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Ranking

8^th in Photography Website Builders

Rating

8.4/10

Price

$8.00See Better Options

What's the Verdict?

Worth It, Some IssuesSee Alternatives

PhotoShelter Review 2020

Item: PhotoShelter
Rating: 8.4
Author: Jonathan Kerns

PhotoShelter is one of the leading photography website builder platforms in the industry, and it was designed specifically to cater to the needs of a professional photographer, as well as those who are simply passionate about creating and sharing quality photography with the world. With over 100 professional-grade features on offer, this platform allows you to create a stunning, high quality website with your own hands, store your high quality photos, and even set up shop and sell your photos. They even have a 14-day trial so you can take it out for a test drive. Read on to learn more now!

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Jonathan KernsMarch 16, 2019

Pros

Lots of Helpful Materials for Beginners: -- Even though PhotoShelter has many features that cater to professional photographers, the website also takes into account novices and newcomers alike. There are tons of helpful materials that can help beginners further their photography game, including market research, free photography business guides, and even interviews that let you get insight from successful professional photographers. If you are a beginner in this field then PhotoShelter's support materials are an absolute must for you.
Risk Free 14-day Trial: -- Not sure yet whether PhotoShelter's services are for you or not? No problem! Thanks to their risk free 14 day trial, you can take any one of their three plans out for a spin, completely free of charge! What's more, you don't need to supply your credit card information so you can be assured that you won't be charged any fee during this trial period. Additionally, you can also cancel at any time during the allotted 14 days, and you will only be charged after the trial period depending on the plan you chose to sample.
High Quality, Customizable Templates: – While there are only nine themes to choose from, the impressive quality of the templates on offer more than make up for it. What's more, these are highly customizable so you can do more in-depth tweaking via HTML or CSS, choose your own fonts and color combinations, add your own logo and watermark, and many more. Additionally, thanks to their BEAM portfolio platform, these templates feature HTML5 & CSS3 responsive designs, which means that your website will automatically adjust to fit whatever screen size or device – be it PC, mobile phone, or tablet – it is currently being viewed on perfectly.
eCommerce Features: -- In addition to offering their services for events, photoshoots, and the like, one of the ways that lots of professional photographers make money is by selling their photos for stock or personal use. Many photographers thrive on this, which is why PhotoShelter's eCommerce features are a godsend. Setting up an online shop opens up a lot of opportunities because, if marketed just right, it can help broaden your business' horizons and find you a lot of new customers across the globe. Another thing worth noting is the features on offer. You can setup your eCommerce site with many options like print vendors, default watermarking, stock licensing, or self-fulfilled printing.

Cons

Limited Space: -- Professional photographers need a lot of space to hold their high quality files, which makes PhotoShelter's limited cloud storage space a bit of a disappointment. While the allotted storage space of 4GB, 60GB and 1,000GB are indeed appropriate for their plans' respective target audience, there are other alternative services out there that offer unlimited photo uploads across the board. That said, if you are comfortable with the storage limit, then there is no doubt that you will find this service quite exceptional.
A Bit Expensive: -- Compared to some of the other DIY photography website builders in the industry, PhotoShelter's prices are a bit on the expensive side. Indeed, there are other alternatives out there that are perfect for those on a budget, but if you do have the money and do not mind paying a bit more, then you will find that the hundreds of features on offer here definitely justify the relatively high price tag.

Why PhotoShelter is Perfect for Professionals

Professional photographers will absolutely fall head over heels with the numerous features that PhotoShelter has on offer. One of the most useful out of the bunch is their eCommerce solution, which allows you to easily set up an online shop with an integrated shopping cart built exclusively for photography. This lets you, among many other useful features, accept orders in 23 global currencies and ship worldwide, fulfill orders with automated print vendors, sell rights-managed and royalty-free licenses, set your own prices and unlimited pricelists in order to accommodate different clients, generate your sales report and sales tax information, use PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net or other merchant accounts to accept payment, and even allow clients to buy photos with offline invoicing and payment. Another small, but incredibly significant feature allows you to apply watermarks to your photos in order to protect them. Photographers know all too well that there are tons of people out there that steal photos and claim it as their own, so this feature is definitely a must-have for any photography website.

