Founded in 2013, Pixpa is a young company offering a website builder geared towards creatives looking to display their art, photography, or creative writing on a clean and functional website. Like other niche website builders, Pixpa focuses on doing one thing well, as opposed to being everything for everyone.
- Pros and Cons
- Getting Started
- Ease of Use
- Template Selection
- Blogging with Pixpa
- eCommerce with Pixpa
- Additional Features
- Pixpa Premium
- Conclusion
Pros and Cons
- Pros
- Cons
- Pixpa includes everything one needs to create a portfolio-style website and even includes eCommerce options if you want to sell your work online.
- The tools for creative users, like the blog and galleries, are powerful and useful. The blog editor, specifically, is quite well optimized.
- The Pixpa website editor is not as fast or easy to use as the most popular competitors in the field.
- The theme selection is smaller than those of other website builders.
Getting Started
Like most other builders, signing up for Pixpa requires just one step and a minimal amount of personal information. Be prepared to share your name and email address upon signup. Only if you opt for a premium account will any further information be requested.
Immediately upon successful signup, you will receive two emails. One is a confirmation/welcome email and the other is a checklist of ten things you need to do in order to set up your site. We recommend going down this list one-by-one instead of jumping in blindly.
Ease of Use
Once you sign up for Pixpa you will be directed to a dashboard. This will be your starting point for creating and fine-tuning your website, setting up eCommerce, and sharing your work.
Unlike website builders like Wix, Pixpa does not offer a drag-and-drop interface. Instead, users can edit elements independently, making the process somewhat less intuitive. This makes the platform somewhat difficult to learn and it took us a while to figure out how to make basic changes. Once you get the hang of it, you wont regret it, as the number of features makes it worthwhile usign Pixpa.
New users will find the video tour – available on the dashboard – helpful for the initial setup process.
Template Selection
Pixpa has a selection of 30 free templates to choose from. This is a vastly smaller selection than other services. There are no premium or third-party themes to choose from, so, if you don’t like any of the designs, you may want to reconsider.
Thankfully, the available templates are attractive and offer something for everyone. As Pixpa is geared toward creatives, all of the designs are extremely visual, putting the focus on your work.
Users seeking a more customized template can create one using the Pixpa page builder. This tool enables you to simply drag and drop different blocks to create a website, a feature we wished was available throughout the entire experience.
Blogging with Pixpa
Where Pixpa really shines is its content creation tools. The blogging feature is particularly powerful.
Along with standard word processing tools that enable you to change alignment, font size, text color, add tables, and more, Pixpa allows you to add a cover image (on which you can enable parallax animation), set tags, change the publishing date, create an excerpt, and define how search engines will display your page in their results.
These features make the standard blogging interface even more functional than user favorites like WordPress, making Pixpa a great choice for bloggers.
eCommerce with Pixpa
Although the eCommerce tools on Pixpa are not as powerful as Shopify, they aren’t really meant to be. Aimed at individuals hoping to sell some artwork here and there, the system provides more than enough features for a small online store, including an abandoned cart tool that allows you to determine when your potential customers receive a reminder email.
The site makes it easy to add items and you can choose from physical products, digital products, or services. You can also set categories, discounts, select online or offline payment methods, change what users see on the order confirmation page, and set shipping rates. Shipping rates are not dynamic, however, and won’t update based on the buyer’s location.
Pixpa enables you to view all of your orders and abandoned carts. Don’t expect deep analytics, however.
Additional Features
Pixpa has a unique feature called Proofing, which allows you to privately share files with other people and clients.
These proofing galleries are password restricted and can be used to update clients on custom orders or provide them with personal photo galleries. The proofing feature can also be set to collect payments before a user can access the page.
Pixpa Premium
New users can access the Pixpa website builder for free for 15 days. Once that period expires, you will have to sign up to continue using the service.
- The starter package costs $8 per month annually, or $10 if paid monthly. It is limited to ten galleries and pages and does not include the proofing feature.
- The pro package costs $12 per month annually, or $15 if paid monthly. It includes 50 galleries, 50 pages, and 50 client proofing galleries.
- The plus package costs $16 per month annually, or $20 if paid monthly. This plan offers unlimited galleries, pages, and proofing galleries.
Conclusion
Pixpa is a good option for those looking specifically for a way to display and sell their work. Considered on its own, it is a good option for creative users. When looked at within the context of all of all available ways to create a website, you may want to consider whether the niche nature of the product suits you better than something more generic.
