As a professional photographer, you’ve likely spent a significant amount of time perfecting your style and artistic identity. You know how you prefer to shoot, what type of photography you focus on, and how to provide your clients with a fantastic session and product. Now, it’s about getting your name out there.

Unless you’re also a sales or marketing professional, getting discovered and securing new clients can sometimes feel daunting. While word of mouth is undoubtedly the most trusted form of marketing, building an online presence is essential for your business growth. Photography portfolio sites can help build trust as a professional with prospects, showcase your work and educate potential clients on the type of sessions you offer, and provide a look into your aesthetic as an artist.

There are platforms that help creative artists like you build a photography portfolio site with little to no web developer knowledge. We’re giving you our top five options for the best site for photography portfolios, and their features and benefits, to help you choose your next step in growing your photography business.

1. Zenfolio

Over 500,000 photographers in 130 countries have used Zenfolio to build their photography portfolio sites. It offers three different plans:

• Portfolio
• PortfolioPlus
• ProSuite

All three plans boast photo and video storage, shareable client galleries, a mobile-friendly and SEO-optimized site with a custom domain, email marketing options, and an online store.

Zenfolio’s motto is “We code behind the scenes while you click behind the lens.” While it offers free photography website templates, Zenfolio gives you thousands of ways to customize your own site.

Additionally, you can link your Instagram profile with your portfolio site to automatically pull in photos from that platform. If you are interested in sharing videos as well, Zenfolio offers video hosting with all of its plans and allows you to share videos in your client galleries, potentially generating more sales and higher order value.

2. Squarespace

Marketing themselves as an all-in-one platform for photographers, Squarespace offers interactive elements such as full-screen slideshows and lightbox callouts to feature your photographs. Squarespace allows your portfolio site to integrate with over 10 different social media platforms to seamlessly connect to your online audience across channels.

Choose between four different plans:

• Personal
• Business
• Basic Commerce
• Advanced Commerce

Squarespace has both monthly and annual payment plans to work with your budget and offers a 14-day free trial to get started. If you do need help building your site or setting up your domains, Squarespace has personalized support via email or live chat 24/7.

While Squarespace isn’t built specifically for photographers like Zenfolio, its product lineup gives you the freedom to build a portfolio, blog, online store, or any mix between the three.

3. Wix

With a simple drag-and-drop design that most website builders offer now, Wix provides you the tools you’ll need to start a simple photography portfolio site for free. You can choose a template yourself, or you can answer a few questions and have a free site designed for you. All templates are mobile-friendly and SEO-optimized as well.

While Wix was known primarily for its free plan, the offerings have expanded over time. With its free plan, you get hundreds of templates, unlimited site pages, and hosting all included. However, if you’re looking for additional features such as a custom domain or online store, you can upgrade to one of four premium website plans:

• Combo
• Unlimited
• Pro
• VIP

Wix also offers Business and eCommerce Plans and Enterprise Plans, so it can grow with you as your business grows.

With the Wix Owner app, you can edit your website from your smartphone, allowing you to run your business on the go. As Wix continues to improve its tools and features like this, the platform is quickly catching up with its competitors.

4. WordPress

WordPress may be the most widely used platform for web development across all industries, and there’s a reason for that. However, it’s important to understand what is offered within WordPress and what you’ll need to have knowledge of and access to outside the platform.

WordPress is free to use as a platform, but there are additional requirements you’ll need to pay for before taking your site live. Unlike Square and Wix, which have built-in hosting, you’ll need to set up your own hosting and domain separately from WordPress. WordPress makes this extremely easy to do and walks you through the process step by step, but it’s good to know what the cost may be upfront. Additionally, while WordPress does offer free templates and themes, you may need to expand to a paid theme as your business grows, which can run anywhere from $50 to $250.

However, even with these costs, WordPress continues to outperform some of the other web-building platforms. With essentially unlimited plugins to customize your site and a rather extensive capability for custom coding, WordPress can handle anything from smaller photography portfolio sites to large enterprise websites.

5. PhotoShelter

Branded as the leading Digital Asset Management platform, PhotoShelter allows you to show, sell, organize, and deliver your digital work. No coding is required, but its site templates are limited to just nine options. PhotoShelter prioritizes its storage platform capabilities over its website builder, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an equally fantastic solution.

With no file size limits, you can have your full archive of images right within the platform and easily add or remove images from your site at any time with just a few clicks. Its client-proofing tool allows you to communicate with your clients back and forth without needing an overwhelming email thread or sharing multiple storage platform links.

PhotoShelter offers individual photographers a 14-day free trial. If you decide to continue, you can choose from three plans:

• Basic
• Standard
• Pro

These are billed monthly or annually. The PhotoShelter platform has over 100 features built specifically with photographers in mind.

Once you’ve chosen the best site for a photography portfolio and built your online presence, Agency Access’ database of over 90,000 contacts can put you in contact with professionals and clients that can help you increase your exposure in the industry and build your portfolio. Stay updated with Agency Access’s email newsletter (in the sticky header up top ☝) to learn more about taking your photography business to the next level.