The best web hosting sites for photographers will still enable you to create a beautiful website to display your work but can sometimes be a little trickier to get your head around. Web hosting services not only make your website accessible on the internet, they also provide stable and secure storage spaces. With so many to choose from, we’ve put together a guide to help you choose the right platform for you.
If you feel a little bit daunted by creating a website for scratch, you can always have a look at the best website builders for photography. These sites allow you to create a website from a template and ‘drag and drop’ the blocks you need into place. You can then upload any photos or videos and add text. They are a much more visual way of designing a website and most templates can be fully customized to make your site unique.
There are two ways to create your own website – the first is to use WordPress, as this can be done without having to use HTML. One of the benefits of WordPress is that many of the best web hosting sites for photographers will already have WordPress pre-installed. If you don’t have much experience in creating websites from scratch, then we would recommend going down the WordPress route. You can use WordPress’ visual website builder called Elementor to drag and drop blocks into place.
Alternatively, if you’re a whizz with coding and you have a clear and unique vision for your website, then why not try using a tool such as Adobe Dreamweaver. This will give you total control over how your website will look, unlocking new creative possibilities.
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No matter which way you decide to build your website, there are a few technical aspects that you should consider before you choose a web hosting service. The most important one is that you’ll have enough capacity for the photo and video files that you might want to upload. After all, being able to display all of your images is a pretty important requirement for a photography website! You’ll also want to look for a web hosting provider that features unlimited bandwidth as well.
One thing that’s worth being aware of is that many of the best web hosting sites for photographers will initially offer low introductory rates. These low prices will then often be hiked up the following year. To avoid a nasty shock in the second year of your website’s life, we’d recommend reading the fine print when signing up to your chosen web hosting site provider.
To help you choose the best web hosting sites for you, we’ve rounded up our favorites below. We’ve also picked out a great web hosting deal to help you save a little bit of cash!
Best web hosting sites for photographers
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If you’ve decided to create a site for your photography portfolio using WordPress, Bluehost is our first choice hosting provider. The service includes automatic WordPress setup at a very reasonable price so you can start building your site straight away using one of the many templates.
Bluehouse also offers a browser-based website builder that is fast and simple to use in case you don’t want to use WordPress. The basic Bluehost account comes with 50GB of storage for your site and photos but if you need more you can upgrade to the Plus plan for unlimited storage. The Plus plan also enables yu to set up email addresses using your domain name and you can manage it through Microsoft Office 365. This is especially good if you need to email clients as having a unique email address will make you sound more professional.
Bluehost is well established and offers good customer support too, so you can be confident that your corner of the web is in safe hands. It’s
UK2 is a budget-friendly hosting site compatible with WordPress. All web hosting packages include a free domain, a 10GB mailbox, a free SSL certificate for all domains and unmetered bandwidth.
There are three different tiers you can choose from for web hosting. The tier you choose will be dependent on how much storage and how many domains you want to host. The starter package includes 10GB storage and hosts one website, the Pro package includes unlimited storage and can host 10 websites, while the Enterprise package includes unlimited storage and can host unlimited websites.
You can either build your website on an external site such as WordPress or you can subscribe to UK2’s own web building service which includes a domain name, web hosting and an email address with 10GB of storage. UK2 offers 24/7 support via its chat service with technical specialists that can help solve any problems.
HostGator’s plans are really competitively priced, even the basic Hatchling plan which allows you to make one website is pretty generous. They come with one-click WordPress installation, a free domain for the first year, unmetered bandwidth and unlimited storage. You’ll also have access to e-commerce tools which is ideal if you want to sell prints or services.
Like with so many web hosting sites, the price does increase after the introductory offer has ended which is worth bearing in mind. However, if you’re looking at sticking with HostGator for a while you can sign up for the three-year plan for just $2.64 (£1.95) a month.
HostGator offers a 45-day money-back guarantee if you’re not completely happy with its service, but with 24/7 help available we doubt you’re likely to need it.
Since 2001, InMotion has offered reliable servers, advanced security tools and malware protection making it one of the most trusted web hosting platforms. The downside is you don’t get unlimited bandwidth unless you upgrade to a business plan but InMotion will give you a rough idea of how many visitors your site will be able to handle so you can decide which plan would be best.
InMotion is optimized for WordPress and it comes preinstalled with any plan. t also includes BoldGrid, WYSIWYG editor that makes it easy to customize and create your own themes. It isn’t the cheapest web hosting service around but you do get a lot for your money and if you change your mind, there’s a 90-day money-back guarantee.
GoDaddy is one of the biggest names in domains and web hosting, and its hosting plans have a lot to offer photographers – particularly if you’re making your first site. There’s one-click WordPress installation so you can start getting creative straight away, plus GoDaddy’s own browser-based website building tools if you’re in a hurry.
The Economy plan only gives you 100GB storage, which might not be enough for a large portfolio, but upgrading to Deluxe only costs a little extra. Alternatively, you can buy extra drive space through the control panel if you need more. Office 365 email is included free for the first year, so you can have a professional-looking email address to share with clients and access your messages anywhere.
You’ll get a free domain for the first year too, and GoDaddy offers a huge range of options so you can pick something that really suits you and your work rather than having to think of an original .com address that becomes very expensive after the introductory period ends.
Wix is best known for its browser-based website builder, but it also offers hosting plans, including a free option that might appeal to creatives on a budget. Although it provides a generous 500GB storage, you only get the same amount of bandwidth and Wix will places ads on your site. To remove these limitations you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan.
These are reasonably priced, and include some welcome extras like Google Ad vouchers so you can buy advertisements to help more people find your site. There are ecommerce tools too, so you can sell prints of your work, and Wix won’t take a cut in the form of transaction fees.
Unfortunately it’s not possible to host a WordPress site on Wix. It used to be possible to set up WordPress on a subdomain, but Wix has now decided to switch over entirely to its own blogging platform, which limits your creativity somewhat.
Most of the web hosting services here are based in the US, but if you’re in the UK then you might prefer a provider closer to home. tsoHost is a well-established provider that’ll host your site from its data center in Greater London.
There’s one-click WordPress installation, and if you already have a website hosted elsewhere, you can transfer it to tsoHost free of charge. The Economy plan only provides 100GB storage, which you might outgrow, but there’s unlimited bandwidth so you won’t need to worry about becoming too popular for your hosting plan. Changed your mind? You can upgrade and downgrade your plan within your control panel.
There’s no 24/7 support chat, which is unusual, but there’s live chat and phone support between 7am and midnight GMT, which should be fine for most photographers. You’ll also get a 30-day money-back guarantee when you sign up, just in case.
Read more:
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