Photography is a creative and rewarding profession, but it can also be a lot of work. From marketing your services to editing your photos, many tasks can take up your time. That's where no-code tools come in.
These tools can empower photographers to build stunning websites, manage portfolios, and even set up online stores without coding skills.
According to Gartner, the no-code and low-code platform market has witnessed growth of nearly $1 billion per year. It has increased from $3.47 billion in 2019 to $8 billion in 2022. It is forecasted to reach around $12.4 billion in 2024.
The shortage of IT specialists, coupled with increasing demand for process automation and rapid digitisation, will continue to act as the catalyst for the advancement of no-code and low-code platforms. In this blog, we will delve into some of the best no-code tools for photographers.
Here are the list of top 15 No-Code Tools for Photographers:
- Pixpa
- Lightroom
- Snappa
- Adobe Photoshop Express
- Canva
- Unsplash
- Plann
- Mailchimp
- Airtable
- Zapier
- Jotform
- Coda
- Monday.com
- Notion
- Google Analytics
Low-Code VS No-Code: Differences
No-code frameworks represent software design systems that enable individuals without technical expertise to build software without writing a single line of code. These user-friendly no-code tools typically feature intuitive interfaces and drag-and-drop functionality, empowering you to visualise the implementation process and define the overall business logic effortlessly.
Low-code and no-code platforms serve distinct purposes:
Low-code platforms | No-code platforms | |
Serves | Developers | Business users |
Objective | Pace of development | Ease of use |
Coding needed | Low, but yes | No coding required |
End-to-end development | Available | Some platforms provide only limited capabilities |
Customisability | Total customisation available | Pre-built templates can be customised |
App complexity | Suited for complex apps | Suited for simple apps |
Platform Lock-in | Free to move between platforms | Sometimes locked into the same platform |
Cost constraints | Cost-effective for businesses with existing pool of developers | Cost-effective for businesses with backlogged IT teams and high requirements |
Low-code platforms are primarily utilised by IT professionals with coding skills to develop custom applications. In contrast, no-code platforms are designed for business users who lack coding knowledge but want to address their development needs.
No-code platforms are the straightforward option between the two. You can create basic yet functional apps with a visual-based, drag-and-drop interface. However, these platforms aren’t suitable for overhauling legacy systems. Even the integration capabilities are limited. Instead, they work well to address specific, limited-scope needs of specialised teams.
No-code tools come with a plethora of benefits:
It is fast, easy to use, and can be updated easily.
You can even pivot easily.
The maintenance is super quick and easy, and it saves a lot of money.
Moreover, it is a lot of fun, encourages innovation, and promotes collaboration.
It helps you to keep a tab on shadow IT as well.
You also get increased analytical capacity and ease of accessibility.
It helps you leverage the potential of internal resources effectively.
Most importantly, you need just one person - not a whole team.
That said, photographers can benefit significantly from no-code tools to maximise their productivity and leverage greater yield through online presence. Let’s look at some of the most essential no-code tools that would be highly useful for photographers.
Must-have no-code tools for photographers
1. Pixpa
Price:
Basic: $3.60/month (paid biannually)
Creator: $7.20/month (paid biannually)
Professional: $10.80/month (paid biannually)
Advanced: $15/month (paid biannually)
Pixpa is one of the best website builders for photography. It is an all-in-one no-code website builder that is tailor-made for photographers. With Pixpa, showcase, sell, and share your work easily with drag-and-drop tools, a built-in store, a blog, ecommerce galleries, a client gallery, and a mobile gallery app. You can save both the time and resources needed to expand your digital presence.
Pixpa’s user-friendly portfolio builder comes with a swarm of benefits to quickly build an amazing photography portfolio website:
Top Features of Pixpa:
You can build your online store without touching a line of code and start selling in minutes.
Your online store will have the same visual look and feel as the rest of your website.
You can create pages easily with pre-built content blocks.
Provide a seamless experience to your customers while they browse your site.
You create custom forms to collect information from your site visitors.
Blog:
Pixpa’s out-of-the-box capabilities help you start blogging instantly.
Its built-in blog platform helps you create your full-featured blog or easily add a blog to your website and share your photos, ideas, and updates with your users.
Pixpa’s ecommerce galleries help you sell your work online in prints, canvases, gallery wraps, etc., and allow you to create your product categories and have complete control over what you want to sell and what price you want to set.
You can even get digital downloads by selling single paintings or full galleries.
