You are a digital artist and want to build a website for your art? It’s a splendid idea to have your own digital art platform where you can showcase your portfolio and sell your work. But how to make a website for digital art? That question and others will be answered in this post, where you can also learn about the best website builder for artists!
You are a digital artist and you want to showcase your work on your own artist website? That’s a splendid idea because your own digital art platform will give you so much more freedom and control over how to make an art gallery and web store.
Having an artist website is almost as essential as any other tool of the trade that you use to create art, such as digital art hardware and software. Your website will help you promote your work and allow potential customers and curators to find you on the internet.
As a digital artist, you already have your artwork saved as a virtual file, so you can quickly and easily upload your images to your site.
Related: → Best File Type To Save Digital Art
Sell virtual and physical products on your digital art platform
If you do not only wish to make your art portfolio available online but also start selling your art, you have the option to sell both digital and virtual products.
You can sell your artwork as downloadable, virtual files that the purchaser can then use within closely defined condition. For that purpose, you will have to write a digital image license agreement where you define the scope of usage of your work. For example, you can choose whether you want to release your artwork for commercial use or for personal use only.
Of course, you can also sell physical products of your art like fine art prints and print-on-demand products. Just make sure to choose the right file format for printing digital art and the best paper for printing your digital art.
What is a good website for digital art?
In this post, we will talk about the best website builders that will make it super-easy for you to make a good website for your digital art.
If you are not yet sure what steps to take to launch your business, then find out How To Start A Digital Art Business (w/ FREE Art Business Startup Checklist).
Do you want to create an art website free? Then read up on How To Make An Artist Website With WordPress in 5 EASY Steps. WordPress lets you build a site for free. However, it has a steeper learning curve and requires a bit more technical know-how than the website builders we introduce in this post.
By using a website builder for your artist website, you can cut out some of the heavy lifting involved in making a website with WordPress.
The website builders on our list are easy-to-use and intuitive, allowing you to build your artist website without any coding knowledge!
Making a website for your digital art with one of these builders will be rather quick, so you have more time and leisure to focus on the thing you love the most – creating art.
Which website builder is best for artists?
While most website builders in the market are pretty straightforward, the only thing that may be a bit confusing is finding out which website builder is best for artists.
To help you make your decision, we’ve sorted out the 5 best website builders that make it easy for your to build a website for your digital art. All these website builders come with ecommerce functionality. That means you can always start with a simple art gallery and upgrade to an online store later on whenever you are ready.
That being said, let’s find out about the best website builders for your digital art website!
How to make a website for digital art – The best website builders for artists
TOP 3 Website Builders to make a website for digital art
Squarespace from $16 per month: Squarespace is the best website builder for artists to make an art portfolio and an online store. It offers lots of beautiful website templates specifically geared towards artists and other visual creatives.
Wix from $16 per month: Wix is another favorite to create your own digital art platform. It’s easy to use and very flexible when it comes to design possibilities. There are more than 500 premade templates to choose from and you can even make a digital art website for free.
Pixpa from $4 per month: Pixpa is a budget-friendly website builder that offers lots of extra features for artists. You will get customizable templates with client galleries, image compression tools, the option to add meta data to images, and much more.
Complete roundup of the best website Builders for artists
1. Squarespace
- Why To Buy
- Geared towards creatives
- Beautiful artist templates
- Good ecommerce features
- Why To Avoid
- No free plan
- Pricing
- Personal Plan $16 / mth.
- Business Plan $23 / mth.
- Commerce Basic $27 / mth.
- Commerce Advanced $49 / mth.
Squarespace is known at the best website builder for artists in the market. Many creatives have their digital art platforms hosted on Squarespace – for a good reason.
Squarespace’s templates are built with creatives in mind, and you will find a host of professional designs for photography, illustration, graphic design, traditional and digital art, and so on.
Like all of the web builders on our list, Squarespace comes with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor that allows you to build your artist website without any coding skills. All you need to do is choose a template and then populate it with your own content. You can simply drag your images and text into the preferred section of the template and customize everything to your liking.
There’s not much of a learning curve. The way it works can usually be mastered within an hour or two, so you can quickly build a professional-looking artist website in no time.
If you do not only want to showcase your work but also make some money with your art, then Squarespace has all the ecommerce features to create an online store.
Squarespace doesn’t offer a free plan, but you can make use of the Free 14-Day Trial to see if you like it.
See our Squarespace Review For Visual Creators for more.
2. Wix
- Why To Buy
- Hundreds of website templates
- Flexible design options
- Budget-friendly ecommerce plan
- Why To Avoid
- Steeper learning curve
- Pricing
- Free Plan
- Light Plan $16 / mth.
- Core Plan $27 / mth.
- Business Basic Plan $32 / mth.
Unlike Squarespace, Wix is not particularly geared towards creatives, but it offers more than 500 templates to choose from, many of them with a focus on art.
It also has a drag-and-drop editor that is extremely easy to use but also highly flexible. Wix offers you pixel-perfect design options and allows you place elements almost anywhere on your website.
