Choosing the Right Artist Website Builder to Sell Art Online
The first question many artists have when they decide it’s time to create their website: what is the best website builder for artists? So many hosting platforms are available that choosing the right one for your needs can be overwhelming.
While many factors go into choosing the right web hosting platform, artists who want to sell art on their website want to pay attention to what e-commerce features each platform offers.
This analysis is based on a report I did for a previous client — a painter and mixed-media artist with limited technology skills who wanted a low-maintenance website where people could purchase her work.
In This Guide
What are e-commerce features?
When it comes to building a website, e-commerce refers to the tools and features that allow you to create an online store to sell physical or virtual goods and services. They allow you to do things like:
create product and service listings
allow users to pay you for products and services
track inventory
manage shipping needs for physical products
calculate sales tax for purchases
Using Wix for Your Artist Website Builder
Often considered the best overall website builder, Wix is a beginner-friendly platform. Much of the technical upkeep is handled by Wix, making it ideal for artists who don’t want to spend a lot of time on technical maintenance.
Examples of real Wix Websites:
-
Drag-and-drop tools are easy for beginners with no website design experience
Has an extensive app store to support additional features a growing business may need over time
Flexible design capabilities to create a custom look even if using a template
Great option for those who want an easy-to-manage website that takes care of hosting, updates, and handling issues if your site goes down
Works with over 50 third-party payment processors
Includes SSL certificate
Allows you to sell an unlimited number of products
Allows integration with apps to support shipping management
Has an abandoned cart recovery feature
Has the ability to create and send newsletters to subscribers (with Wix Stores app, which is free)
24/7 customer support
All hosting plans offer a free domain for the first year
-
You can’t switch your template once you’ve published your site without starting again from scratch
Advanced functions may require you to purchase third-party apps, which can slow your site performance
The best features are only available on paid plans
Does not support product management without installing an app
Getting a personalized business email requires a separate purchase from Google Workspace
Wix Plans (2025 prices)
Wix offers 5 pricing plans. Since the Free and Light plans don’t support e-commerce features and the Business Elite plan is for high-volume businesses, we’ll focus on the two plans most relevant to a beginner artist website with a store: Core and Business.
Core
Cost: $29/month when you pay annually
50 GB storage space
Basic marketing suite
Basic site analytics
Allows customers to create accounts
Offers free year of Events Calendar app
Offers free year of Site Booster app (search engine optimization tool)
Supports up to 50,000 products
Business
Cost: $36/month when you pay annually
100 GB storage space
Standard marketing suite
Allows automated sales tax calculations for up to 100 transactions per month
Offers integration with order fulfillment and shipping apps
Managing Products on Wix
Wix has an excellent collection of videos demonstrating how to use various features, including this one on creating an online store with Wix. You can skip ahead to 4:39 to see a demonstration of how to add new products.
Using Squarespace for Your Artist Website Builder
Squarespace offers website building and hosting services to suit various business types. It allows users to use pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to customize and modify pages. Prioritizing simplicity and design, this platform makes it easy to build an attractive website with an easy-to-navigate user interface.
Examples of real Squarespace websites:
-
Highly customizable with a drag-and-drop interface.
Versatile and robust features support long-term growth and change.
Supports local pickup options for customers within your community.
Allows you to change or cancel your plan at any time, and you’ll receive a prorated refund if you downgrade or cancel.
Possible to use a one-time promo code for a discount
Offers a free trial.
24/7 customer support.
Can purchase a domain name through Squarespace.
-
May require learning additional skills to use tools and interface.
Requires third-party payment processors (such as Stripe and PayPal).
Custom email address with your domain name is not included for free.
Requires a subscription to Google Workspace. The most basic plan costs $7 per month for a one-year commitment.
Squarespace Plans (2025 prices)
Squarespace offers 4 pricing plans. While the Personal plan doesn’t support e-commerce features, it is a strong option for those who want to build an artist portfolio website. Since we’re focusing on plans that support a virtual storefront, we’ll look at the Business, Basic Commerce, and Advanced Commerce plans.
Business
Cost: $23/month when you pay annually
Best for businesses offering basic online transactions that don’t plan to have high sales volume
Charges a 3% transaction fee on every sale to cover the cost of processing those transactions
Unlimited bandwidth and storage
Free custom domain
SSL security
Unlimited number of website contributors/admin accounts
Website metrics
Professional email from Google
Mobile-optimized sites
Basic Commerce
Cost: $28/month when you pay annually
Best for businesses with moderate sales volume that would benefit from features like customer accounts
No transaction fees
Includes all features from the Business plan
No limit on the number of products you can sell
More advanced commerce metrics
Ability to offer gift cards
Inventory, orders, tax, and coupons
Label printing
Allows customers to complete their purchase on your domain without navigating them to another website to complete their transaction
Repeat customers can create accounts
Integrated accounting tools
Mobile-optimized checkout experience
Advanced Commerce
Cost: $52/month when you pay annually
Best for businesses with high-volume sales that need advanced features to maximize sales opportunities
No transaction fees
Includes all features from the Basic Commerce Plan
Abandoned cart recovery
Allows you to sell subscription products
Advanced shipping tools
Advanced options for offering discounts
Allows for custom integrations with third-party systems to handle needs including order fulfillment, inventory management, and more
Managing Products on Squarespace
There are many helpful written and video tutorials to help you learn how to manage your website features, including this one on getting started with your online shop with Squarespace. You can skip ahead to 4:05 for a demonstration on adding products and 10:04 for how to add a payment processor.
