Photo Portfolio & Online Hosting

Where the public sees your work. Two flavors: photographer-flavored hosted services with templates, client galleries, and proofing built in (paid); and self-host gallery software (free / OSS) that you point at your own server. For raw library / catalog see Photo DAM & Management; for self-host Google-Photos-shape see Self-Hosted Photos & Media.

Hosted photographer-specific (paid)

• ★ Format — paid; clean templates, photographer-flavored, simple. Free trial. Long-running, reliable.
• ★ Pixieset — paid; the de-facto wedding / portrait client gallery tool — clients pick favorites, order prints, the studio gets a commission. Free tier with limits.
• Squarespace — paid; not photographer-specific but most-used by working photographers; portfolio templates are strong.
• SmugMug — paid; the long-running photographer host; portfolio + client galleries + e-commerce + unlimited storage. No free tier.
• Zenfolio — paid; photographer-specific; client galleries, proofing, integrated print fulfillment.
• PhotoShelter — paid; pro photographer; CDN delivery, archive shape, agency-grade.
• 22Slides — paid; no-frills photographer portfolios; cheaper than Format.

Hosted general (paid)

• Cargo — paid; designer-leaning; photographers use it for moodboard-shape sites.
• Adobe Portfolio — included with Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan; minimal but free if you're already paying Adobe.
• Webflow — paid; bring-your-own-design; powerful but more work.
• Wix / Carbonmade — paid; consumer-grade.

Hosted free tiers worth knowing

• Behance — free; Adobe-owned; for case studies and showing process. Discoverability matters more than aesthetic.
• Flickr — free tier capped at 1,000 photos; community / discovery angle. Pro paid.
• 500px — paid; photo community / licensing marketplace.
• VSCO — paid; mobile-flavored social portfolio.
• Glass — paid iOS/Android; subscription photo-only social network. Niche but loved.
• Cara — free; AI-art-pushback social / portfolio that grew in 2024.

Self-host gallery (free / OSS)

• ★ Lychee — MIT, PHP. Modern self-host gallery; album-based, password-protected sharing, EXIF display. The polished OSS choice. Easy Docker deploy.
• ★ Piwigo — GPL, PHP. The classic; over 20 years old; battle-tested at large libraries (100,000+ photos). Plugin ecosystem is enormous; more administrative than Lychee, but unmatched at scale.
• Chevereto — paid + free OSS tier; image-host shape (more like Imgur than a portfolio).
• PhotoPrism — see Self-Hosted Photos & Media; has a public-share mode for galleries.
• Immich — same; recent versions added shareable albums.
• Pigallery2 — MIT; lightweight; reads folder-shape libraries.
• Photoview — MIT; Go + React; modern; reads folder-shape too.

Self-host portfolio (static site generators)

• Astro — see Frameworks; image-optimized, perfect for static portfolios. Pair with astro:assets.
• Next.js / <Next/Image> — see File Uploads; great if you want a real app.
• Hugo — fast SSG; gallery themes available; minimal.
• Eleventy — flexible SSG; JS-friendly.

Client-proofing-specific

• ★ Pixieset — already covered; the standard.
• ShootProof — paid; Pixieset competitor; strong on print fulfillment.
• Cloudspot — paid; proofing + delivery.
• Pic-Time — paid; wedding-specific proofing.
• Pixellu Galleries — paid.

Print sales / fulfillment

• Pixieset Store / SmugMug / Zenfolio all integrate with Bay Photo / WHCC / Loxley fulfillment; clients order, lab prints, you get a margin.
• Format Store — same.
• Etsy + Printful / Society6 — DIY route. See Photo Print & Book.

Patterns to know

• Slow-load is a portfolio killer — use a CDN; serve AVIF + WebP + JPEG fallback. See File Uploads.
• Watermark previews, full-res after order — Pixieset / SmugMug do this automatically.
• Right-click protection is a fig leaf — anyone can screen-grab. Watermark instead. See Photo Watermark & Batch.
• EXIF-strip published images — see Photo EXIF & Metadata — strip GPS at minimum.
• Bandwidth costs scale — Cloudflare R2 + Pages is essentially free at hobbyist volume.

What's changing in 2024–2026

• Cloudflare R2 + Pages combo — many photographers self-host portfolios on R2 for the no-egress story.
• AI-generated stock pushback — pro photographers reasserting "100% real, no AI" badges in metadata.
• C2PA Content Credentials — surface "captured by camera" provenance; Pixieset / Format experimenting with badges.
• Open social fediverse for photo — Pixelfed (Mastodon-shape, photo-flavored, OSS, free) growing as a platform.

Pick this if…

• Default hosted photographer site: Format or SmugMug.
• Wedding / portrait client galleries: Pixieset.
• Already in Adobe CC: Adobe Portfolio is free with the plan.
• Self-host, polished, modern: Lychee.
• Self-host, scale to 100k+ photos: Piwigo.
• Static SSG, photographer-developer: Astro + R2 + Cloudflare Pages.
• Federated / Mastodon-shape: Pixelfed.