Ultimate Guide to the Best Web Hosting for Photographers (2024)

by Southie Williamson on May 3, 2024

Are you looking for the best web hosting for photographers? Choosing the best website hosting is crucial for your business. Like most people, you may be overwhelmed by all the different hosting options available.

We’ve helped countless photographers and artists showcase their work online, and we understand first-hand how crucial it is to choose the best web hosting company. And more importantly, as a business owner, you need to understand what you’re signing up for.

In this beginner’s guide, we’ll cover what web hosting is, the various hosting options available to you, how to choose the best web hosting, and which companies offer the best web hosting for photographers.

This article aims to help you choose the best web hosting for your photography business, so let’s dive in!

Understanding Photography Hosting

Before we jump into hosting, it’s important to talk about the CMS (Content Management System) you’ll use to build your photography website.

What website do most photographers use?

WordPress is the most popular website platform for photographers, eCommerce businesses, and even huge corporations like Disney. In fact, it powers over 43% of all websites on the internet! Even if you’re not tech-savvy, WordPress is easy to use while offering the highest level of customization and flexibility.

As your photography business grows, WordPress can grow with you. It’s easy to add new features and functionality as needed. Plus, WordPress is open-source software, meaning it’s free to use. You’ll still have to purchase hosting, but it’s a very affordable option, which is great for photographers who are just starting out.

Note: WordPress has two versions: WordPress.org and WordPress.com. WordPress.com is a managed hosting platform. WordPress.org, or the “real WordPress,” is the free version where you’ll purchase your own web hosting.

For photographers, we recommend a self-hosted WordPress website. This means you’ll purchase hosting, install WordPress, and then build your site.

What is web hosting?

In simple terms, web hosting is a service that allows you to store your website’s files on a server and make them accessible to visitors on the internet. Think of it like renting space on a powerful computer to house your website.

What are the different types of web hosting?

There are several types of web hosting available, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Let’s go over the most common ones.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is a popular choice for small businesses and photographers because it’s affordable and easy for beginners to set up. As the name suggests, you’re getting shared space on a large server to host your website. This allows providers to offer hosting services at a much lower price.

While it’s standard practice in the hosting industry to advertise unlimited storage, please know that hosting services have usage restrictions. Most small businesses will never exceed them, but you’ll be asked to upgrade your plan if you do. 

If you’re just starting out, you only need shared hosting. There’s no need to overpay for resources you don’t need.

VPS & Dedicated Hosting

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is the next step above shared hosting. Your website still shares a server but with much fewer websites. You have dedicated resources allocated to your site and more control over the server settings.

On the other hand, Dedicated hosting means you get an entire server to yourself. This provides the most resources, customizations, and control, but it can get fairly expensive based on the size of your website.

Since you’re reading this article, chances are you probably don’t need either of these options.

Managed Hosting

Think of Managed WordPress Hosting as a tailored service. The hosting resources are optimized for WordPress, and the provider takes care of the technical aspects like security, updates, and performance.

In some cases, “managed WordPress hosting” means fully managed, 100% hassle-free, and may even include a separate website building platform from the hosting provider. Other times, however, “managed WordPress hosting” just means shared hosting that’s configured for WordPress and comes with included perks like auto-updates, backups, and support.

Another form of managed hosting is Non-WordPress Platforms like Squarespace and Wix. Unlike WordPress hosting, these platforms operate as a one-stop shop for building, hosting, and managing your website. You use the company’s built-in features to create your site, which is then hosted on their servers. The drawback is that you’re limited to the provided templates and functionality of the platform.

Fully managed hosting is popular among beginners, but the average cost is 10x more than a simple, shared hosting plan. Many WordPress hosting providers already include perks and support, and it’s actually pretty easy to manage a WordPress site yourself. Because of this, the benefits of fully managed hosting don’t outweigh the costs for many businesses.

What to look for when choosing a web hosting company?

