Weebly vs Squarespace vs Smugmug

[Alex_G711]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to hear your thoughts on websites builders such as Weebly, Squarespace and smugmug.
I'm not making money out of photography just yet, so I'd probably go with the cheap "starter" type of plan on either of those builders.

I know weebly makes building a website quick and easy, but I'm not sure I get the whole "getting your own domain" thing. Do you have to pay for it separately from the monthly fee?

I kind of like squarespace, but I'm a little concerned about the their "Personal" aka cheapest plan because I'm not sure how much storage you get with that and what are some of the drawbacks.

I know that many photographers use Smugmug to sell their images, but looking at even 2 of the cheapest plans I don't think they provide that option.

Does anybody have experience with all/some of those website builders?

 

[patticake]

you might be better off hosting on wordpress and using their free software and choosing from one of their thousands of themes. pretty easy - as easy as others - and extremely configurable. they also have some themes with gallery layouts.

or you could go with dreamhost or certifiedhosting.net for their very cheapest plan. both have built in wordpress, and you can get your own domain from godaddy or directnic and that way you control the domain. years and years ago i let my hosts control my domain, which turned out to be a huge pain in the butt.

--
my old user profile
http://www.dpreview.com/members/1742491492/overview

 

[Abrak]

Well I went with Squarespace about 6 weeks ago. You can see my website in my signature below. I was pretty much influenced by this video from Tony Northrup.

So yes there is space limited to I think 16 pages in their basic (US$8 a month) package but his concept is that any website should be short and focused. His view is that nobody is going to spend 30 minuted browsing someone's website - instead maybe 5 minutes at most - and your photos should be limited to around 40 or so.

I was very impressed by Squarespace.

1) The templates are very modern and many designed for a photography portfolio. (Again see my site below.)

2) It is unbelievably easy to build. It took me 3 hours to do but i[f I did someone else's, now knowing how everything works, it would take less than 30 minutes.

3) Super simple to edit or update at any point

You can try out Squarespace for free without credit card details. The monthly fee includes a 'free domain' that belongs to you if you use squarespace for at least 6 months (or something like that.)

 

[Cerumen]

I agree with Abrak, above, that Squarespace is very easy to set up and maintain.

Squarespace was the app I used to build my site:

www.delmar.photos

Re: the OP's question of securing a domain name, this is what I did. I secured my domain name several months earlier, and when I subscribed to Squarespace, the software provides the means to use your own domain name.

I elected to use the purchase level one up from the basic, since I often host images for projects I'm working on, and didn't want to be restricted by the 20 folder limit of the base price.

 

[patticake]

you can get unlimited number of pages and quite a bit of space plus built in programs including wordpress for $8.95 a month at dreamhost and i think from $3.95 a month from certifiedhosting, and they also include lots of built in programs including wordpress.

 

[Doss]

Please note: I only use free accounts, and all my links are works in progress.

wordpress: I don't know why, but I couldn't get to grips with it (despite having some training in layout/design). That puts me in a vast minority position, but the reason I mention it here is because my failings led me to try...

weebly, which I found so much more easy. At the end of the day, they are both simple and limited, but sometimes that's for the best. I'd rather put my time into photography and processing than web design.

If you want a sample, here's what I managed with weebly :

compared to equivalent page with wordpress

Personally, I prefer the overall look of the weebly one, the gallery layout of the wordpress one, and the gallery open-view of the weebly one. More importantly, the weebly one took half the time to make. 3:1 to weebly.

I like the option to mix some words with my pictures, but if you want purely image I'd suggest having a little look at:

Carbonmade - This site is really the bizz if you want a nice looking site with minimum effort. The price you pay is minimum choice.

I made a (free) portfolio page with them a while ago, (here) and just left it there with nothing to really add (because their free accounts are very limited)

However, they have just expanded their designs and now give full screen options (eg- travel portfolio I'm currently uploading). Now I might have to bite the bullet and pay for something!

Regarding Squarespace - never used it, but i have to comment that the links given here by Abrak & Cerumen are to very nice sites, with quick loading, easy to navigate pages. And wonderful photography to boot (obviously latter not down to the web building software!)

 

[jonathanj]

I looked at a few sites, but ended up with squarespace. This was partly because I already had a domain with them, so it seemed simpler to just post my photos there as well, but also because their interface is really nice. However, if I'd been starting from scratch, I'd probably go with zenfolio, as their hosting works out cheaper for a lot of images.