Important Buyer Information

If you are a professional photographer and don’t have any knowledge about website building and designing, but want to be able to build one without hiring an expensive web designer, then this site is definitely for you. The numerous highly customizable templates and the easy to use WYSIWYG editor lets you easily create a professional-looking photography website without ever learning how to code .

That said, if you are a beginner and just want to be able to showcase and share your photos to photography lovers everywhere, then this site might not be the best fit for you, thanks to a rather expensive price tag. If all you want is to be able to share your work, there are plenty of other low cost or free options out there like Tumblr, Blogger, or WordPress. However, if you are serious about photography and want to be able to sell your work online, as well as grow your presence, then this is one of the best options currently available to you.

PhotoShelter Review – Extra Features

There are many features on offer here that photographers of any caliber, whether novice, freelance, or professional, will definitely find useful in order to grow his presence and business online. For starters, their Beam portfolio platformallows you to choose from 9 gorgeous, highly customizable, and responsive templates that can automatically adjust to fit any screen size or device perfectly. Many people have taken to browsing the world wide web using their mobile devices more than their PC’s, so making sure that your photography website displays perfectly every time, regardless of device used, is key to reaching a large number of people and, consequently, growing your presence.

Speaking of growing your presence, PhotoShelter also offers SEO and analytics that can aid you in that regard. Their service gives you the ability to automatically submit sitemaps to Google, easily index IPTC descriptions, keywords, titles, and code, easily integrate Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, track you most popular public images, and even see who has signed up for an account on your website.

There are also various sharing and marketing options available that let you add yourself to PhotoShelter’s database for buyers, share your website via various social networks, upload images directly to Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr, send email invitations directly from your account, and even create discount codes or coupons for your promotions.

PhotoShelter’s Pricing

Basic Plan – $9.99/month – At this price point you get anything you might need as a hobbyist or as a novice. Photoshelter integrates all of your social media for you, provides 4GB of cloud storage, a custom domain, a mobile app, and will even work in a little SEO on the side. This is definitely the proper step above the free trial account.

Standard Plan – $29.99/month – The standard plan allows you to spread your wings a little bit as a budding photographer. The features available here are nearly identical to the Basic plan, save for a few key differences. This gives you 60GB worth of online storage plus the ability to add eCommerce functionality to your website. This is plan is perfect for freelancers, or even those who are just starting to lay down the foundations for their photography business.

Pro Plan – $49.99/month – Seasoned professionals can definitely do no wrong if they choose this price plan. You get a full terabyte of online storage – that’s 1,000GB – which should be enough for those high resolution uploads. While you don’t get anything else beyond all the features of the previous two plans, the expanded storage alone should be justification enough for the higher price tag. This is definitely a package worth having if you have the money to back it up.

What's the Verdict on PhotoShelter?

Worth It, Some Issues

PhotoShelter Review 2020 – Conclusion

With over 80,000 satisfied photographers from all corners of the globe using PhotoShelter, it is hard to deny that this photography website builder platform is doing a lot of things right. For one thing, while they cater to a lot of professional photographers, they also make it a point to make new users feel at home by providing them with a host of very useful resources, like free photography business guides and interviews of successful photographers, for example. Additionally, you can also create a website without having to learn how to code or even design, thanks to the sleek templates on offer, and their easy to use, WYSIWYG site editor.

For those who are quite serious about photography and would want to expand their business online, PhotoShelter provides an eCommerce option that will let you quickly set up shop and sell your photos. While the price tag for their plans may be more expensive compared to other services’, the numerous features on offer and the quality of service definitely makes the higher asking price, if you are willing to pay and have the money, worth the investment. If you are still undecided, they also have a risk free trial option. So, what are you waiting for? Check out PhotoShelter now!