Hopefully, by now, you understand the differences between each type of web hosting option. When choosing a hosting service for your photography website, consider the following factors:

1. Speed and Performance: Your website should load quickly to provide a great user experience and improve search engine rankings.
2. Uptime and Reliability: Look for a hosting provider with a high uptime guarantee (ideally 99.9%) to ensure your website is always accessible.
3. Storage and Bandwidth: Make sure the hosting plan offers enough storage and bandwidth to accommodate your high-resolution photos and growing website traffic.
4. Security: Choose a hosting provider that prioritizes security with features like SSL certificates and malware scanning.
5. Customer Support: Opt for a hosting company with responsive and knowledgeable customer support who is available to assist you with any issues.
6. Pricing and Value: Consider your budget and look for a hosting provider that offers the best value for your money, with a good balance of features and affordability.

Best Web Hosting for Photographers

Short on time? Here’s a quick breakdown of the hosting providers on our list.

(click a hosting provider to jump down to our in-depth review)

Hosting Provider	What It’s Best For	Starting Price (Monthly)
Bluehost	Overall best web hosting for photographers	$1.99
SiteGround	Best for fast, affordable managed WordPress hosting	$2.99
Hostinger	Best for geolocation-specific hosting	$2.99
HostGator	Best hosting with an included website builder	$2.52
A2 Hosting	Best for photographers who value speed (Turbo servers)	$6.99
WPEngine	Best premium, fully managed WordPress hosting	$20.00
GoDaddy	Best managed hosting with a built-in AI publisher	$10.99
GreenGeeks	Best eco-friendly hosting	$2.95
InMotion Hosting	Best hosting for higher storage at an affordable rate	$3.99

Now that you have a grasp on hosting and know what to look for, let’s explore the top web hosting for photographers.

1. Bluehost

Bluehost is a beginner-friendly hosting provider that’s been around since 1996. They offer affordable shared hosting plans, and are officially recommended by WordPress. Their plans come with unlimited bandwidth, a free domain name, a free SSL certificate, easy WordPress installation, and more.

They also provide 24/7 customer support and a 30-day money-back guarantee. And if you need more resources as your business grows, they offer VPS and Dedicated hosting plans as well.

Best For: Photographers who want an affordable and easy-to-use shared hosting solution.

Price: Starts at $1.99 / month for the first term ($7.99 / month renewal rate).

2. SiteGround

SiteGround is legendary for its high-quality web hosting service and 24/7 top-rated customer support. Founded in 2004, they specialize in managed web hosting services for WordPress, WooCommerce, and other open-source software on a high-performance, cloud-powered platform, which is perfect for gallery websites.

They guarantee easy website creation or migration with their managed WordPress hosting plans along with plenty of useful tools like daily backups, a free SSL certificate, email accounts, automatic WordPress updates, free CDN, staging, and more.

You’ll be able to conveniently manage your photography site with their intuitive Site Tools control panel. And if you work with other people on your website, SiteGround gives you the option to add collaborators easily and set their permissions.

Last but not least, SiteGround maintains a security-first approach by having a 24/7 team of system administrators, a web application firewall, and an advanced monitoring system.

Best For: Photographers who value speed, reliability, and excellent customer support.

Price: Starts at $2.99 / month for the first term ($17.99 / month renewal rate).

3. Hostinger

One of the most popular hosting providers available today, Hostinger caters to millions of website owners worldwide. They’ve secured a high customer satisfaction rating thanks to their 50-second customer support response time and their 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Hostinger offers a variety of plans, including managed WordPress hosting, shared web and cloud hosting, and VPS hosting. Their WordPress hosting includes weekly backups, a free SSL certificate, pre-built website templates, and more. They also offer geolocation-specific hosting with data centers in the USA, Europe, Asia, and South America.

Best For: Photographers who want affordable, geolocation-specific hosting.

Price: Starts at $2.99 / month for the first term ($7.99 / month renewal rate).

4. HostGator

HostGator is an industry-leading web hosting company that hosts over 10 million websites. With pre-installed WordPress, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a free domain, malware scanning, and 24/7 support, it’s a solid option for any photography business.

