In recent months Malini and I have been working on various websites and portals, testing and using solutions from Shopify, Webflow, WordPress, and Wix. Time for an update of this post which I first published in 2018.
Why is this topic relevant? Because to photographers and writers the effort and capacity required to create meaningful photography and content not only justifies, but demands an attractive presentation of their work.
I am now in the 7th year of using Wix Editor as CMS and gallery for this website. A lot has changed and the platform is not only much more powerful and performant regarding design and usability than it was, today it also provides comprehensive multi-language functionality, marketing and communications tools, SEO management, and easy to use e-commerce including professional payment solutions.
Let's have a look at how things have changed over the years:
For several years, mywilderness.net had been set up on the photography content management system of Zenfolio. Following an extensive evaluation, I eventually decided to switch to Wix in 2018. The Zenfolio CMS had worked very well and kept growing in functionality over the years. However, I became dissatisfied with the design and lay-out options, as well as the general usability. I just wanted to create a more beautiful, modern looking website with simpler structures.
Back in 2018, the most popular alternatives were Squarespace, Photoshelter, SmugMug, Weebly, and Format. Wix wouldn't even show up on recommendations for photographers, and they only featured sites for photographers to advertise their services, rather than displaying their photographic work (i.e. wedding, architecture, fashion, etc.). Ask Google about the best CMS for photographers today, you get the following list:
Wix
Webflow
Zyro
Zenfolio
Pixpa
Webnode
Carbon Made
Adobe Portfolio
By 2018, Wix had updated the configuration options and started adding attractive gallery add-ons. However, Wix was not yet very good at covering technical requirements of most photographers and it showed in a very simple way: the storage capacity for any Wix client account was limited to a tiny 20GB and files larger than 25MB could not be uploaded. The arguments Wix offered were:
Don't put too much content on your website. Only publish the best of the best, as people won't look at more than a few pictures before moving on.
Use low resolution files, as many visitors don't have high speed internet access.
Today, Wix offers subscriptions with 50GB, 100GB, and even unlimited storage space, allowing to share large photo galleries and video sequences. Also, there now is a powerful multi-language functionality which provides AI-driven translations, although the model would require additional training to learn my style of writing. Other than that: Sehr gut!
For our little start-up Intellitraps Ltd., Malini, Laila and I first experimented with Shopify for the webshop functionality in combination with Webflow for content, blogs, and galleries. This cumbersome arrangement was necessary because Shopify did not provide CMS functionality to build a beautiful website around a web shop, and Webflow did not provide extensive e-commerce functionality the way Shopify does. Neither solution was satisfactory for us and I didn't like having to manage and pay for two platforms.
Malini recently set up a brand new website for the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group (see www.catsg.org) using Wix's latest design platform: Wix Studio. catsg.org holds a lot of content and building this site took quite a bit of time, but Wix Studio just supported most of the capabilities required with standard functionality. What made me decide to throw the combination of Shopify and another CMS out for Intellitraps Ltd. was when we set up the donations and subscription site for the Cat Specialist Group. Within a few hours, we had built and registered the site to receive online payments via credit card and other methods including country-specific methods for Switzerland.
One topic that remains to be confirmed are the integration options for Wix-based web shops with logistics partners such as UPS, DHL, etc. I will further analyse this and update this site once I have a clear view. For mywilderness.net this may be relevant to sell prints in the future.
Patrick Meier, updated 18.01.2025