Using Shopify for Your Artist Website Builder
Shopify is a versatile commerce platform that allows merchants to build and customize an online store. Its features are flexible enough to allow you to sell online through a website, from your phone, in brick-and-mortar locations, and pop-up shops, as well as online marketplaces like social media. Since the platform was built exclusively for supporting e-commerce, every feature’s primary focus is helping you create and manage product sales for your business.
Examples of real Shopify Websites:
-
Can accept payments directly on your website without using a third-party provider.
Free SSL certificate.
Offers a free trial.
When you buy a domain name using Shopify, they give you an unlimited number of forwarding email addresses for free.
With a forwarding email address, you can send and receive messages from your business email using an email account you already own (such as your personal email account). This saves time because you don’t have to log in to a different email account.
Offers 24/7 customer service.
User-friendly interface and tools don’t require learning a lot of extra skills to use.
Every plan offers abandoned cart recovery functionality.
Offers competitive shipping rates with discounts for shipping carriers including DHL Express, USPS and UPS.
Using Shopify Shipping supports purchasing shipping labels you can print on a standard printer.
Using Shopify Tax will automatically collect taxes at checkout based on product-specific rates and customer addresses. This tool includes features like tax liability tracking, automatic tax updates that handle changing regulations and tax holidays, and product categorization that ensures tax exceptions are correctly applied to orders.
Supports building and automating a refund/return process.
-
Additional features may require extra purchases (such as access to additional site themes, templates, apps, and plugins).
Customization options may be limited by choice of paid plan and default software capabilities.
Does not offer email hosting.
Difficult to transfer your store to another platform if you decide in the future to move your online store to a different provider. You can download certain data records, but you would have to rebuild the store if you ever decided to switch to a different platform.
Higher transaction fees if you choose a third-party payment processing provider instead of Shopify Payments.
Higher-tier plans are expensive, especially for new sellers without a reliable customer base.
Despite having the option for a blog page, the functionality of Shopify blogs is minimal. While this may make it simpler to use, it renders the blog feature an ineffective content marketing tool.
Shopify Plans (2025 prices)
Shopify offers 5 pricing plans. Since this post focuses on a new artist website that likely doesn’t have a large or consistent income yet, we’ll look at the Starter and Basic Plans. That said, the other plans are useful if your business grows and you need to scale up.
Starter Plan
Cost: $5/month
Best for creating a simple online store that includes product pages and a contact page
Extremely simple interface
Unlimited number of products
Includes blogging features
Does not let you create a publicly visible website that can be found on search engines; your only traffic will come from direct clicks on a link to the store
Includes Linkpop tool (designed for e-commerce “link in bio” features to use on social media)
Access to Shopify apps
Shopify order management and integrated fulfillment network
In-depth analytics, finances, inventory, and traffic reports
Has the highest transaction fee of all their plans
Basic
Cost: $29/month when you pay annually
Best for small businesses just starting out or existing businesses in need of an online storefront
Simple functionality
Unlimited products
An actual website you can edit and customize
Can accept payments offline
2.9% transaction fee that can add up quickly if your products are expensive
Managing Products on Shopify
The official tutorial from Shopify on how to set up an online store is over an hour long, but it demonstrates the many processes that go into managing a store with their system. You’ll find how to add products at 14:34, how to organize your products into collections at 12:52, how sales taxes work at 45:26, and how to manage your orders at 1:01:10.
Using WordPress for Your Artist Website Builder
WordPress is behind millions of websites, including bloggers and small businesses. But there are two types that offer different options depending on how your website is hosted: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The main difference is WordPress.com allows you to do everything in one place (hosting, design, and plugins) while WordPress.org allows you to use WordPress software but manage your hosting elsewhere.
The most important thing to note is WordPress.com is more beginner-friendly and doesn’t require a lot of technical knowledge. You need more intermediate to advanced technical knowledge to use WordPress.org.
