Portfolio website, client galleries, store. One platform to run your creative business. Public work out front. Roughs, revisions and unreleased commissions behind a password on the same site.
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The basics
An illustrator portfolio website is a site on your own domain holding your commissioned work at full resolution, sequenced by the kind of job you want next, with a way to hire you attached. It isn’t a Behance profile or an Instagram grid. Those sort by recency and put someone else’s interface between the art director and the art.
For most working illustrators the public site is half the job. The roughs go out by WeTransfer, the revision notes come back in email, and the print sales run through a marketplace that takes a percentage.
Why Pixpa
Templates you can take apart.
200+ designer-made starting points, editable down to the grid, with custom CSS and HTML on every plan when the editor runs out.
A password on any page.
Put an embargoed book cover or unannounced packaging behind a password without hiding the rest of the site.
Client galleries on the same site.
Send roughs, collect comments on individual frames, deliver the final files. No second subscription.
Zero commission on sales.
Prints, digital files, ebooks. Pixpa takes nothing on top, on every plan.
“It has everything I needed to make a unique and personalised portfolio page for my work.”
Inspiration
Live sites from illustrators taking commissions right now. Open them and look at how the work is sequenced and where the contact link sits.
Design
Templates are filtered by discipline rather than by color swatch, because a wedding gallery and a single-scroll illustration site solve different problems.
Then take it apart. Move any block, change the type scale, write custom CSS or edit the HTML directly. Custom CSS is on every plan, not gated to the top tier.
“The templates are clean and tidy with good option of fonts.”
Is there a learning curve?
Yes. Block-level control over every section is more to learn than a template you can only recolor. Support is on live chat 24/7 with a person, which is what most of the reviews that raise this end up saying.
What if the editor won’t do what you want?
Some reviewers hit the edge of the drag-and-drop layouts, usually on gallery pages. Custom CSS and HTML are on every plan rather than gated behind the top tier, so getting past that edge doesn’t cost an upgrade.
“The customer support is brilliant. Even when I get lost figuring out where to make a change, they always respond very quickly. I appreciate the real humans on the other side!”
Client work
Upload a set of thumbnails or roughs, share one link, and let the art director mark the direction they want. They can comment on individual frames instead of writing “the third one, second row” in an email. Ratings work when you want a shortlist rather than a yes or no, and more than one person at the client can mark favorites in the same gallery.
Deliver the final files as downloads from the same place. Set an expiry date and the gallery closes itself when the job is done.
Privacy
Most commercial illustration is under wraps until the client ships it. Password protection works on a whole site or on one page, on every plan, so an NDA’d project can sit in your portfolio structure months before anyone else can open it.
Right-click protection is a site setting that stops visitors saving images straight off the page, and on client proofing albums it’s on by default. You can also turn downloads off for a single gallery or a whole album, which matters when someone is approving roughs they haven’t paid for yet.
Watermarks on gallery images are available on Creator and above, which is what you want on work going out for approval rather than on published pieces.
Store
The store runs on the same domain as the portfolio. Sell framed prints, open editions, digital files, brushes or an ebook. Set your own shipping and tax, run discount codes, take payment through Stripe or PayPal straight into your account. Print orders can auto-fulfill through an integrated print lab.
Pixpa’s cut is zero on every plan. A platform taking a percentage costs you more the better a year you have.
Step by step
Six steps, about two hours if your files are ready.
Cut to the work you want more of.
Not your best work, the work you want commissioned again. If a piece is there because it was hard to make, it’s costing you the next brief.
Pick a template built for image-heavy pages.
Filter by discipline first. Color and type are the easiest things to change later.
Build four pages.
Work, About, Contact, and one page for the service you actually sell. Four pages that earn their place beat eleven thin ones.
Split public work from client work.
Public portfolio pages stay open. Embargoed projects and client deliveries go behind a password or into a client gallery.
Connect your domain.
Bring one you own, or take the free custom domain included for the first year on annual billing.
Publish, then write your page titles.
Use the SEO Manager to set titles and descriptions before you share the link, not after.
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Standards
Six things separate a portfolio that gets commissioned from one that gets a polite reply. None of them are about drawing better.
One specialty visible in the first screen.
Art directors commission a look, not a range. A portfolio that opens with editorial, then children’s book, then a logo, reads as available rather than specialist. Lead with the lane you want to be booked in and put the rest deeper in the site.
Twelve to twenty pieces.
A hundred images signal output, twenty signal judgment, and judgment is what’s being hired. Personal work counts as long as it looks like a brief you could be given.
Commissioned work labeled as commissioned.
Name the client, the publication, the art director if you have permission. An unlabeled image could be spec work. A labeled one proves you’ve delivered to a deadline with someone else’s opinion in the room.
Process, but only where it proves you take direction.
Two roughs and the final tells an art director you can be steered. Twelve sketchbook pages tells them nothing they’re buying.
Files that load on a phone.
Most portfolio links get opened from an email or an Instagram bio on mobile data. Upload at full resolution and let the platform serve a device-appropriate size rather than pushing a 6MB PNG to a phone. This is a delivery problem, not a design one.
A rate or an inquiry path.
Ambiguity reads as unavailable. A starting figure or a clear brief form removes the one question that stops people writing to you.
Editorial, children’s book, commercial and brand, concept art, character design and hand lettering each want a different first screen. The illustration portfolio examples page has live sites from each.
Answers
Twelve to twenty. Enough to show a consistent point of view, few enough that every piece is one you'd want to be commissioned for again. Anything weaker drags the average down.
Both, for different jobs. Behance and Instagram are discovery. Your own site is where the work is sequenced the way you want it read, where the contact route is yours, and where nobody changes the layout on you. Keep a profile on the platforms and send serious inquiries to the site.
Yes. It's what lets you change platforms later without losing every link an art director has bookmarked, and the search authority accrues to you rather than to the host. Pixpa includes a free custom domain for the first year on annual billing, and you can connect one you already own instead.
Yes, on every plan. Password protection works on a whole site or a single page, and client galleries add access controls plus an expiry date so a delivery closes itself once the job is signed off.
Yes. The store sells framed prints, open editions, digital files and ebooks from the same domain as the portfolio, with payments through Stripe or PayPal into your own account. Pixpa takes zero commission on every plan.
Client galleries and the zero-commission store are included in the plan rather than sold as add-ons, so the site, the client delivery and the print sales sit on one bill. Students and educators get a discount. See the pricing page for current plans.
Get started
“This is definitely a cost effective option for building your website. As a student, I found Pixpa to give me all the features I needed.”
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