Connect your PayPal and Stripe accounts to collect payments directly from your customers. Pixpa doesn’t charge any commissions.
Photographers leverage Pixpa’s client galleries to easily transition to a digital workflow and help clients view, proof, purchase, and download photos.
You get to showcase your work with beautiful online galleries that match your brand identity.
Pixpa’s mobile gallery app allows you to easily create a mobile gallery and share a sneak peek of your photos, allowing your clients to have your photos at their fingertips.
Pixpa gives you mobile-friendly and highly customisable templates that allow photographers to build a beautiful online portfolio website without the help of a designer.
Choose from over 150 responsive templates designed for a photography portfolio.
You can switch between different templates even after the site is live.
Out-of-the-tools:
Built-in marketing tools like SEO manager, Marketing Popups, and an Announcement Bar, help you manage and drive traffic to your website.
Integrate your website with leading payment, social media, and marketing tools.
Connecting with over 50 third-party services like Google Analytics, Hotjar, Mailchimp, Stripe, and much more is easy with your Pixpa-powered website.
24/7 support:
Pixpa’s round-the-clock live chat and email customer service will be available to guide you in case of any issues.
Looking for the best website builders for photographers? Read what hundreds of photographers who benefitted from Pixpa for 10+ years have to say about Pixpa on Capterra, Trustpilot, G2, GetApp, and SoftwareAdvice.
Checkout: Best photography portfolio website examples from Pixpa
2. Lightroom
Price:
From $18 to $36 per month
Easily edit your images with Lightroom, no matter where you are, and take your photography to new places. Lightroom offers intuitive editing tools and a diverse online photography community. It makes it easy to adjust exposure, colour, and more. It’s never been easier to photoshop your images and take your photograph dreams to greater heights.
Top Features of Lightroom:
Editing:
Be it desktop, mobile, or web, Lightroom helps you make basic edits to brightness, contrast, and more so that you can share amazing pictures with your friends and family.
Presets:
Lightroom gives you a consistent look and feel.
You can apply filters with a click using premium presets.
Presets can also be added to specific areas of your photo so that focused edits can be done.
Easy to learn:
The best part of Lightroom is you get to experience loads of information right inside Lightroom.
You can access informative step-by-step tutorials and get inspired by the community in Lightroom Discover.
Hammer out finer details:
Lightroom helps you fine-tune photos with greater control and accuracy on the Lightroom Desktop.
Powerful AI masking:
You can choose the subject in your image with a single click and easily apply the edits to only those regions.
3. Snappa
Price:
From free plan to $20 per month
Snappa is a beautiful graphic design tool that is specifically designed for photographers. Snappa makes it easy to create graphics for social media graphics, ads, blogs, and more.
Top Features of Snappa:
Image sizing:
Snappa gives you perfect image dimensions that are needed for social media, display ads, blogs, emails, and infographics in the form of clickable presets
In a single click, you can turn your Twitter header into a Facebook cover, your Facebook post into a Pinterest pin, or an Instagram ad into a billboard ad.
Readymade templates and stock images:
You can choose from thousands of pre-made templates.
You get access to 5M+ high-resolution stock photos.
Edit-friendly:
You can play with photo effects
You can easily remove the background from the images.
4. Adobe Photoshop Express
Price:
It is free to download. Premium subscription costs $4.99 per month, $34.99 per year, with a first-year offer of $9.99.
Photoshop Express is excellent for quickly editing and bringing life to your images, which can work wonders on social media and elsewhere.
Top Features of Adobe Photoshop Express
Colour pop:
Photoshop Express has intelligent tools for carrying out intricate tasks like cutouts, dehazing, retouching, and noise reduction.
You can make selective edits to two things simultaneously to create eye-popping effects.
You can also change the foreground or background of your images by applying Fused Looks.
Collage:
Photoshop Express helps in creating a scrapbook collage effect instantly with its automatic cutouts.
You can retouch photos with makeup transfer and skin smoothing presets.
Community:
Discover your community by browsing the Discover feed and finding the ones who have created a look you like, which you can apply to your photos.
You can post your favourite photos directly on social media.
5. Canva
Price:
From free to $209.90 per year
Canva is another useful no-code tool that makes life easier for photographers. Canva lets you design and edit like a pro, and you can enhance your images, convert PDFs, add text to videos, and much more.
Canva makes your design process a downhill task. It comes packed with impressive features and helps in creating content that stands apart from the rest:
Top Features of Canva:
Enhance images:
Quickly fix dark, blurry, and oversaturated photos using Canva’s photo enhancer tool.
