Best website builders for artists: the options compared, and how to choose

Do artists need a website?

Yes, if you show work, sell it or apply for things. A website is the one place online where your work appears under your own name, in the order you choose, with nothing between it and the person looking.

The people who make decisions about your work usually look you up before they reply:

• Gallerists and curators want to see recent work and where it has been shown.
• Open calls, grants and residencies often ask for a website link on the application form.
• Collectors and journalists want images, a short bio and a way to reach you.

A social media account does a different job. It is good for reaching people who do not know you yet, but it shows posts in date order, mixes finished work with everything else, and belongs to a platform that can change its rules. A website is where those people go next, when they want to see the work properly.

It does not need to be large. One page of selected work, a short bio and a contact address is a complete artist website, and it is enough to start with.

What makes a good artist website?

A good artist website shows the work quickly and answers the questions a visitor arrives with: what does the work look like, what is it, who made it, and how do I get in touch.

• The work comes first. Images are on the first screen, large, with nothing to click through to reach them.
• Every work has a caption. Title, year, medium and dimensions, written the same way each time.
• It is a selection. Recent, finished work, grouped by series or by year. Older work goes in an archive section or comes off.
• The images are accurate. Straight-on, evenly lit, cropped to the edges of the work and true in color.
• It says who you are. A short bio, a statement, a CV or exhibition list, and a contact address that someone reads.
• It is current. The newest work and the next exhibition are there. A site that stops three years ago suggests the practice did too.
• It works on a phone and loads quickly on a slow connection.
• The design stays out of the way. A plain background, one typeface and simple navigation.

The captions and the exhibition list are where most artist websites fall behind, because they have to be typed again each time something changes. Keeping them first in an inventory of your work turns the website into a matter of copying from your records, or of publishing straight from them.

What pages should an artist website include?

Four pages cover almost every artist website: work, about, CV and contact. Add the others only when you have something to put on them and the time to keep them up.

The about and CV pages are built from documents you will be asked for anyway. See how to write an artist statement and how to format an artist CV.

What kinds of artist website builder are there?

The tools artists use to make a website fall into three kinds. They overlap, but each starts from a different idea of what the site is.

• General site builders make any kind of website from templates: pages, a blog, a shop. Squarespace, Wix and WordPress.com are examples.
• Portfolio platforms are site builders narrowed to showing visual work, with themes designed around images. Format, Pixpa, Adobe Portfolio and Cargo are examples.
• Inventory tools with a portfolio start from a private database of your works and publish the parts you choose. ArtieDB and Artwork Archive are examples.

There is a fourth route, which is to build the site yourself or pay a designer to. It gives the most control and the most upkeep, and few artists need it for a first website.

What are the best website builders for artists?

No single product is best for every artist, and all of them change their plans often. The notes below keep to what each company says on its own website, checked on November 13, 2026. Prices are left out because they differ by country, billing period and promotion, so read the pricing page of any product you are considering.

General site builders

• Squarespace has no free plan. It has a 14-day free trial that needs no card, and every paid plan lets you sell products or services and attach a domain of your own.
• Wix has a free plan. A free site carries Wix branding, sits at an address on wixsite.com, and cannot use your own domain or take payments. Paid plans remove the branding and connect a domain. If you plan to sell, check which of them include payments.
• WordPress.com has a free plan with no end date. A free site sits at an address on wordpress.com and shows WordPress.com’s ads to visitors. Paid plans remove the ads, and annual paid plans include a domain for the first year.

Portfolio platforms

• Format is aimed at photographers, artists, designers and illustrators. It has a 14-day free trial that needs no card. Of its three plans, the two higher ones include an online store, and the lowest does not.
• Pixpa describes itself as a portfolio website builder for photographers, artists and designers. It has a 15-day free trial that needs no card. Every plan includes a store, client galleries and a blog, and lets you connect a domain you own. The number of products you can list rises with the plan.
• Adobe Portfolio is included with a Creative Cloud subscription. It has themes, supports your own domain and password-protected pages, and imports projects from Behance. Adobe’s page for it does not mention a shop.
• Cargo describes itself as a site builder for designers and artists, with templates for portfolios and shops.