Examples of real WordPress websites:
-
Versatility makes it customizable for any type of website
Large support community to help you learn and troubleshoot issues
Optimized for search engines
Thousands of plugins and themes to make your site your own
Lets you transfer your site to other hosts
Most theme templates are designed to be mobile-responsive
Can integrate analytics tools and tracking plugins
Automatic backups to keep your content and other data safe
-
Requires some technical understanding and can have a steep learning curve
Not knowing what you’re doing can lead your website to slow down
No phone support
Can get expensive as you grow
Using WordPress.org will require you to be in charge of all updates, backups, and security measures
Can be more time-consuming to maintain
WordPress Plans (2025 prices)
WordPress offers 6 pricing plans (including the free version). The actual cost of using WordPress will depend on any additional purchases you make, like buying certain theme templates and plugins. The prices below refer only to the base cost excluding taxes. While you can make a beautiful portfolio site using the Free, Personal, or Premium plans, we’re going to focus on the Business and Commerce plans since they have e-commerce capabilities that make sense for artists who want to sell their art on their website.
Business Plan
Cost: $25/month when you pay annually
Free domain for one year
Ad-free experience
Premium themes and styles, plus the ability to customize your site design with CSS
Ability to monetize your site by displaying ads
Integration with Google Analytics
50 GB storage for images, video, audio files, and documents
Allows you to accept credit and debit card payments for goods, services, subscriptions, memberships, donations, and more (2% transaction fee)
Ability to install plugins to add more features and functions to your site (including the popular Yoast SEO plugin)
24/7 customer support
Commerce Plan
Cost: $45/month when you pay annually
Everything included in the Business Plan
Unlimited product listings, including gift cards
Customizable cart and checkout experience
Unlimited order processing
Ability to issue coupon codes and run sales
Offer product recommendations
Abandoned cart email reminders
Integrations with shipping carriers
Automated tax calculations
Ability to manage your store via the WooCommerce Mobile App
Managing Products on WordPress
Since WordPress can require more technical skills, it's great how easy it is to find support and guides for anything you want to do. The video below walks you through the entire process of setting up a site with an online store, but the steps to set up your store and add products begin at 21:08.
FAQs About Websites
-
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It’s a security feature that ensures data like personal or financial information (including payment methods) is encrypted and safe from hackers. If you plan to ask people to provide any information on your website, such as their contact and billing information, you need an SSL certificate to keep that information secure and confidential.
-
Both are great options, but it all comes down to your needs, skills, and budget. If you have the technical skills or the desire to learn them, you can use any of these website builders to make a great site on your own. You can also hire a professional for a redesign further down the road if you decide that’s right for you.
-
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using a template, especially if you want to get your site running and looking good quickly. That said, if you don’t spend much time customizing your site within the abilities of that template, your brand will have a harder time standing out.
-
Not necessarily. An e-commerce site allows customers to browse the work you have for sale, add it to their cart, and make a purchase without having to contact you and wait for a response. But it's not the only way to sell your art online. You can also build a portfolio site and direct people to contact you about purchases or commissions.
-
If you're selling physical art pieces, you’ll need to use a shipping carrier to transport them to your customers. You’ll have to research the rates different carriers charge to find out what the best option is for you and the size of your work. Don't forget shipping distance can also affect rates.
My Personal Views on These Options
Of these four website builders, Shopify is the only one I haven't personally experienced. I’ve been a WordPress user for almost two decades now and a Squarespace user for nearly 10 years. I’ve also used Wix to build a client's art store.
When you start searching for comparisons of these platforms, most people say Wix is the best value for design and ease of use. I agree the price is great, and I feel the back-end for e-commerce stores is easy to navigate with a lot of powerful tools. But I'm not a fan of Wix when it comes to actually building the site.
I don't like that I could spend a few hours customizing a template, then decide I want to try a different template, and have to start completely from scratch. It's a good idea to have all your written content prepared and saved elsewhere because it won't transfer if you change templates. I also found several elements had a much more tedious process for editing than with other website builders. Lastly, while you can move pretty much any element anywhere you want on the page, this makes it very easy to “misplace” those elements. (I had a client who tried to make a tiny adjustment to their navigation menu on their own, then contacted me because it disappeared entirely from the mobile version of the site. It was still there, but they had accidentally positioned it off-screen and behind other layers.)
I’ve used WordPress for a long time and I would happily recommend it to anyone who wants to build some basic website developer skills on the side. That said, the cost can really add up and you have to stay on top of technical updates if you want your site to keep functioning in the long-term. (I’ve seen people completely break their site to the point the site-owner can't even access it by simply doing some necessary updates in the wrong sequence.)
Personally, I recommend Squarespace for beginners. Between site-wide templates and individual block templates, it's easy to build an attractive and unique website. Not only that, but it ensures your site design is sharp, clean, and doesn't look outdated no matter how long it's been since you refreshed the look. My main gripe with them is I don't like how some of the marketing features are distributed across their plans. For example, while the Business Plan gives you some email marketing tools, you're not able to set up even a basic automation to send a new subscriber a free downloadable resource without upgrading your plan. This makes building an email list require more focus and effort.
