online presence, and now just want to be able to make some money off their art.

What’s The Best Value Plan?

Shopify’s pricing comes in three regular premium plans for its website builder, plus the Starter plan:

• Starter – $5 per month
• Shopify Basic – $29 per month
• Shopify – $79 per month
• Advanced Shopify – $299 per month

If you already utilize social media to show off your work, the Shopify Starter plan is perfect for selling. You can make use of your existing social media followers rather than driving traffic to a new website, plus it’s very affordable at only $5 per month.

The Shopify Basic plan is our recommended choice for website building, as it gives you a great base for an online store and plenty of room to grow., but even then you may find it overkill just for selling art. Shopify is primarily designed for online businesses, with a monthly fee reflecting this – so we recommend Shopify for artists with 10 or more artisanal crafts to sell through their store

Further Information:

• Shopify vs Squarespace: Torn between our top two choices? Check out our head-to-head comparison.

Alternative: Square Online – Best for selling art in person

Starting price: $0 per month
Read our full Square Online Review

Square Online is known primarily for its range of POS systems, a great option for artists who want to sell physical copies of their work while still having a website. The POS systems range from simple card readers to full retail terminals, meaning you can mix and match based on your needs. Better yet, they tend to be cheaper than Shopify’s, with Square Online’s terminal costing $299 compared to Shopify’s $349 price tag.

Another major advantage of Square Online is that you can sell on it for free. Compared to Shopify, Square Online’s sales features and shipping tools aren’t as strong. But, if you are dead set on selling your art in person, then we recommend choosing the free plan and using the money you would have saved on a POS system. You can continue in-person selling while still having a website to show off your art – all for 15% cheaper for the first year (and pay nothing every year after!)

Design-wise, Square Online is the weakest on this list, earning only 1.7 out of 5 for design functionality in our research. While all the templates are mobile-friendly, there is very little creative flair in them, being made more for function than form. Combined with limited customization in the editor, your Square Online website will not turn heads in the way Squarespace or Wix can manage.

What’s The Best Value Plan?

Square Online’s pricing comes in two premium plans as well as its free plan:

• Plus – $29 per month
• Premium – $79 per month

When you think of the annual savings, the free plan can seem very tempting. But we should give you the facts. Like Wix, you’ll have to contend with ads, a Square Online domain, and no access to PayPal and similar services. The free plan also comes with next to no features – you’ll have to pay extra subscriptions for things like marketing and memberships. There are also transaction fees to be paid for each sale, beginning at 2.6% + 10¢ per transaction and only getting more expensive from there.

That being said, we still recommend it, as long as you take our advice and invest in Square Online’s POS system for your artisanal crafts as well.

Actors, Musicians, Dancers, Comedians, etc.

For performing artists, you are the art. This means your website will be primarily selling yourself and your services. Website builders like GoDaddy not only let you integrate your social feeds into the website, but you can also create Facebook and Instagram ads to show off your skills. Additionally, due to the less-than-consistent way performing artists get paid, a cheaper starting price is better suited.

Top Choice: GoDaddy

Starting price: $9.99 per month
Read our full GoDaddy Review

If you just need to make a website quickly so you can get back to your artistic passions, then GoDaddy is the builder for you. GoDaddy forgoes traditional templates in favor of ADI, making a custom template based on your answers to a short questionnaire. When we tested, we noticed it never made the same template twice, so your template should be fully unique to you. These designs do not have the same level of aesthetic quality as Wix or Squarespace’s professionally designed templates, and you won’t find the same functionality in the editor either. In our research, it scored a middling 3.5 out of 5 for design.

However, what elevates GoDaddy above its competitors is its cheap starting price. $9.99 per month is a very budget-friendly price for an artist, and even better is that it has a free plan. Like Wix, you won’t get a custom domain or access to a lot of features, but it’s a great way to test out the builder at your leisure.

GoDaddy also succeeds in having excellent SEO and marketing tools. During onboarding, it is very upfront about getting the word out about your new website as soon as possible. With an inbuilt video creator plus Facebook Ad functionality, you can give yourself an aggressive ad campaign on the level of a professional agency – all from your website.

What’s The Best Value Plan?