Inventory tools with a portfolio

• Artwork Archive is inventory software for artists, collectors and organizations. Its three artist plans are set by the number of works (100, 500 or unlimited). Each includes a public profile for sharing work online, and the two higher plans can embed your public works in a WordPress or Squarespace site. It has a 14-day free trial that needs no card.
• ArtieDB is inventory software for individual artists. Every account can publish a portfolio at an address on ArtieDB, or keep everything private, with a page for each published work and an exhibition history. It has one layout, no custom domains and no shop, and it is free for 14 days with no card needed. More on where it fits.

What are the best free website makers for artists?

Few website builders are free for good. Of the ones above, two have a free plan with no end date, one comes with something you may already pay for, and the rest offer a free trial of about two weeks.

ArtieDB is also free for 14 days, with no card needed.

A free plan is a fair way to start, and a real site on a free plan is better than no site. What you give up is the address and the branding: your work sits under the builder’s name, and the address changes if you ever move. The one thing worth paying for early is a domain in your own name, because it should outlast whichever builder you use.

Use a trial properly. Upload ten real works with their captions, look at the result on a phone, and send the link to one person whose eye you trust before you pay for anything.

How do you make an artist website?

Building the site takes an afternoon. The preparation takes longer, and it is the same whichever builder you use.

1. Decide what the site is for. Being looked up by galleries, curators and juries, selling directly, or both. The answer decides the kind of builder.
2. Choose the work. Fifteen to thirty pieces is plenty for most artists: recent, finished, and consistent enough to read as one practice.
3. Photograph it properly. One straight-on image of each work, evenly lit and cropped to its edges, plus details or installation views where they help.
4. Write the captions. Title, year, medium and dimensions for every work, in one format. If you keep an inventory, they are already written.
5. Write the words. A short bio, an artist statement, and a CV or exhibition list.
6. Choose the builder using the table in the next section, and register a domain in your own name if the builder supports one.
7. Build the fewest pages that do the job. Work, about, CV and contact, with the work on the home page.
8. Test it. Open the site on a phone. Ask someone who does not know your work to find your email address and the dimensions of one piece.
9. Keep it current. Add new work when it is finished and photographed, add exhibitions when they are confirmed, and take down work that no longer represents you.

Which artist website builder should you choose?

Start from what the site has to do, then pick the kind of tool. The product comes last.

Whichever you choose, put the site on a domain of your own where the builder allows it, so that the address on your CV, your cards and your email signature never has to change.

Where does ArtieDB fit, and who should use something else?

ArtieDB is art inventory software and a portfolio website for working artists. It is not a general website builder, and the difference is worth stating exactly.

In ArtieDB you keep a private record for every work: its images, title, year, medium, dimensions, location and price, and its exhibitions, consignments and sales. The portfolio is what you choose to publish from those records. It has:

• An address you choose on ArtieDB, with your name at the top of every page.
• The works you have marked as published, and a page for each one with its images, title, year, medium, dimensions, availability, the exhibitions it has been in and its press.
• An exhibition history, listing each exhibition with its venue, city, dates and the works shown.
• Your bio and, if you want one shown, a contact email address.

Prices, buyers, locations, notes and consignments stay private. When you add a work, record a sale or add an exhibition, the portfolio changes with it, so there is no second site to keep up to date.

What it does not have:

• Templates, themes or design settings. Every portfolio uses the same plain layout.
• Custom domains. Your portfolio lives at an address on ArtieDB.
• A shop or a checkout. Prices are never shown on the public pages.
• Other pages, such as a blog, a news page or a separate statement or CV page.

ArtieDB suits you if the inventory comes first: you show and consign work through galleries, need to know where each piece is, and want a plain portfolio with a page for each work and an exhibition history that follows from those records.

Use something else if you want to sell through the site, need a domain of your own, want to design the site yourself, or need pages beyond the work, the exhibitions and a bio. A general site builder or a portfolio platform is the right tool for those. The same goes if the main job of the site is to be found in search engines, which a site on your own domain does better. You can still keep the records separately: see how to inventory your artwork.