Plus, many of HostGator’s plans include a website builder to help speed up the process of creating your photography site.

Best For: Photographers who want an affordable hosting solution with an included website builder.

Price: Starts at $2.52 / month for the first term ($9.99 / month renewal rate).

5. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting offers hosting packages for every business owner, including shared, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated hosting. With their shared and WordPress hosting plans, you can host your site on their Turbo servers, which boast speeds up to 20x faster than regular servers. Plus, their control panel lets you monitor your site and reach the support team 24/7.

A2 Hosting offers an anytime money-back guarantee on their hosting packages, so you don’t have to worry about losing money if you’re unhappy with the service. 

Best For: Photographers who prioritize speed, with the flexibility of an anytime money-back guarantee.

Price: Shared Turbo hosting starts at $6.99 / month for the first term ($15.99 / month renewal rate).

6. WPEngine

WPEngine is a premium managed WordPress hosting provider that offers fast performance, automatic updates, daily backups with 1-click restore points, a staging environment for testing changes, SSL certificates, and more.

As a premium hosting service, you’ll get top-notch customer support, advanced security features, and a team of experts that manage your site. Plus, their hosting plans include access to 36+ premium StudioPress themes, many of which are great themes for photography websites.

Best For: Professional photographers who want fully managed WordPress hosting with all the premium perks.

Price: Starts at $20.00 / month for the first term ($30.00 / month renewal rate).

7. GoDaddy

GoDaddy is a popular domain registrar and hosting provider that offers fully managed WordPress hosting at a more budget-friendly price. It includes malware scans, backups, site optimization tools, and a free SSL certificate and domain.

GoDaddy’s Smart Update Manager handles everything needed to keep your site up-to-date and secure, and hosting plans includes a number of premium themes and WordPress plugins. Plus, one of their unique features is a built-in AI publisher to help you design and optimize your photography website faster.

Best For: Photographers who want managed WordPress hosting with a built-in AI publisher.

Price: Starts at $10.99 / month for the first term ($12.99 / month renewal rate).

8. GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks is an eco-friendly hosting provider that offers fast and reliable hosting with a commitment to renewable energy. Like many of the hosting companies we recommend for photographers, GreenGeeks includes easy WordPress installation, a free SSL certificate, free CDN, backups, managed WordPress updates, support, and more.

GreenGreeks has been recognizes by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 2009. They match their energy usage by 3x in the form of renewable energy and plant 1 tree for every hosting account. Because of this commitment to sustainability, GreenGeeks is particularly popular among nature and landscape photographers.

Best For: Environmentally conscious photographers who want fast and eco-friendly hosting.

Price: Starts at $2.95 / month for the first term ($11.95 / month renewal rate).

9. InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting is another top-rated host provider. They offer fast web hosting for websites of varying sizes on secure servers protected by custom firewalls.

Their starter WordPress plan provides 2 websites and 100GB of SSD storage, which is more generous than a lot of intro hosting plans. It also comes with a suite of security features, a website builder, marketing tools, and more.

And if you want InMotion to handle more of the technical stuff, they also offer fully managed WordPress VPS hosting at a more affordable rate than many other VPS plans. Rather than a traditional cPanel, you’ll manage your site on their native dashboard, Platform i.

Best For: Photographers who need more storage at an affordable rate.

Price: Starts at $3.99 / month for the first term ($12.99 / month renewal rate).

Best Managed Hosting Platforms for Photographers (Non-WordPress)

While WordPress is the recommended CMS (content management system) for photographers, several non-WordPress platforms offer an all-in-one solution, which includes hosting, website templates, and built-in features for showcasing and selling your work.

These options are more expensive, offer less flexibility, and aren’t nearly as customizable as a self-hosted WordPress website. But, if you’ve got the cash to spare and aren’t keen on WordPress, some photographers prefer them.

