Photography Website Recommendations: WordPress, Zenfolio, SmugMug, or...

I've had a couple WordPress sites for awhile, as well as a personal SmugMug site for sharing travel photos. After doing a couple nights of event photography, I'd like to have a client proofing area where people can check images from the previous night's event, flag and pay for what they want to purchase.

WordPress seems to give me the most control over the options I choose, and how I piece things together. The biggest challenge or risk with WordPress is that it's on me to keep everything together. I do my own web hosting today, but it's the ongoing support or possibility of having to dig into PHP code as WordPress evolves and templates/plug-ins come and go. The upside is that I hear SEO and analytics options are the best with WordPress, so that could provide some payback for the extra care and feeding in the site.

SmugMug I'm familiar with and seems to be the most straight forward. They aren't known for being good in the SEO and analytics fronts, but if I separated the blog from the marketplace and had galleries and purchases hosted with SmugMug, that might be fine. SmugMug also doesn't seem to offer any flexibility over the lab used, and I haven't seen a way that I can flag files for approval before an order is processed. As I understand it from the other event photogs I'm working with, they tend to go SOOC to their gallery for viewing, and then will do additional post processing on purchased prints to make sure they are up to quality. It means getting the exposure mostly right in camera, but I don't see an option within SmugMug for intercepting orders for retouching before they go to the lab. I've seen a few write ups on how to integrate SmugMug into a WordPress site so that you can get the best of both ... analytics and SEO from WordPress and the sales backend from SmugMug, but then I still need to work through the template and CSS integration to make that as seamless as possible.

Zenfolio is new to me, but seems to be a hybrid. A little better SEO than SmugMug, a few more options around the selling side of things, but still not fully customizable like WordPress. It's hosted with them (like SmugMug), but so far doesn't seem to be as open to cross integration with WordPress like SmugMug is. It looks like Zenfolio has a better blogging platform than SmugMug, but if the SEO and publishing tools aren't there, it might just be a better compromise/starter site than anything.

I haven't mentioned other options like Wix or SquareSpace, because to my knowledge both are lacking the e-commerce backend and are even less flexible than WordPress (though hosted on their own platforms), so seems like a step in the wrong direction.

What are others using? Maybe I'll make this a poll ... what's your preference for a photography business/portfolio/sales platform?

I have several Wordpress sites and enjoy being able to design my own templates. I have never needed/wanted to sell via my website but am starting to lean into that direction. Will be interested in seeing what options I have with wordpress to so that. The paid sites would not be worth it to me since what I would be selling would be few and far between.

Don Kuykendall said:

The paid sites would not be worth it to me since what I would be selling would be few and far between.

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That's part of the equation for me. It's great that I've got some money coming in during December and February, but until it's consistent it might not make sense. It's the whole weighing of opportunity costs (time spent finding/integrating/maintaining the WP site) vs the monthly operational cost of just paying for it to be there and having the ability to just call someone if/when it breaks. Or how much automation versus hands on control in the product delivery side. Right now, those don't seem to be mutually exclusive ... hosted sites also make the product delivery low touch, but I don't think that's what I want.

I am not sure I want a company taking orders, sending them out to get printed and then delivering to the customer. All that without me seeing the photos. I plan of seeing what is available this week. Will update you with what I find. Sounds like we are in the same boat.

Don Kuykendall said:

I am not sure I want a company taking orders, sending them out to get printed and then delivering to the customer. All that without me seeing the photos. I plan of seeing what is available this week. Will update you with what I find. Sounds like we are in the same boat.

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Yeah, we definitely agree there. I don't see a way to have SmugMug do anything but the full automatic if I enable selling features there. Zenfolio sounds like there is the option to "proof"/approve purchases, so print size/scaling can be validated/adjusted as necessary. I'm not sure how digital downloads would come into play there, or customer expectation either for that matter. (would someone wait, possibly a day or more before the digital image(s) they purchased could be approved for download?)

There's definitely some pro's and con's to each beyond just the technology side of things.

I'd say WP. If my theme wasn't rather convenient for how I want my site to be right now, I'd likely plunge into Nextgen Gallery plugin since that one allows all the sales and such to be much easier than any other.

SkvLTD said:

I'd say WP. If my theme wasn't rather convenient for how I want my site to be right now, I'd likely plunge into Nextgen Gallery plugin since that one allows all the sales and such to be much easier than any other.

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NextGen is not compatible with the current generation of WP. At least it wasn't last week. I tried and tried. I ended up using WooCommerce and to get the photos into WooCommerce I used Bulk Photo to Product Importer Extension for WooCommerce (Free) That takes your photos in and turns them into a product automatically. It also gives you all your predetermined choices for each photo and the price. It will also do the ordering for the client. They pick the things they want and it will put it in the cart for them and add it all up and total it. When they are ready it will send them to PayPal to let them pay for the order. You will get a copy of the order along with the copy of where they payed through paypal. There are emails that the customer gets that they have ordered. you can then send a email telling them the order is being processed. All in all it is a pretty nice system. Took me some time to figure out how to configure it and I still have not designed a custom theme for this site since it is just a family site for on wedding. IF you want to see it here it is.

Products – Rebecca & Jim Wedding Photos

I have only added a couple of photos just for testing. The site is live though so please do not order anything unless you plan to pay for it. LOL

I'm playing with both WooCommerce and NextGen this week after Don did a lot of testing with WooCommerce earlier this month. It looks like NextGen finally updated their plugin ... at least it shows 100% compatibility when I installed it over Christmas. More to come...