Pixpa review – website builder for your portfolio
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Miglė Šeikytė
Content Lead
Pixpa is a niche website builder for creatives like photographers, artists, and anyone alike that would like to display and sell their visuals online.
First things first, Pixpa is a very visual website builder that markets itself as a portfolio builder with an integrated eCommerce functionality. So it’s no surprise that this builder won’t fit everyone's liking.
However, if you’re looking for a quality website building platform that will allow you to build a visual portfolio and showcase and sell your photographs, paintings, or any crafts, Pixpa is the best you could go for. It’s affordable, easy to use, and surely visually appealing.
To see if Pixpa is the one for you, keep on reading this review, where I’ll tell you all there is to know about this website builder, its functionalities, perks, and drawbacks. So without further ado, let’s jump right in.
| ⭐️Rating: | |
| 📝Ease of use: | Very easy to use |
| 🎨Templates: | 131 responsive all-purpose templates |
| 💼Business features: | Simple, minimalist business features |
| 🔥Coupons: | Pixpa coupon 63% OFF |
Pros and Cons of Pixpa
What website to use Pixpa for?
Pixpa initially is marketed as a website builder for portfolios with built-in eCommerce functionality specifically. While the builder will undoubtedly be best for that niche, let’s see what other types of websites it can be used for:
| Website type | Benefits | Limitations |
| Online shops | Cheap to get started, no commission fees, set taxes, and shipping rates | Is best suited for selling images, photographs, and prints |
| Businesses | Easy to use and includes advanced SEO settings | Not much value for medium-sized sites |
| Portfolio site | Many responsive templates for photography or art portfolios | Limited features and similar layouts make the portfolio sites pretty simple |
| Blogs | Simple and easy to integrate blogging platform with advanced SEO features | Blogging is not the main area of focus for Pixpa |
Pixpa pricing
Pixpa offers 4 different pricing plans – Basic ($1.88/mo), Creator ($3.75/mo), Professional ($5.63/mo), and Advanced ($9.38/mo). Additionally, you can test any plan for free for 15 days.
One thing to note, all plans apart from Basic allow selling online.
Now, no matter which plan you choose, all include a free SSL and possibility to connect a custom domain. Now all plans, except Lite, also offer a free domain, advanced SEO features, unlimited bandwidth, and a blogging platform.
Here’s how they differ:
- Basic ($1.88/mo) – the plan allows connecting a custom domain and does not specify the amount of storage included. More so, it does not include eCommerce functionalities or a blogging platform.
- Creator ($3.75/mo) – comes with 3GB storage and allows selling up to 5 products. You can sell the images as prints or for downloading with 0 commission on sales. More so, the plan includes discount coupons and allows to set taxes/shipping rates, as well as to collect payments directly.
- Professional ($5.63/mo) – includes Creator plan offerings, plus 25GB storage, marketing pop-ups, announcement bars, free website setup, and the possibility to sell up to 50 products.
- Advanced ($9.38/mo) – in addition to the Professional plan’s features, the Advanced includes 100GB storage, payment forms, customer accounts, inventory management, abandoned cart recovery, and allows selling up to 1000 products.
To get the most freedom in terms of storage and how many products you can sell, I suggest you check the Advanced plan. For $9.38/mo, you get to create customer accounts, sell up to 1000 products, and easily manage your inventory.
Now if you wish to test any of the plans before making a purchase, Pixpa offers such a possibility with its 15-day free trial. Best of all, you do not need any credit card information for this.
Additionally, the website builder also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you choose to cancel your subscription within that time, you are eligible for a full refund.
Overall, Pixpa is a very affordable website builder. While the plans are a little limited in terms of storage, you do get all the necessities like a domain name, SSL, and the ability to sell online with any plan. For such a low price point, that’s not very common.
Is Pixpa easy to use?
- Getting started – the start with Pixpa is very simple. I signed up for the free trial and all I needed was an email address and a password.
- Designing the website – once signed in, I picked my site’s name and the type of website I’ll be building. Pixpa comes with a simplistic drag-and-drop editor that you’ll use to edit your site further.
- Managing the website – Pixpa’s dashboard is simplistic and very well organized. From there you’ll be able to manage your website/shop, set up marketing tools, and edit your site’s design.