Newbies can start building their artist website by taking a questionnaire similar to Jimdo’s (see below). Depending on your needs, you can then select your preferred editor – either the regular one or the Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI). The classic Wix Editor gives you full control over the look of your website (but also requires more of a learning curve), while the ADI takes most of the work from you.
The great thing about Wix is that it comes with a Free Plan – however, with limited features and ads. But you can still start building your artist website for free and then upgrade to the Core Plan to get rid of the ads and have your own domain name.
3. Jimdo
- Why To Buy
- Very affordable prices
- Easy wizard for beginners
- Small learning curve
- Why To Avoid
- Rather basic templates
Jimdo is a budget-friendly website builder for artists who want to make a website for digital art without spending a ton of money.
Jimdo offers a guided approach similar to Wix. You can respond to a number of questions to let Jimdo know what kind of website you need. Based on your answers, Jimdo will help you create a website suited to your requirements.
This makes Jimdo a great choice for beginners without any website building experience. But it’s also an interesting option for users with some programming skills, because Jimdo also gives you access to the HTML and CSS code of your template to make custom changes.
Just like with Wix, you can start creating your site without paying any money or submitting your credit card details. There’s a free plan that you can select on the payment page.
If you opt for the Start Plan (for a personal website) or Grow Plan for an ecommerce site you will get hosting for your artist website, your own domain name, and tools that help with selling your artwork and improving your search engine results.
4. Pixpa
- Why To Buy
- Budget-friendly website builder
- Geared towards visual creatives
- Lots of extra features for artists
- Why To Avoid
- Not so customizable
- Pricing
- Basic Plan $4 / mth.
- Creator Plan $7.50 / mth.
- Professional Plan $10 / mth.
- Advanced Plan $12.50 / mth.
Pixpa promotes itself as one-stop solution for visual creatives. It offers everything you need to make an art portfolio with client proofing tools, ecommerce functionality, and blogging.
In fact, Pixpa is very similar to Squarespace in that its templates are geared towards artists. The template designs are visually stunning and you will find many features that artists need, for example image galleries, automatic image compression, and the option to add metadata to your images to protect your work online.
You can also sell art prints, downloadable files, and services. The ecommerce solution lets you create products with variants and upsells, integrate common payment gateways and even connect your Shopify store.
Template customization is not as flexible as with Wix. You are more limited in where you can place visual elements on your page, and the editor also requires some time getting used to.
However, Pixpa is a very budget-friendly option where you can start a portfolio website with as little money as $3 per month with the Basic Plan and later on upgrade to another plan as your site grows.
You can choose if you want to have your plan billed annually or monthly. The annual billing will allow you to save some money in the long run, so it’s worth considering when budgeting for your website.
5. Voog
- Why To Buy
- Beginner-friendly website builder
- Competitive prices
- Free 30-Day Trial
- Why To Avoid
- Pretty simplistic editor
- Pricing
- Standard Plan €11 / mth.
- Plus Plan €17 / mth.
- Premium Plan €39 / mth.
Voog is the best beginner-friendly website builder for artists who want to put together a simple portfolio or ecommerce site quickly.
You will find a decent selection of art-specific templates that you can fill with your own content. More experienced web designers can build a unique website from scratch on their own.
Compared to the other website builders, the Voog editor is quite basic. It’s a block-based drag-and-drop editor that allows you to place elements into pre-defined sections. Despite its limited design options, the editor is intuitive and easy to use, which also makes it a great choice for beginners.
There’s a decent selection of ecommerce tools for your online art store that are available with the Standard Plan, too. For more advanced ecommerce functionality, you will need to upgrade to the Plus Plan, or Premium Plan where you won’t need to pay transaction fees anymore.
That being said, you will currently only find prices in Euros on Voog’s website because it’s a European company. However, the Standard Plan for €11 per month (around $14) is a good option for beginners who don’t need the more advanced features that you will get with Shopify, Wix, or Squarespace.
Voog offers significant discounts if you pay upfront annually and a generous Free 30-Day Trial.
6. Shopify
- Why To Buy
- Top ecommerce platform
- Beautiful templates for art stores
- Lots of apps and plugins
- Why To Avoid
- Not the cheapest option
- Pricing
- Basic Plan $29 / mth.
- Shopify Plan $79 / mth.
- Advanced Plan $299 / mth.
If your main focus is to sell your artwork online and you already have an established customer base, you should consider using Shopify. Shopify boasts the best ecommerce features available in the market.
It has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor just like all the other website builders on our list. Plus, you will also find some beautiful templates for your online art store with lots of customization options.
There is a large selection of apps and plugins that allow you to add extra functionality to your store. For example, you can integrate gallery and product page apps, or apps for social media marketing. You even have the option to connect print-on-demand platforms to sell prints and other merch with your art via Printful or Printify.
Shopify is definitely one of the more costly website builders on our list, and most of the templates need to be paid for, too. But if your goal is to start a serious digital art business, have a good look at the Basic Shopify Plan for $29 per month.
