If you’re a photographer trying to choose the right platform to showcase your work online, you’ve probably come across Squarespace and Pixieset. At first glance, both seem like solid options—but they’re built with very different priorities in mind.
Squarespace is a versatile website builder known for its sleek, all-in-one platform that combines website design, blogging, e-commerce, and portfolio features.
Pixieset is a photography-focused platform offering client galleries, image delivery, proofing, and online sales in a clean, user-friendly interface. It’s tailored specifically for photographers.
I started using Squarespace because it’s promoted by almost every photographer on YouTube. Being a bit gullible, I figured it must be a good fit and set up a photography site, hoping for a smooth, enjoyable experience. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy, but I don’t want to get lost in front-end tweaking—especially for something as personal as sharing my art. I wanted a platform that made it easy to publish and blog without turning it into a second job.
But after spending considerable time with it, I’m shocked by how many basic features are either missing or poorly implemented. For example, there’s no way to use a masonry layout in a blog post gallery—even though it works perfectly fine on standalone pages. That feels less like a design decision and more like a bug.
There’s also no built-in way to share photo galleries with clients. The only method Squarespace offers involves a convoluted setup: you create a password-protected page, manually add a gallery, and even then, clients can’t zoom in or download images (not to mention the annoying 20MB upload limit). The workaround I settled on was to manually link each photo in a gallery to its corresponding downloadable asset in a new window. Yes, one by one. It’s absurd.
Pixieset isn’t perfect either—it has quirks, like not allowing you to leave a text block empty unless you change the layout entirely—but at least its limitations make sense within a photography workflow. Unlike Squarespace, it doesn’t fight you on things that should be simple.
I finally used Wappalyzer to investigate the tech behind websites run by some of the YouTubers I’ve learned so much from—like Tony and Chelsea Northrup (whose book, Stunning Digital Photography, I’m truly grateful for) and Sean Tucker.
Tony and Chelsea often promote Squarespace and occasionally imply that their own site is built on it. But that’s misleading. Yes, they do have a Squarespace page—but their actual main website is WordPress-based, likely professionally developed. It’s clearly not the drag-and-drop site they’re advertising in their videos.
On the other hand, Sean Tucker does genuinely use Squarespace, but his website is quite minimal. It feels more like a small boutique storefront than a comprehensive, fully functional site.
The takeaway? If you’re looking for a serious, flexible, and scalable photography website, Squarespace is probably not the answer. Even for a simple portfolio, I’d recommend Adobe Portfolio, especially if you already subscribe to Creative Cloud—it’s included in your plan and does a much better job showcasing your work without pretending to be something it’s not. Here is my photography website: https://www.mahyaretedal.com/