Zenfolio vs SITE123: What’s the Best Builder in 2024?

Zenfolio vs SITE123: Final verdict

Zenfolio and SITE123 both offer unique strengths, catering to different user needs.

• 
  Zenfolio (Overall Grade: 6.4/10)
  
  is tailored specifically for photographers and visual artists, providing elegant, customizable templates and integrated e-commerce capabilities. It excels in offering specialized tools for showcasing and selling photography work, making it an ideal choice for professionals in the visual arts. However, its complexity and limited versatility outside of photography-specific needs may not appeal to a broader audience.
• 
  SITE123 (Overall Grade: 6.5/10)
  
  stands out for its user-friendly interface and wide range of customizable templates. It is designed for individuals and small businesses looking to create professional websites without any coding skills. SITE123 offers better ease of use, more flexible design options, and comprehensive website speed optimization strategies, making it a versatile platform for various website needs.

Which one is the best for ecommerce: Zenfolio or SITE123?

Verdict

: Zenfolio and SITE123 both offer solid ecommerce features, but SITE123 edges out Zenfolio with a slightly higher score, making it a better choice for general ecommerce needs.

• 
  Zenfolio
  
  : Zenfolio is tailored for photographers and visual artists, offering specialized ecommerce features like multiple currency support, discount coupons, and order management. It provides customizable templates designed to showcase and sell visual work effectively. However, when comparing Zenfolio vs SITE123, Zenfolio’s ecommerce capabilities are more niche-specific and may not cater to broader ecommerce needs as effectively.
• 
  SITE123
  
  : SITE123 is a versatile platform suitable for a wide range of businesses. It offers comprehensive ecommerce features, including product management, various payment gateways, and SEO tools. Its user-friendly interface and professional templates make it an excellent choice for those looking to create a seamless shopping experience. SITE123’s higher score in ecommerce aspects like POS capabilities and payment gateways makes it a more robust option for general ecommerce purposes.

Which one is the best for informational and business websites?

Verdict

: When comparing Zenfolio vs SITE123, SITE123 emerges as the better option for informational and business websites due to its user-friendly interface, extensive template options, and comprehensive support.

• 
  Zenfolio
  
  : Zenfolio is tailored for photographers and visual artists, offering elegant, mobile-friendly templates and integrated e-commerce capabilities. While it excels in showcasing and selling visual work, its specialized focus may limit its versatility for broader business needs. Zenfolio scores 6.9 in this category.
• 
  SITE123
  
  : SITE123 provides a wide range of customizable templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, making it ideal for individuals and businesses without coding skills. Its versatility, ease of use, and robust support make it a strong contender for creating professional-looking informational websites. SITE123 scores 7.4 in this category.

Zenfolio vs SITE123: Detailed comparison

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Winner: SITE123.

SITE123 offers a wider variety of templates and designs, more customization flexibility, and better mobile responsive design.

Zenfolio offers a variety of customizable templates and features specifically tailored for photographers, with a focus on showcasing and selling their work. While it provides several customization options, it may not offer as much versatility outside of photography-specific needs.

Zenfolio Themes

On the other hand, SITE123 offers a wide variety of templates and designs for their website builder, with over 180 options to choose from. Their templates are organized by industry and category, making it easy to find the perfect design for your website. SITE123 also allows for customization of templates, giving users the ability to make their website unique and tailored to their brand.

SITE123 Themes

🏆 Winner: SITE123

. With a score of 8.1, SITE123 is more user-friendly than Zenfolio, which has a score of 6.3. SITE123’s simplicity and intuitive interface make it ideal for individuals and small businesses, while Zenfolio’s platform is more specialized and may be a bit complex for beginners.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: SITE123

. SITE123 offers a well-structured support center full of informative guides and FAQs, making it a user-friendly choice for those new to website building. On the other hand, Zenfolio’s learning resources are somewhat limited and users have expressed a desire for more comprehensive learning resources.

When it comes to ecommerce, both Zenfolio and SITE123 offer a range of features to help users sell products online. However, SITE123 scores slightly higher than Zenfolio in this category.

Zenfolio ecommerce features:

• Multiple Currency Support
• Discount Coupons
• Order management
• Gift Certificates
• Tax management

SITE123 ecommerce features:

• Product Management
• Payment Gateways
• Shipping and Tax Configuration
• SEO tools
• Analytics
• Social Media Integration

Ecommerce themes & templates

Zenfolio provides customizable website templates with integrated e-commerce features for photographers, designed to showcase and sell their work across various genres. These templates include essential online selling tools such as secure payment options, product management, and marketing integrations, making it an all-in-one platform for photographers aiming to display and market their creations effectively.