The main disadvantages of squarespace (to me) are

• No lightroom plugin, which means it's slower to load photos than with the major photography-centered sites. This is particularly irritating if you want to upload photos and see how they look, then make adjustments, for example. I spent a while working out what metadata needs to be populated (caption and description, keywords) for the best results.
• Limited storage. The basic limitation on the squarespace cheapest package is the number of pages, with a gallery equal to a page. But I actually worked out that the limitation is not as severe as it first seems, because you can load different sets of photos to a gallery, then use blog posts with filtered content blocks to selectively display those sets. So you can have half a dozen "pages" of photos, but only use 2 pages - one for the blog and one for the gallery. (I can give more details if you end up using squarespace)

My site is here http://www.jonathan-jones.com/photography but I haven't loaded many photos yet. Basically my goal was to be able to display and present several hundred (but less than a thosuand) travel photos in albums, without ugly adverts pretending to be my photos (cough cough flickr, cough cough). I want it to look professional, but target audience is friends and family only, I don't care about social networks, print sales, SEO, or any other commercial aspects - if I did, I'd probably have ended up on a different site.

I don't know Weebly, but if you're looking for a more commercial site, I recommend you look at zenfolio as well as smugmug, they are quite similar but I preferred the former. (Also the name doesn't sound so stupid )

 

[Alex_G711]

I looked at a few sites, but ended up with squarespace. This was partly because I already had a domain with them, so it seemed simpler to just post my photos there as well, but also because their interface is really nice. However, if I'd been starting from scratch, I'd probably go with zenfolio, as their hosting works out cheaper for a lot of images.

The main disadvantages of squarespace (to me) are

• No lightroom plugin, which means it's slower to load photos than with the major photography-centered sites. This is particularly irritating if you want to upload photos and see how they look, then make adjustments, for example. I spent a while working out what metadata needs to be populated (caption and description, keywords) for the best results.
• Limited storage. The basic limitation on the squarespace cheapest package is the number of pages, with a gallery equal to a page. But I actually worked out that the limitation is not as severe as it first seems, because you can load different sets of photos to a gallery, then use blog posts with filtered content blocks to selectively display those sets. So you can have half a dozen "pages" of photos, but only use 2 pages - one for the blog and one for the gallery. (I can give more details if you end up using squarespace)

My site is here http://www.jonathan-jones.com/photography but I haven't loaded many photos yet. Basically my goal was to be able to display and present several hundred (but less than a thosuand) travel photos in albums, without ugly adverts pretending to be my photos (cough cough flickr, cough cough). I want it to look professional, but target audience is friends and family only, I don't care about social networks, print sales, SEO, or any other commercial aspects - if I did, I'd probably have ended up on a different site.

I don't know Weebly, but if you're looking for a more commercial site, I recommend you look at zenfolio as well as smugmug, they are quite similar but I preferred the former. (Also the name doesn't sound so stupid )

Thanks Jonathan,

I decided to do the 14day free trial on Squarespace. What also appeals to me is that as a college student i also get 50% off there, so the "personal" plan for me would only cost 5$/month.

My only concern is that I really can't sell images right off the website. If someone ordered a print, I'd have to print it myself at a print shop and ship it myself.

Anyways, I'll see how it goes and maybe I'll check out zenfolio as well. Here's my website (which I Just started designing). I really don't have enough stuff on there yet as I'm more working on design rather than content. www.alexganeevphotography.squarespace.com

 

[Lisetta1]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to hear your thoughts on websites builders such as Weebly, Squarespace and smugmug.
I'm not making money out of photography just yet, so I'd probably go with the cheap "starter" type of plan on either of those builders.
I know weebly makes building a website quick and easy, but I'm not sure I get the whole "getting your own domain" thing. Do you have to pay for it separately from the monthly fee?
I kind of like squarespace, but I'm a little concerned about the their "Personal" aka cheapest plan because I'm not sure how much storage you get with that and what are some of the drawbacks.
I know that many photographers use Smugmug to sell their images, but looking at even 2 of the cheapest plans I don't think they provide that option.

Does anybody have experience with all/some of those website builders?

I like weebly although I haven't used it in a year. You can buy a domain name from weebly or you can buy it from someone else (mine was from Yahoo, an old one. I had to disable one setting at Yahoo and then activate it at Weebly. It took a little trial and error, but was fine. I think it actually would have cost less to buy from Weebly, but they don't care if you get it from someone else.)

Web design was very easy, drag and drop. My understanding is that it gets a little more difficult if you want to add a shopping cart, billing option and payment features, but they offer them and its doable. You don't need to code any of it yourself.

 

[Nikole777]

I don't have any experience in using Squarespace and Smugmug, but I built a website with Weebly. I should say, it is easy-to-use and doesn't require special coding knowledge. If you will decide to use it, I can recommend to check a Weebly review that helped me to find out all necessary things about this web builder. Hope it helps!

 

[KCook]

Caution: the OP is 2 years old! :-O