For Artists
Own your gallery outright. Nothing rented, nothing locked in.
If you’re an artist paying Squarespace, Wix, or a similar platform every month just to keep your work online, here’s another way: have a site built once that you actually own (the code, the images and the catalogue) instead of renting one indefinitely.
Renting a platform
You never own it
CA$21–45 a month, indefinitely, and it goes up. Stop paying and the site goes dark: pages, shop and mailing list with it. The cheaper plans also take a percentage of every sale. Whatever you build, you build inside someone else’s product.
A site that belongs to you
You own the asset
The code, the images and the catalogue are yours from the first day, and exportable whenever you want them. Built once, for a one-time fee, then hosted at cost. Nothing is held hostage, and nothing can be discontinued out from under you.
What it actually costs
Plainly: over five years this is not dramatically cheaper than a platform subscription. Hosting a site that takes money costs real money (about CA$27 a month here), and the build is a one-time fee on top of that. Against a template plan, the totals land close to each other.
The difference is what you are left holding. After five years of subscription you have five years of receipts. Here you have a site you own outright: you can move it, hand it to another developer, change anything in it, and keep it running without anyone’s permission.
If the monthly number is the thing that matters most to you, a template plan is a sensible choice, and I’ll say so on the call rather than talk you out of it.
Or let me host it
All of the above assumes you hold the accounts: your hosting, your database, your domain. That is the cleanest form of ownership and what I’d recommend.
If you’d rather not manage three logins, I can keep the site on my own account for a flat monthly fee we agree on the call. You still own the code, and you can take a full export of your catalogue any time you like. Moving onto your own accounts later is an afternoon’s work, not a renegotiation, which is rather the point.
What you get
- A real admin area, built for an art practice. Add, edit, reorder and hide works, upload images, and flag pieces as New or On Sale, all without “upgrading to the commerce plan.” You sign in with a passkey (Touch ID or Face ID), not a password that can be guessed or phished.
- Features shaped around how art is sold and seen. “In a room” wall mockups, replaced by a collector’s own photo of the piece on their wall once one is sent in; a map on every piece showing where it was made, and a single map of the whole collection; a gift-shop builder (custom calendars, card and postcard packs); “making of” films on a work’s own page, each linked to its spot on the map and back; an archive that keeps sold-out work on the site as proof it sells, rather than deleting it; and full search, filter and sort.
- Instagram, posted for you. Every piece gets a draft caption written for it and queued up; you read, edit and approve them in the admin, and approved posts publish to Instagram on their own schedule. Nothing goes out that you haven’t signed off on, and if a post ever fails you get an email rather than silence.
- Fast pages, ready for Google. Image-optimized and search-engine-ready out of the box (sitemap, link previews, structured data), plus built-in visitor analytics, which can put the work visitors engage with most at the front of the gallery.
- You own the code and the data. Everything is backed up automatically every day and can be exported anytime. No lock-in.
The honest part
This isn’t drag-and-drop. It’s a real, custom-built website, so changes to the design or structure happen in code rather than a visual editor. The day-to-day work of adding and managing your art, though, is all done through the simple admin area, no code required. It’s the right fit if you’d rather invest once and own something fast and tailored than pay rent forever for a template.
As featured in
“I’m not after postcards. I’m after the feeling of being there.”
Like the idea of a site like this one?
Book a free 15-minute chatFifteen minutes, no pitch: what you make, and what a site of your own would need to do.
Curious how it’s built, or want to show your developer? See the architecture.