In simple words, creating a website with Pixpa took me just a few minutes. Right from the start, the process was quick and simplistic. There were no overcomplicated questionnaires or an abundance of choices. I simply chose a template and got to the customizing.
In fact, let’s explore in more detail how quick and effortless it was to create a site.
Getting started with Pixpa
Once you’ve picked a plan of your liking (yes, you can even choose which plan you’d like to try out with the free trial), you’ll have to choose the type of website you’ll be running and name it.
The second step is to pick a template. Once you do, you are redirected to a simplistic, clean, and very well-organized Pixpa dashboard.
From here, you’ll manage all your website’s settings starting from its design to SEO settings, store settings, and client profiles.
If you’re a first-time user or just simply want professional help, Pixpa also offers a free setup service with its Professional and Advanced plans.
In short, starting with Pixpa is a breeze. It takes only a few minutes and you can start editing your site as you wish.
Designing the website
To start editing your website simply click on the Website button in your dashboard, on your left side menu.
This menu is the main tool you’ll use to manage and customize your site. Here, you’ll be able to add new pages or edit the existing ones.
To add any element to your chosen page, just simply click on Add Section where you wish to add a new element. Talking about those, you can add anything - an image list, button, gallery, contact form, or a blog.
I must note, while Pixpa is considered to be a drag-and-drop website builder, it functions as a section-based builder. You won’t get the freedom of placing elements anywhere you desire, you must choose a section where to place what.
Although the design flexibility is not the highest, this makes the builder very simple to use. Once you add an element, you can change the font and colors. More so, you can edit the size of the section for laptops as well as mobile devices.
At the same time, if you’re a slightly more advanced user, feel free to edit your site through HTML.
All things considered, building a website with Pixpa is very simplistic. While you get barely any creative freedom, the builder does include all elements you might need to add to your portfolio site.
Pixpa templates – galleries upon galleries
When it comes to templates, Pixpa comes with 131 responsive and modern-looking all-purpose options.
One thing you’ll notice right off the bat is that images are a focal point in Pixpa’s templates. This comes as no surprise since Pixpa does market itself as a builder for portfolio sites specifically.
While the variety of templates is pretty wide, I must note, most of them are quite similar. That’s due to the fact that the only thing that really changes is the layout of the images on the site.
However, that’s kind of the point. Images and their layout are the main site elements. Additionally, all themes are modern-looking and very pleasant to the eye. Just take a look at this:
Lastly, each and every Pixpa template is responsive. This means that no matter what device (laptop, tablet, or phone) your visitors will use, your site will look great regardless.
Simply put, Pixpa comes with a wide range of options in terms of templates. While they are not the most diverse ones out there, they are very functional and beautifully designed.
Pixpa eCommerce builder review
One unique fact about Pixpa is that it’s a portfolio/eCommerce website builder. This means that all plans, even the cheapest one, allow selling products online.
To integrate Shop functionality onto your site takes just a second. Just click on the Shop icon on the left side of your site’s management menu, and you’re set.
Once you’ve activated the eCommerce functionality, you can start adding the products to your shop. The builder allows you to sell physical and digital products as well as services.
More so, Pixpa eCommerce platform allows to:
- Create and edit product pages and product lists,
- Group products into categories,
- Create discount codes,
- Track your orders,
- Accept online and offline payments,
- Add shipping regions,
- Edit the Checkout page.
Additionally, for online payments Pixpa allows you to connect your Stripe Basic or a PayPal Business account.
In sum, Pixpa’s eCommerce functionalities are pretty basic. However, that’s more than enough to sell prints, photographs, or niche-related services. The most impressive thing is that you can integrate eCommerce with any of Pixpa’s plans.
Pixpa business features
In addition to the most prominent business feature, eCommerce functionality, Pixpa also has a few more things to offer. You will be pleased to find functionalities like Customer Galleries, Gallery App, and SEO settings. Let’s explore each in a bit more detail.
Customer Galleries
A pretty convenient and handy feature that Pixpa offers is Customer Galleries. You can create individual galleries with multiple folders within them for each and every paying client.
