Every photographer wants their work to be seen, used, and purchased by as many people as possible; the question is how to go about making that happen.
While photographers have a very specialized and important skill set, they are not always the world’s best web developers. This hampers their ability to have their work shown off online.
Enter Pixpa, a hosting, sale, display, and management tool for the photographer who can’t, or doesn’t want to code. Pixpa, an Indian company, was founded in 2009 to help photographers organize their own web presence.
The company will host your pictures, use your own domain, allow you to embed videos, and offer direct sale downloads of your images for $15 a month. This is a shot of what your dashboard will look like the first time you use Pixpa:
However, as with any solution like Pixpa, we worry about what sort of templates are included. If they are ugly, it will bring your pictures down a notch. Fortunately, foreseeing this problem, Pixpa has put together 100 templates for consumer use, most of which are more than usable. This ensures that no matter your photographic style, you can find something that will fit. Below are a few template samples:
You can of course customize any template you select. The below image is a portion of the live site of a Pixpa user:
The largest downside to Pixpa is that its rates go up with the number of pictures you keep on the service. For just 100 pictures the service will run you $15 a month. The upgrade to 500 pictures will cost an extra $5 a month, and 1500 images will run you $25 a month. Every set of 1000 pictures above 1500 you need will cost an extra $10 a month. The product does have a 15 day free trial.
Still, for the price we can’t quickly come up with a platform that can beat Pixpa on features, flexibility, and (so far as we can tell) convenience. If you are an avid photographer in need of a better website, Pixpa is worth looking at.
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