On the other hand, SITE123 offers a variety of ecommerce templates suitable for various types of businesses. These templates are designed to be professional and user-friendly, ensuring that your products stand out and that customers have a seamless shopping experience.

Product page customization

Both Zenfolio and SITE123 offer extensive customization options for product pages. Zenfolio allows users to detail their product pages with descriptions, images, and options such as size or color. This allows for each product page to be adjusted to clearly display its unique attributes. Placing products in specific galleries or categories helps organize the site and improve navigation. The platform also supports customization in pricing and shipping settings, allowing sellers to cater to various needs effectively.

SITE123 offers similar customization options for ecommerce product pages, suitable for both physical and digital goods. Adding products is streamlined through the Website Editor, under the ecommerce (Store) page within the Pages section. Products can be organized into categories for better navigation. Detailed product pages can include essential information like product name, description, images, videos, pricing options, SKUs, brands, and additional descriptions, with customizable SEO settings to improve online visibility.

Payment processing

Zenfolio supports Stripe and PayPal for payment processing, integrating them seamlessly into its platform designed for photographers to sell their work online. The platform charges a commerce fee of 7% per order (excluding tax and shipping) and a payment processing fee for transactions through Stripe or PayPal.

SITE123 supports various payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon Pay, enabling seamless online transactions without charging sales commissions. Users can expect payment processing fees around 3%, which are standard across ecommerce platforms. The platform offers a 14-day money-back policy on certain package purchases, with detailed terms around invoicing, taxes, and refunds.

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Winner: Zenfolio

. Zenfolio, with a score of 7.6, offers an intuitive, no-coding-required website builder tailored for photographers, featuring drag-and-drop customization, a wide array of templates, and a powerful Custom Layout block for personalized designs. Its integrated eCommerce capabilities enable selling both digital and physical photography products, supported by comprehensive security features for protecting photographers’ work. Additionally, Zenfolio provides tools for SEO, marketing, photo and video hosting, client booking, and management, backed by award-winning customer support.

SITE123’s editor, scoring 7.0, is a straightforward and user-friendly website builder designed for individuals without coding or design expertise, emphasizing ease of use and efficiency in creating and customizing websites. It offers a selection of ready-made templates, mobile responsiveness, free hosting, and SEO tools, alongside ecommerce capabilities for users willing to subscribe to higher plans. However, customization is somewhat limited due to the inability to access template source codes or integrate external templates, and advanced features may incur additional costs.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Zenfolio

. Zenfolio and SITE123 both offer mobile editing capabilities, but they differ significantly in their approach. Zenfolio provides a dedicated mobile editor app, allowing users to manage their websites and galleries directly from their mobile devices. The app includes features for receiving notifications, managing galleries, handling sales-related tasks, and showcasing photos through a client presentation mode. This makes it a convenient tool for photographers and visual artists who need to manage their online presence on the go.

On the other hand, SITE123 does not have a mobile app for website editing. Instead, users can edit a SITE123 website on a mobile browser. While this does provide some level of mobile editing capability, it lacks the convenience and functionality of a dedicated mobile app. Therefore, Zenfolio is the clear winner in this category due to its comprehensive mobile editor app.

Overall Result

:

Zenfolio Wins

. Zenfolio scores 8.4 in product testing options, while SITE123 scores 6.4. Zenfolio offers a 14-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, allowing users to test the platform and its premium features risk-free. SITE123, on the other hand, offers a free version and allows users to test premium features during a 14-day refundable period. However, it does not offer a money-back guarantee.

Zenfolio and SITE123 have different pricing strategies. Zenfolio offers a range of plans with varying features and storage capacities, while SITE123 keeps it simple with a free and a premium plan.

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Winner: SITE123

SITE123 offers managed hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, although it does not disclose information about its data centers. Zenfolio, on the other hand, offers cloud hosting with storage ranging from 15GB to unlimited, but does not provide information about its uptime or data centers.

🏆 Winner: SITE123

Both Zenfolio and SITE123 have strategies in place for website speed optimization, but SITE123’s comprehensive approach gives it a slight edge over Zenfolio.