Wix

A fully managed website platform that offers an easy builder and a range of templates designed for portfolio sites. You can create a simple site for free, but you’ll be stuck using the Wix domain (www.wix.com/yoursite) with advertisements on your site and limited storage. You can purchase a subscription to get a custom domain, upgrade your storage, and remove Wix branding.

Squarespace

Another popular, all-in-one website builder and managed hosting solution that offers beautifully designed templates for photographers. Their platform is known for its sleek, modern designs and user-friendly interface. Depending on the plan you choose, Squarespace offers features like galleries, blogging, eCommerce, and social media integration.

Format

Made for photographers and creative professionals, Format offers fully managed hosting with an intuitive platform and a range of customizable templates. Depending on your plan, they also provide functionality that’s tailored to photographers such as image storage, client proofing, and payment integration. They also offer premium plans where a professional designer will build a complete website for you.

SmugMug

A platform designed specifically for photographers, offering a range of tools for showcasing, sharing, and selling your work. It’s not actually a website host or builder, but you can create a portfolio and sell prints or digital downloads directly to customers. Think of it as a marketplace, like Etsy, but specifically for photographers.

Enhancing Your Photography Website

Once you’ve chosen the best web hosting for your photography website, it’s time to showcase your stunning portfolio. Envira Gallery is the leading WordPress gallery plugin that makes it easy to create beautiful, responsive photo and video galleries.

Envira Gallery is a beginner-friendly, powerful solution for WordPress photography websites.

• Create stunning galleries with customizable layouts, lightbox displays, and animations.
• Display your portfolio in a professional, visually appealing way, including albums to showcase multiple galleries and the ability to create a filterable portfolio.
• Sell photos directly from your website with eCommerce integration.
• Offer client-proofing galleries for easy collaboration and image selection.
• Protect your images with watermarking, right-click-download protection, and password-protected galleries.
• Optimize your galleries for SEO with built-in image compression, metadata, breadcrumbs, and deep linking.
• Speed up your workflow with Adobe Lightroom integration to create and manage your WordPress galleries right inside Lightroom.
• And so much more!

Enhance Your Photography Site with Envira Gallery →

Envira Gallery integrates seamlessly with your WordPress website, regardless of your chosen hosting provider. It’s the perfect tool to enhance your online presence and show off your photography skills to potential clients.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is the best web hosting for beginner photographers?

Bluehost and Siteground are great options for beginner photographers looking to build their website. They offer affordable pricing, user-friendly interfaces, easy WordPress installation, and tools to help you manage the technical part of running a site such as automatic updates, security features, regular backups, free SSL certificates, and expert support.

How much does web hosting for photographers cost?

The cost of web hosting for photographers varies depending on the type of hosting and the provider. Shared hosting plans start as low as $1.99 per month, while managed, VPS, and dedicated hosting can range from $10 to $100+ per month.

Do I need managed WordPress hosting for my photography website?

Managed hosting is not essential. Many shared hosting providers, like Bluehost, still provide all the necessary tools to manage your WordPress site easily. That said, fully managed hosting may benefit photographers who don’t mind the extra cost in exchange for more peace of mind.

Can I switch web hosting providers later on?

Yes, you can switch your web hosting company at any time. Most WordPress hosting providers offer free site migration to make the process easier. However, be sure to check the terms and conditions of your current hosting plan for any early termination fees.

How do I choose the right web hosting plan for my photography website?

When choosing a web hosting plan for your photography business, consider factors like your budget, website traffic, storage and bandwidth needs, and the level of support you require. Evaluate each website hosting service carefully. Then, start with a plan that meets your current needs and can scale as your photography business grows.

Choosing the best web hosting for your photography website is crucial for showcasing your work, attracting clients, and growing your business online. Now that you’ve learned about the best web hosting for photographers, don’t forget to take your site to the next level with Envira Gallery!

When you combine the right WordPress photography hosting with Envira Gallery, you’ll be well on your way to creating a successful online presence for your business.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out Proven Ways to Build Your Photography Brand (Expert Tips).

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