Top PhotoShelter Alternatives

PhotoShelter is a photo management service launched in 2005 and headquartered in New York, USA. The main focus of the company is to help photographers build their photo business online. The service allows photographers to showcase, organize, share, and sell their photos to their audience, with various tools available to promote their photo website.

Many people have an artistic side to their life. Photography is one such art in which a person captures beautiful and attractive images. While performing this beautiful art, you may want to share or display your work on a platform so that people could see them. In today’s time, the best way to display your art is through the digital platform in the form of websites. It is not necessary that every person has the knowledge of building a website that shows your photographic skills. To help these people, there are organizations that help in building such sites.

What is PhotoShelter?

It is a website builder that is designed for professional photographers so that they can grow their base and extend their reach. It enables photographers to take their photography business to the extent of achieving goals. The platform that they design for you revolves entirely around your photography. This will increase your reach and attract more customers, in turn, leading to good business. The working of PhotoShelter is easy and fast.

HTML5 Website

You can build an HTML5 website that hosts your photos in one convenient place, with fully-customizable templates and mobile-responsive themes. You can use your own domain name for your website and integrate it with various third-party services, such as Instagram, WordPress, Tumblr, and Vimeo. You can showcase a beautiful and full-screen portfolio in your website, as well as display images that are optimized for Retina display. More importantly, you can do many things on your website, such as selling your digital photos, selling the printed version of your photos, and build a professional portfolio website to showcase your works.

Working

You need to make a PhotoShelter account. Then it creates a website according to your requirements. You can add or delete images on your website quickly by using the images stored in your PhotoShelter account. You don’t need to re-format or re-size the images. You can add your logo to the website and also allow your customers to browse and download images on your website. The access to the images stored in this account is available 24/7 and irrespective of the location where you are. The mobile app of PhotoShelter helps you in uploading, downloading, or even putting a price to your images easily.

Why use PhotoShelter?

It creates a website for you, so you don’t have to worry about the coding part involved in creating it. It has interactive drag-n-drop file management that helps you work smoothly. It allows you to send high- resolution pictures without involving third party services. You can sell your prints directly from your website and get paid instantly. It provides the security of your images by giving you the facility of watermarking the images and storing it on the cloud.

Secure Cloud Storage

PhotoShelter offers secure cloud storage for photographers to store and share their photos with others. There is limited space that you can use in the cloud storage, as well as limited bandwidth for photo downloads, but there is no limit on the size of each photo that you upload to the cloud storage. With the drag-and-drop file management system, you can sort and search your images easily. You can also upload various image file types into the cloud storage, such as TIF, PSD, RAW, JPEG, and more. There is also a feature called Image Theft Guard, which helps to protect all of your stored photos from people who want to steal and use it without paying the license fee.

Social Tools and SEO

There are many social and SEO marketing tools that can help to promote your photo website to your audience. These tools are available in all plans, unlike other photo management services that only provide promotional tools in their most expensive plan. With the social tools, you can easily promote your photo website in various social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can post your galleries directly to your social media pages, and your audience can easily share the links of your photos to their social media connections. The SEO tools can help you to optimize your photo website for the best placement in the search engine, giving you more consistent traffic to your website. You can also give each image some relevant keywords and tag them, so that your audience can easily find your images in the search engine.

Image Delivery and E-Commerce

The image delivery system provided by PhotoShelter allows you to deliver your images without using email or third-party services. You can also create special collections and galleries that are available only for your private clients. You can deliver any type of images in the highest resolution, without any file size limit. With the e-commerce feature, you can sell the digital and print version of your images easily. The built-in shopping cart feature allows you to accept payments from your customers with various payment options. You can sell your photography products directly in your website and get paid instantly.

Good:

Allows you to sell prints and licensed images in all available plans. SEO and social sharing tools are available in all plans.

Things to Improve:

Offers more expensive pricing, with limited cloud storage for the basic and standard plan. The client proofing tool is not available in the basic plan.

Overall:

Provides a complete photo management platform built specifically to help sell your photos and promote your website. You can upload all types of images and store them in the cloud storage platform, with unlimited storage available only for the Pro plan.

Conclusion

PhotoShelter is a photo management service designed to allow photographers build businesses around their photography-related works. You can build HTML5 website with beautiful mobile-responsive themes to choose from. You can store your photos and protect your works from illegal download with the secure cloud storage. The social and SEO tools allow you to promote your images in various social media channels, as well as optimize your portfolio website for the best search engine placement. Lastly, the image delivery and e-commerce feature allows you to deliver high-resolution images directly from your website, as well as sell the digital or the printed version of your images to your audience and accept payments instantly.