Why it’s so handy is due to a few reasons, but the most notable being that your clients can mark favorite pictures or leave comments about your work.
More so, you can put a price tag on these galleries and send links to your clients with payment and download buttons via email.
Lastly, these galleries can either be made public or private. Regardless, Pixpa secures your work by disabling the right-click functionality on these galleries.
Mobile Gallery Apps
If you’re running a photography site, Gallery App is a very useful and quite a unique feature that helps to quickly and conveniently send images to your clients.
You can either create an entirely new folder of images or simply group images from an existing gallery on your site. Once done, you can share this file directly with your customers via email.
They get a link to download an app that contains the full gallery of sent images. A very fast and convenient way to send your work to your clients right there from your site.
Pixpa Marketing and SEO tools
Now Pixpa is not the most advanced in terms of marketing and SEO. However, the builder does provide features like marketing pop-ups, cookie consent banners, as well as website and page-specific SEO settings.
For added convenience, Pixpa allows you to design marketing popups that you can edit to fit your needs by changing the content or the design. This feature makes it very easy to collect your customers’ emails.
You can also edit your cookie consent banner. Change the text and font to keep your visitors informed on what kind of cookies you’re using.
Now talking about SEO, you can edit your website’s SEO title and description, as well as each page URL, page title, and its description. You can even hide your chosen page from search engines if you wish.
Although Pixpa is pretty much you get what you see, there are a few useful business features like gallery app, client gallery, and SEO. The gallery app is something that is truly unique to Pixpa and makes image sharing that much faster and more convenient.
Alternatives to Pixpa
Since Pixpa is a pretty niche website builder, you might be looking for something else. No worries, there are plenty of good website builders out there. Some of the best Pixpa alternatives are Hostinger Website Builder, Squarespace, and Zenfolio.
Hostinger Website Builder
Hostinger Website Builder is one of the cheapest website builders out there, with prices starting at just $2.33. With a very functional drag-and-drop editor Hostinger Website Builder allows you to quickly and easily build a beautiful website of your choice.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a slightly more premium yet very much small business-oriented website builder. It includes all the necessary tools like eCommerce, blogging tools, and analytics for any type of website.
Simply put, Squarespace is a great solution for entrepreneurs who want sleek design, ease of use, and eCommerce functionalities.
Zenfolio
If you’re specifically looking for a portfolio and Pixpa just wasn’t it, check Zenfolio. It’s easy to use and very similarly priced Pixpa alternative that also highly focuses on portfolio and photography sites.
Just like with Pixpa, Zenfolio also comes with eCommerce functionality. However, this is not available with its entry plan.
Pixpa review – conclusion
Overall, Pixpa is a good website builder for those looking to start a portfolio/photography site or a small online store. The builder is very affordable and easy to use, making it a very tempting option for both beginners and more advanced users.
| Feature | Sleek portfolio website builder with eCommerce functionality | |
| Pricing | The prices are very reasonable starting at just $1.88/mo. However, the entry plan is not worth your time. Better-suited plans range from $3.75 to $9.38 per month. | |
| Ease of Use | Although there aren’t many customization options available, the builder is very easy to use. You can create a functional site in minutes. | |
| Templates | There are 131 responsive and modern-looking templates for different types of websites. Although very functional, they all are quite similar-looking. | |
| eCommerce | Pixpa allows eCommerce functionality with all its plans. The platform is very simple to use and functional. | |
| Business features | Pixpa comes with a few very useful business tools like Client Galleries, Gallery apps, and marketing/SEO settings. |
Pixpa FAQs
What is Pixpa good for?
Pixpa is a very visual website builder that puts images at the forefront. For this reason, the builder will best suit those looking to create a portfolio or display and sell artistic creations.
Is Pixpa good for a photography website?
As the builder’s main point of focus are visual pages, Pixpa is a great option for photography website building.
Is Pixpa free?
No, Pixpa is not free. However, the builder is very affordable, with prices starting at $1.88/mo. Additionally, Pixpa offers a 15-day free trial that does not require any credit card information.
What can I sell with Pixpa?
Pixpa allows you to sell any physical and digital product as well as services. The only limitation is how many products you are able to sell. The limit will depend on the plan you opt for.
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