As a photographer, having a website is super important and is not only good for showcasing your work. It’s good for potential clients see what services you offer, your rates for different services, testimonials and more. Investing (whether your money or time) in a GOOD quality website that’s informative and looks good is always worth it. I know most of us build our websites, so here’s my experience with the two website builder’s I’ve used. Just a heads up though, Showit is my favorite and the best website builder.

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MY EXPERIENCE WITH SQUARESPACE

The first site I thought about was Squarespace because of their promoting. They practically sponsor all the YouTubers and they have discount codes and they have free templates so you don’t need much- if any, website design experience if you decide to build from scratch. It’s also very user friendly and inexpensive. They also own Acuity, so if you use Acuity Scheduling to book clients, that’s a bonus. You can also buy your domain through Squarespace, which is very convenient.

They also advertise themselves as a drag and drop site, but there are limits to that. Squarespace has a grid of where you can place things, so you cannot go outside said grid. There were times where I’d have to settle on where I could place the item because of that limitation. Trying to build the mobile version of my site was a pain as well, which is a horrible flaw for a website builder. My website would look good on the desktop version, but not the mobile version. It’s imperative that your website looks amazing on mobile because that is where websites are viewed on the most.

Squarespace starts at $16/ mo

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MY EXPERIENCE WITH SHOWIT

Although I’ve only experienced using two host sites- Showit is definitely my favorite and cannot recommend it enough and every chance I get, I promote them.

I converted to Showit because a photographer I follow on Instagram uses it and her web designer was RAVING about amazing it is when it comes to building your site on mobile, as well as Showit’s customer service, so I decided to do some research.

I want to emphasize how much Showit is a learning curve and I would not have the website that I do now, if I did not hire a web designer. With that being said, Showit templates are not free. They are easy to use and build off of and I know this I added more things to my website once the web designer finished building the site. If you wanted to, you can have a completely different mobile version of your website than the desktop version… that’s how customizable Showit is.

If you do not have any website designing experience, I would not recommend trying to build your website from scratch because it can be very intimidating- but it’s worth learning.

Showit also works WordPress, if you ever want to start a blog. You’d have to pay extra for it, but it is easy to use and is fully integrated with Showit. You build your website in Showit and create your blog posts in WordPress. You’re even able to see how your blog post rates with the SEO free plugin. So, in my opinion, Showit is the best website builder.

Squarespace starts at $19/ mo