GoDaddy’s pricing comes in four premium plans, plus its free plan:

• Basic – $9.99 per month
• Standard – $10.49 per month
• Premium – $14.99 per month
• Ecommerce – $16.99 per month

The Standard plan has everything you need: booking, scheduling, and SEO options. Do not get the Basic plan. For only 50 cents extra you get the Standard plan with SEO, which is crucial for getting traffic to your site.

Further Information:

• GoDaddy vs Squarespace:Find out which you should choose in this head-to-head comparison.

Alternatives: Hostinger – Cheapest website builder for artists

Starting price: $2.99 per month + 3 months free (if you opt for the 48-month plan)
Read our full Hostinger Review

Hostinger is a great all-rounder website like Wix, but less complex and less expensive. While it doesn’t really stand out in any one area, it is ideal for performing artists who want a fully functional website for a cheap price, starting at only $2.99 per month, plus 3 months free if you opt for the 48-month plan!

You can choose from over 100 templates with Hostinger, and while they aren’t on par design-wise with Squarespace, they cover a wide range of industries. Like Wix and GoDaddy, Hostinger can use generative AI to create a personalized website template from scratch. If you want to build and design the site yourself, then Hostinger’s drag-and-drop editor is one of the easiest-to-use we’ve tested, coming just behind Squarespace in our research with 4.5 out of 5.

Hostinger is a low-key website builder to post photographs and videos from your performances and lets people know how to get in contact with you. For only $2.49 per month, it’s very manageable for busy artists and could be the difference between you landing your next gig.

What’s The Best Value Plan?

Hostinger has three paid plans:

• Premium – $2.49 per month (+ 3 months free)
• Business – $3.69 per month
• Cloud Startup – $8.99 per month

Each plan has the same website builder and features, just a different hosting option. We recommend the Premium plan for performing artists. Readers can also take advantage of 10% off using code WBE at the checkout.

The right website builder for you will be different from someone else’s, but there are certain factors you should consider, especially for website builders for artists.

What Exactly Should I Be Looking For?

Choosing a website builder for your artist’s website means you have to make sure it satisfies all your needs. After interviewing real artists and seeing their websites, we’ve broken it down into three essential and equally important questions every artist needs to ask when looking for a website builder – and what this means feature-wise:

• Can it help build my professional presence as an artist?
  • Images & Galleries
  • Video Integration
  • Booking & Scheduling
  • Marketing
  • SEO
  • Social Media Feeds

• Can I sell my art on it?
  • Online Store
  • Shipping Capabilities
  • POS Systems
  • Memberships & Subscriptions

• Can I showcase my artistic abilities in my website’s creation?
  • Templates for Artists
  • ADI
  • Drag-and-Drop Editor
  • In-Depth Design Customization
  • Full Color & Font Options

For this list, we’ve chosen and ranked the website builders according to how well they answer these questions, as well as factoring in the variable that controls all our lives: cost. As an artist, we understand there can be a tight budget, so we’ve prioritized affordability with each builder and will let you know what’s the best value plan to get the most bang for your buck.

Ideally, you want a website that can accurately display your artwork and share information on who you are, where to find your work, and how to purchase your art (if necessary). Your site needs to represent you as an artist and invite new visitors to explore.

Here’s a comparison table of all our providers’ features so you can compare in detail:

How did we find our top artist website builders? Good question! First, we put every builder on this list through our rigorous research process. That’s where we analyze builders in six key areas.

After our research and testing, each builder receives a score out of five in every category, and we add those scores together to produce an overall score. However, we realize that not all of these categories are created equally, and as a result, special weighting has been given to specific categories that artists told us were most important to them, such as design and ease of use.

Here are the unique weightings for our artist category:

Design flexibility – 37%
Ease of use – 25%
Features – 18%
Value for money – 10%
Help and support – 5%
Customer score – 5%

Overall, the best website builder for artists is Squarespace. With its phenomenally-designed templates and easy-to-use editor, it turns your website into a veritable work of art itself. Be careful it doesn’t overshadow your own!

But just like the many varieties of paint, each builder brings a unique quality to your artwork, so experiment and see which turns your work-in-progress into a masterpiece.