Rapidly improve your photos for easy download or to share on social media apps.
Trim videos:
Canva’s video cutter and trimmer lets you easily edit videos and feature the best moments of your recording to create a fantastic story timeline for your video projects.
Easily trim, split, splice, or cut your videos online.
Curved text:
Start creating beautiful stories in your designs with wonderfully arched texts that you can curve in a few clicks.
Convert file formats:
Canva lets you convert files to PDFs without changing the content or compromising quality.
Or, you can convert your ODFs into editable Canva designs.
6. Unsplash
Price:
From free to $6 per month
Unsplash is one of the best stock photo sites. It is a stock photography site that is very useful for photographers and offers high-resolution images and 3D renders useful for personal, editorial, and commercial purposes. The images available on Unsplash are uploaded by photographers worldwide, making this platform an excellent way of sharing your photos with a broader audience.
Top Features of Unsplash:
Free to use:
The photos available are free for all, under the Unsplash license, and without the need for crediting the photographer (though it is appreciated if credits are given).
Add to collection:
Registered users can like photos and add them to their collections.
Learn from the community:
The photographers can share their images' technicalities, including the camera and lens they used to click the photos. Photographers and interested users learn about photography, strengthening the community profile of Unsplash.
Also Read: Top 25 online photography communities and forums for photographers
Featured collections:
You can see how many views and downloads a given image has garnered and whether or not it is featured in one of Unsplash’s collections.
Get paid or show that you’re open to work:
Photographer’s Unsplash profile can contain information about contact details, a link to their website, and a direct link that allows users to donate money.
Photographers can inform users on their profile if they are available to be hired.
7. Plann
Price:
Ranging from free to $129+ per month
Plann is a must-have for photographers to handle social media scheduling. It’s an all-in-one social media content planner, scheduler, and strategist that gives you post ideas, free templates, link-in-bio, and more. It helps to organise your content planning and social media strategy so that you know what to post and when. It helps you optimise your SEO and instantly share content on any social media platform.
Top Features of Plann:
Plan content and schedule posts:
Plann helps you auto-post your content at the right time
Easy content management:
Plann makes content creation easy by giving you an AI caption generator, ready-to-go templates, post ideas, hashtags, photos, and videos so that you never run out of post ideas and always have something to post.
Organise your work:
Plann gives you an all-in-one platform to organise everything in one place.
You can organise your media collections, best-performing hashtags, reply to comments, build an engaged audience, and review results.
Link-in-bio:
Plann comes with your hyper-visual link-in-bio page.
You can customise your link-in-bio page with social links to increase the reach of your content and convert your followers into sales.
8. Mailchimp
Price:
From free to $476.57 per month
Mailchimp is a leading all-in-one marketing platform that caters to small and large businesses and provides powerful tools to engage with customers. It makes it easy for businesses to create eye-catching, effective email marketing campaigns that can be customised per your business requirements.
Top Features of Mailchimp:
Marketing essentials:
With MailChimp, you can create impactful emails, perform A/B testing of your emails, manage campaigns, automate your campaigns, send personalised emails, create landing pages, and showcase your photography brand on the web.
Content production:
Mailchimp allows you to manage your creative assets like photos and videos, use data analytics, generate beautiful designs, automatically personalise your emails, and write compelling headlines.
Audience segmentation, targeting, and positioning:
You can segment your audience, send targeted messages, use predictive demographics to build personalised campaigns, strengthen customer interactions, and gather customer feedback.
Marketing automation:
Mailchimp allows you to simply automate your campaigns, personalise emails, instantly retarget visitors through retargeting ads, and respond to customer interactions.
Reporting and analytics:
You can get personalised insights, know when to send emails and have data to improve marketing campaigns.
AI marketing tools:
You can streamline omnichannel marketing, use generative AI to create unique copy and automate your campaigns instantly.
9. Airtable
Price:
From free to $20+ per month
Airtable allows you to run essential photography business processes, from tracking global marketing campaigns to managing your product roadmap on a single platform.
Used widely for project management, this no-code tool can provide photographers with a much-needed workspace for all team members.
Top Features of Airtable
Power of AI:
Airtable allows you to operationalise your critical data, look beyond rigid tools, and revamp your digital workflows using AI and that too without any coding expertise.
Easy to use:
It is intuitive and straightforward to use.
End silos:
No matter what your digital workflow is, you can build it in Airtable.
Airtable allows you to end silos with a unique platform that links every part of your work.
