Portfolio website, client galleries, store. One platform to run your creative business.
Send the gallery, take the print order, and never open a second tab.
15 days · No card required
The basics
Four things, and the order matters. Your work at full resolution, on a domain in your name. A way to send a private gallery to the couple, the art director or the agent who is paying you. A way to take money for a print or a download without handing over a cut. And an editor you can open at 11pm after a shoot and change something in five minutes.
Most builders do the first one well and stop. That's why the standard photography stack is two subscriptions: a site on one platform and a gallery tool on another, with your images uploaded twice and your client crossing a brand boundary to see them. Pixpa runs all four from one login.
Why Pixpa
Design control past the template
61 photography templates, editable down to the grid, with custom CSS and HTML when the editor runs out.
Client galleries on the same subscription
Proofing, favoriting, ratings, comments, secure delivery and auto-expiry, on the same site as the portfolio. No second platform, no second bill.
Zero commission on every sale
Prints, wall art, digital downloads. Pixpa takes no percentage on any plan.
Support answered by a person
24/7 live chat, staffed by people who know the editor.
I switched from Squarespace to Pixpa and my experience has been very positive. The customer support is also incredible and instant. I never had to wait for a response while building my site.
INSPIRATION
Real sites from working photographers. Open any of them live and see how the same platform handles a 400-image wedding portfolio and a six-frame fine-art series.
Design
61 photography templates, every one built for image loads rather than text blocks. Full-bleed, grid, masonry, single-scroll, split-screen. Swap between them after the site is live without losing content.
The template is the starting point. Move any block, change the type scale, set your own gallery behavior, or write custom CSS and edit the HTML directly. 25+ gallery layouts ship as standard, including full-screen slideshows and lightbox galleries.
I really like how easily a template can be adjusted to your own needs and how easy is to integrate a custom css. Support is so easy to approach and you get a reply within 5 minutes.
Client delivery
Upload the shoot, set a password or an expiry date, send one link. The gallery sits on your domain, under your branding, so the client never lands on someone else's product page.
Your client marks favorites, rates images when you want a shortlist rather than a yes or no, and comments on individual frames. More than one person can favorite in the same gallery independently, which matters when both partners and a mother of the bride are picking album images. On the date you set, it expires.
Gallery Links do the same job without a website attached: a standalone responsive gallery you can send from a phone, on every plan.
Selling
Turn any gallery into a shop. Set per-image pricing or apply one price list across a gallery, sell framed prints, wall art, digital files, gift vouchers or shoot packages, and take payment through Stripe or PayPal straight into your account.
Print orders route to an integrated lab through WHCC for automatic fulfillment, or you set your own pricing sheet and fulfill through any lab you already use. Pixpa’s commission is zero, on every plan. Platforms that take a percentage on their lower tiers cost you more the better a year you have.
Step by step
Six steps, roughly two hours if your files are already culled.
Cut to 20 to 40 images
Pick what you would show a paying client, not what was hardest to shoot. Sequence the first six with more care than the rest.
Pick a template
Filter by photography first, then by layout. 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 strong pages beat eleven thin ones.
Upload at full resolution
Let the platform serve a device-appropriate size instead of shipping a 6MB JPEG to a phone. Watermark proofs if you deliver them.
Set up one client gallery before you launch
Send it to yourself on a phone. That's the experience your client gets, and it's worth seeing once before a real job runs through it.
Connect your domain, then write your SEO
Bring one you own, or take the free custom domain included for the first year on annual billing. Use the SEO Manager to set page titles and descriptions before you share the link.
15 days · No card required
Standards
Six things separate a photography site that books work from one that just exists. None of them are about taste.
The first screen is the edit
Art directors and picture editors decide inside three images whether to keep scrolling. Recency is your filing system, not their interest. Lead with the strongest frame you own even if you shot it four years ago.
Twenty to forty images, not four hundred
A big archive signals volume. A tight edit signals judgment, and judgment is what gets hired. If a frame is on the site because it was difficult to make rather than because it wins the next job, cut it.
It has to load on a phone on mobile data
Most people open your link from Instagram or an email signature, on a train. Upload at full resolution and let the platform resize per device. This is a delivery problem, not a design one, and it's the most common reason a well-shot site underperforms.
Say what you shoot and what it costs to start
Ambiguity reads as unavailability. A services page with a starting figure or a clear inquiry path removes the question that stops most people from writing to you.
Show the client experience, not just the portfolio
If you deliver galleries, say so and show what one looks like. A wedding client choosing between two photographers at the same price is comparing the whole job, and the delivery is half of it.
Give people somewhere to go next
An inquiry form, a print shop, a gallery link. A portfolio with no exit is a print on a wall in a locked building. On Pixpa the inquiry form, the client gallery and the print store are already on the same site, so the next step exists without a second platform.
By speciality
Real sites, grouped by what you shoot.
Answers
Yes, for two reasons that have nothing to do with taste. A client who wants to check you out before spending four figures will look for a site, and a feed doesn't answer their questions about pricing, coverage or delivery. And the SEO accrues to Instagram, not to you. Your site is the only asset in your marketing you own outright.
The portfolio is the edit: the images you chose and the order you put them in. The website is where that edit lives and what it can do once someone arrives. A portfolio can exist as a PDF or a printed book. A photography website adds the things a PDF cannot do, like a private client gallery, a print store and a contact path that reaches you at 2am.
No. You start from a designer-made template and change what you want to change with drag and drop. Custom CSS and HTML are there if you want to go further, and some photographers use them to fine-tune gallery spacing, but nothing on the platform requires them.
Twenty to forty across the whole site, split into two or three galleries by type of work. Anything above that and viewers start skimming, which is the opposite of what a portfolio is for. Keep the archive; just don't put all of it on the front end.
Yes, and you don't have to move anything on day one. Build alongside your current site, point the domain when the new one is ready, and keep the old one live until then. Squarespace and Wix are the two platforms Pixpa users most often arrive from. Support will walk through the structure with you on chat before you commit a domain.
On Pixpa, client galleries and the zero-commission store are in the plan rather than sold as add-ons, so the site, the delivery and the print sales sit on one bill instead of two or three. Students and educators get a discount. See the pricing page for current plans.