SITE123’s approach to website speed optimization is comprehensive, including the use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN), image optimization, caching, minification of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, use of asynchronous loading, and database optimization. These strategies help to reduce load times and improve the overall performance of websites built with SITE123. However, the actual load times and PageSpeed scores can vary widely, depending on the level of optimization and the user’s location.

On the other hand, Zenfolio focuses on mobile responsive design for speed optimization. The actual load times and PageSpeed scores can vary depending on the level of optimization and the complexity of the website. Zenfolio does not provide any specific information on their Core Web Vitals improvements.

Neither Zenfolio nor SITE123 provide specific information on the tools they use for performance measurement or their PageSpeed scores range. They also do not disclose any information about their Core Web Vitals improvements.

🏆 Winner: SITE123.

SITE123 scores 7.1, offering a wide range of plugins and extensions to enhance the functionality of your website. With over 250 apps available, you can easily add features such as social media integration, ecommerce capabilities, and SEO optimization. The platform also allows for easy integration with popular third-party tools like Google Analytics and Mailchimp. On the other hand, Zenfolio, with a score of 6.5, offers a focused set of plugins and integrations specifically designed for photographers, including WordPress plugins for embedding photos, a Lightroom Classic plugin for direct photo uploads and management, and the ability to embed forms via services like Jotform. These features enhance the functionality of Zenfolio websites by facilitating content integration from external sources, streamlining photo management workflows, and allowing for customized user interactions through forms.

SITE123 Applications

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Overall Winner: Zenfolio

. Zenfolio edges out SITE123 with a slightly higher score, thanks to its more specialized marketing tools for photographers and visual artists. SITE123, while offering a similar range of features, is more general-purpose and may not cater as specifically to certain niches.

🏆 Winner: SITE123

. In the comparison of Zenfolio vs SITE123, SITE123 takes the lead with its 24/7 online support chat available in English and additional support in 16 other languages during business hours. This extensive language support ensures that users from various regions can receive assistance in their preferred language, making SITE123 a more accessible option for a global audience.

Zenfolio, on the other hand, offers customer support through email 365 days a year, LiveChat from Monday to Thursday, and phone support for Advanced plan subscribers during specific hours. While Zenfolio provides a rich Support Center with self-help resources, its limited live support hours and phone support availability make it less accessible compared to SITE123’s round-the-clock support.

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Winner: Zenfolio

. Zenfolio’s commitment to security is evident in its features designed specifically for photographers and visual artists. It offers SSL encryption, watermarking, password-protected galleries, and cloud backup for data protection. Zenfolio also limits third-party access to personal data and adheres to data protection rights.

Although it may not offer the same level of specialized security features as Zenfolio, SITE123 also prioritizes security with SSL/HTTPS encryption and modern firewalls. Despite this, SITE123 still provides a secure platform for building and hosting websites.

🏆 Winner: Tie

. Both Zenfolio and SITE123 have limited AI capabilities. Zenfolio uses AI to enhance the eCommerce experience for photographers, while SITE123 uses AI to generate SEO-friendly, relevant content. However, neither platform has a comprehensive range of AI features.

🏆 Winner: SITE123

. Managing your online team with Zenfolio and SITE123 involves different approaches to website editing access.

• Zenfolio allows only one user to edit and manage a website.
• SITE123 allows multiple users to have two different roles: Admin and Contributor, each with its own set of permissions. However, there is no mention of limitations on the number of users who can edit the website on SITE123.

Additional Features

Zenfolio vs SITE123: User Feedback

Users appreciate Zenfolio for its elegant and affordable site/portfolio designs, highlighting the platform’s suitability for photographers looking to showcase and sell their work online. The Starter plan is praised for its value, though some users express a desire to upgrade to the Pro plan for its enhanced client interaction features and customizable marketing tools. Criticisms include dissatisfaction with the platform’s handling of photo albums and a desire for more privacy and faster loading times. Overall, Zenfolio is valued for its ability to organize and share professional photographs and files, despite some navigational and performance issues.

SITE123 seems to offer a user-friendly platform with drag-and-drop features, making website building quick and easy. Users appreciate its wide library of free images and templates, mobile responsiveness, and excellent customer support. However, some users find its customization options limited, especially in the free version, and wish for more robust features like additional plugins and payment methods tailored to different regions. Overall, SITE123 appears beneficial for those seeking to create professional-looking websites without extensive coding knowledge, though it may lack certain advanced functionalities for more specialized needs.

Zenfolio vs SITE123: FAQ