Integrations:
You can link Airtable to your existing tools, connect your essential business processes, and create super-powerful applications.
10. Zapier
Price:
From free to $799 per month
Zapier helps big businesses integrate apps and tools to do specific tasks like a domino effect and provides a seamless experience with thousands of apps like Google Suite, Slack, Twitter, etc., ready to be looped in.
Photographers with a massive portfolio of clients and projects can leverage this no-code tool to a great extent. It helps in bringing the power of automation to any business process. Visualise and build advanced workflows with custom logic, conditions, and filters.
Top Features of Zapier
Automation:
You can automate several tasks at once.
You can perform different tasks based on if/then logic
Scheduling:
You can schedule your tasks whenever it is right for you.
11. Jotform
Price:
Free to $99+ per month
Jotform streamlines creating forms and gathering the information you get when people fill them out. It’s one of the perfect no-code tools for photographers as they don’t have to worry about not having coding experience, thanks to large libraries of form templates and table templates. Creating custom forms and databases becomes super easy. Plus, it has a drag-and-drop editor that makes it all the more enjoyable.
Top Features of Jotform
Create forms in minutes:
You can create professional-looking photography forms without a single line of code.
Customise your forms using your logo, fonts, and colours.
Integration with business apps:
Jotform can automatically send form submissions to email marketing services, project management boards, CRMs, cloud storage apps, and more using its 150+ integrations.
Payments:
Jotform helps in collecting online payments seamlessly.
Whether selling images, accepting a fee, or collecting donations, you can use your form to get paid directly.
12. Coda
Price:
Free to $30+ per month
Coda is an excellent alternative to Google Sheets. It brings all the data and people back onto the same page. Its all-in-one doc helps your team to vote on ideas, create roadmaps, draft roadmaps, and even play games.
Top Features of Coda
Better collaboration:
Coda gives you a double delight by making it feel like a doc and engaging like an app, helping in effective collaboration and better decisions.
Customisability:
Coda is great for customisations that fit your needs.
As and when teams grow, or the plans alter, you can leverage the building blocks of Coda to evolve your doc seamlessly, for instance, when a to-do list transforms into a task board.
Regular sync:
Coda ensures there are no stale data present.
You can roll your team’s plan to an executive dashboard and automatically sync updates.
Third-party integrations:
You can embed, synchronise and take action on the tools you utilise for all your work - all from your doc.
Connect the apps you use often and add them to your docs.
13. Monday.com
Price:
Free to $57+ per month
Monday is an excellent project management tool for photographers for managing a to-do list, task prioritisation, task creation and assignment, and due dates. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes it all the more easy.
Top Features of Monday.com
Work management:
It helps manage tasks, projects, and processes for better collaboration and increase work efficiency.
Sales management:
Tracking and managing all aspects of your sales cycle, customer data, and more can be done in one place.
14. Notion
Price:
Free to $15+ per month
If you are looking for an all-in-one workplace, Notion is what you need. Your team can work collaboratively, create tasks, track processes, etc.
Top Features of Notion
Centralisation:
Centralise everything about your work in Notion
Docs:
Notion helps you communicate with efficacy using its next-generation docs.
Project management:
You can manage any type of project efficiently.
Notion AI:
Leverage the power of in-built generative AI
15. Google Analytics
Price:
GA as a base software is a freemium tool, and you can leverage advanced features for free. And, if you need more, Google Analytics 360 is also available. There is no fixed cost attached for the upgraded version. The sales team can walk you through this per your specific needs.
Google Analytics has advanced features and an intuitive user interface. With GA, you get the data only Google can get you. It comes packed with features like reporting, data analysis, and visualisation.
Also Read: SEO for photographers: A complete guide
Top Features of Google Analytics
Reporting and visualisation:
You get the post-click performance of a user on a website or app.
You can evaluate metrics like active users, lifetime value, demographics, etc.
Funnel analysis:
It lets you understand the user journey, from clicking an ad to purchasing your products.
Tag management:
You can effortlessly add tracking code to your website.
Conclusion
No-code tools allow photographers to create professional websites, design engaging visuals, and manage their online presence without extensive coding skills.
When choosing a no-code tool, you must consider your budget, skill level, the features you need, and the platform you want to use.
Tools like Pixpa for no-code website building or Lightroom for photo editing can be game-changers. Choose from this list a perfect combination of no-code tools to take your photography business to the next level. Embrace technology, unleash creativity, and make your mark in the world of photography.