How to create your gallery website for less than 500 euros

It is entirely possible to create a functional, elegant and professional gallery website for less than 500 euros, by devoting a few days of personal work to it. Here are the steps, tools and trade-offs that will get you there.

01Defining what your site truly needs

Before choosing a technical tool, you must clarify the essential functions of your site. A gallery website is not a standard e-commerce site. Its visitors do not come to buy in one click: they come to discover your programme, see your artists' works, find your contact details and form a first impression of your identity. The essential functions are therefore: a home page with a strong image of your space or current exhibition, a section presenting your artists with a selection of works for each, a page dedicated to the current exhibition with text and visuals, a section grouping past exhibitions, and a contact page with address, opening hours and a form or email address.

What is not essential at the start: an integrated online sales system, a news blog you will not have time to maintain, a sophisticated newsletter, a password-protected press area, an interactive catalogue raisonné. Each of these elements can be added later, when your gallery has found its rhythm and resources. Galerie Marcelle Alix in Paris operated during its first years with an extremely sober site that prioritised the quality of visuals and the clarity of information rather than technical sophistication, and this in no way hindered its recognition in the art world.

02Choosing the right platform

Three platforms stand out for gallery websites on a small budget. The first is Squarespace, which offers subscriptions from 16 euros per month (approximately 192 euros per year). Squarespace provides templates designed for visual portfolios, with full-screen image galleries, refined typography and responsive layouts that automatically adapt to phone screens. Many emerging galleries use Squarespace for their first site: its drag-and-drop interface requires no programming skills.

The second option is Cargo, a platform particularly popular in the art and design world. Cargo offers a free plan for a basic site and a professional plan at 13 dollars per month (approximately 156 dollars per year). Its default aesthetic is more pared-back and more contemporary than Squarespace, which suits the image of a contemporary art gallery. Galleries such as Galerie Balice Hertling in Paris have used Cargo for their online presence.

The third option is WordPress with external hosting. WordPress is free open-source software, but it requires web hosting that you pay for separately. Hosting with a reliable provider costs between 3 and 10 euros per month. The domain name (your .com or .fr address) costs between 10 and 15 euros per year. The total investment for the first year therefore comes to around 60 to 140 euros. WordPress offers unmatched flexibility thanks to its thousands of themes and extensions, but it demands a greater investment in time for learning and maintenance.

03Reserving your domain name

Your domain name is the address at which visitors will find your site. It should be simple, memorable and directly linked to your gallery's name. The ideal format is galleryyourname.com or galerie-yourname.fr. Avoid overly long names, numbers and multiple hyphens that complicate verbal communication and email sending. If the .com is already taken, .fr is an excellent alternative for a French gallery.

Reserving a domain name is done through a registrar for an annual cost of 10 to 15 euros. You can reserve your domain directly through Squarespace or Cargo, or separately through a registrar and then connect it to your platform. Both methods work, but separate reservation gives you more freedom if you change platforms later.

04Building your site structure

Once your platform is chosen and your domain reserved, building the site can begin. Plan two to three days of focused work to achieve a polished result. The typical structure of a gallery website comprises five to seven pages.

The home page is your shop window. It should feature a large-format image (your current exhibition or an emblematic view of your space), your gallery name, and optionally the name of the current exhibition with its dates. Nothing else. Sobriety is your ally. Galerie Jocelyn Wolff in Paris (now Galerie Crèvecoeur following the merger) always favoured a home page dominated by the image, without superfluous text, letting the work speak for itself.

The artists section is the heart of your site. For each artist, create an individual page with a short biography (five to ten lines maximum), a selection of six to twelve works photographed in high quality, and essential information (medium, dimensions, year). Do not overload the pages: collectors and professionals consulting your site want to see the works, not read blocks of text.

The current exhibition page must be updated with every new hanging. It includes the artist's name, the exhibition title, dates, a presentation text of ten to twenty lines and a selection of installation views and works. The past exhibitions page is a simple chronological archive with one image and one title per exhibition. The contact page includes your full address, opening hours, a telephone number, an email address and if possible an access map.

05Refining visuals and typography

The visual quality of your site rests on two elements: your photographs and your typographic choice. For photographs, refer to the smartphone shooting methods: sharp, well-lit images with faithful colours are essential. Each image should be optimised for the web, meaning resized to approximately 2,000 pixels wide and compressed for fast loading. A site whose images take five seconds to display drives visitors away.

For typography, choose one or two fonts maximum. Sans-serif fonts such as Helvetica, Arial, Inter or Work Sans suit contemporary art galleries well. Serif fonts such as Times, Georgia or Playfair Display bring a more classical touch that may suit a gallery specialising in modern art or works on paper. Galerie Lelong, which represents both historical and contemporary artists, uses an elegant serif typeface that reflects its positioning. Galerie Air de Paris (now integrated into Lafayette Anticipations for its programming) had opted for a minimalist sans-serif typeface that matched its more experimental identity.

06The detailed budget

Let us summarise the budget needed for the first year. With Squarespace: annual subscription approximately 192 euros, domain name approximately 15 euros if reserved separately, giving a total of approximately 207 euros. With Cargo professional: approximately 156 euros per year plus the domain, giving approximately 171 euros. With WordPress and external hosting: hosting approximately 60 to 120 euros per year, domain approximately 12 euros, a premium theme suited to galleries approximately 50 to 70 euros (one-time purchase), giving a total of approximately 122 to 202 euros for the first year.

In all three cases, you remain well under the 500-euro mark, even if you add a newsletter extension (free up to a certain number of subscribers on services such as Brevo or Mailchimp) and a few hours of online training via free YouTube tutorials.

07Optimising your search engine visibility

A site that does not appear in search results is an invisible site. A few simple search engine optimisation (SEO) steps can improve your visibility at no additional cost. Start by writing a unique page title (title tag) for each page of your site. The home page can be titled with your gallery name followed by your speciality and city. Each artist page should carry the artist's full name in its title.

Write a description (meta description tag) of 150 to 160 characters for each page, summarising its content in one or two sentences. These descriptions appear in Google results and encourage users to click. Name your image files descriptively: rather than IMG_4523.jpg, use the format artist-name-work-title-gallery.jpg. Search engines index file names and image alt text, and this information contributes to your site's ranking in searches related to the artists you represent.

Your site's loading speed is a ranking criterion for Google. Compress your images before uploading them (free tools such as TinyPNG reduce file size without visible quality loss) and avoid auto-playing videos on the home page, which considerably slow loading times.

08Evolving your site over time

Your first site is not meant to be definitive. It is a functional communication tool that accompanies you through your first two or three years of activity. As your gallery grows, your programme expands and your needs become clearer, you can invest in a more ambitious redesign, potentially entrusted to a web designer specialising in the cultural sector.

In the meantime, keep your site up to date. A gallery website whose last listed exhibition is six months old sends a negative signal to visitors. Schedule one hour of updating in your diary with each exhibition change: adding visuals, updating the presentation text, moving the completed exhibition to the archives section. This regular discipline is more important than technical perfection.

Also consider integrating your social media into your site. A link to your Instagram account (the most used social network in the art world) allows visitors to follow your daily activity. Some platforms such as Squarespace offer Instagram integration blocks that automatically display your latest posts on your site, creating fresh content without additional effort on your part.

For Artedusa partner galleries, your personal website and your profile on the platform complement each other. Your site is your space of total freedom where you control every aspect of your image. Your Artedusa profile offers you visibility among an international collector community that your site alone could not reach. Together, the two constitute a robust and complete online presence for a start-up gallery.