10 Best Websites For Selling Art Online

Building a Square Online store is simple, even for eCommerce novices with little tech skill or interest. Square Online uses popular the website builder Weebly’s framework for creating standalone online stores.

It’s versatile, easy-to-use software for building a store quickly and starting to sell. You won’t need a lick of technical experience or have to spend a dime to build a functional store with Square Online. Especially if you’re a creator selling jewelry and art in person, Square Online gives you an easy way to build your online presence, including a generous free plan that won’t take a bite out of your art and jewelry sales.

Square is a good option for an artist or creator without a big budget because you can build and operate a Square Online store for free.

Your only expense would be payment processing fees when your customers make an online purchase from you. At 2.9% + $0.30, Square Online’s payment processing fees are squarely in line with industry standards.

Square’s generous free plan may be enough for you to sell art online. If you need more storage and some advanced features, you can upgrade to a reasonably priced paid plan, starting at $16/month. Read our full review of Square Online for more in-depth information on pricing, features, and more.

Square Online’s Free plan lets users add an unlimited number of products, sync inventory and orders with Square POS for in-person sales, and utilize social media integrations that make it easy to sell your art and jewelry on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. You can even use the Free plan to sell digital downloads of your artwork if that’s a part of your business model.

The Free plan limits users to 500 MB of storage, however. That may not be enough if you plan to include high-res images of creations. Paid plans start at $16/month.

Shopify is truly an all-in-one solution for artists who want to build a sizeable online store while also selling on social media sites and in person. And although you can build an impressive online store using Shopify, you won’t need an impressive tech resume to do so.

Our full Shopify review can help you see how easy it can be to use Shopify to sell your jewelry and art online.

Shopify offers the right mix of useful complexity and ease of use at a range of pricing, which means there’s a plan to fit every budget. Even if you don’t have experience with web design or coding, you can use Shopify to set up an online store and start selling quickly. When ready, you can add advanced features and enable high-volume online sales.

Shopify Starter Plan costs $5/month and allows you to sell via social media, email, SMS, WhatsApp, and anywhere else you can post product links. If you want a full online store, plan options range from $29/month to $399/month.

Shopify plans include transaction fees that you can avoid only by choosing Shopify Payments as your payment gateway. If you choose a different processor, expect to pay transaction fees as high as 5%, depending on your subscription level. These fees will come on top of the fees charged by your choice of payment processor other than Shopify Payments.

You can choose among 100+ payment gateways, including international options. Each of these payment providers has its own processing rates. Remember that if you use anything other than the in-house option, Shopify Payments, you will incur transaction fees that start at 0.5% and can go up to 5% on every sale you make.

If you use Shopify Payments, processing rates will depend on your subscription level. Expect to pay from 2.9% + $0.30 up to 2.4% + $0.30 in processing fees.

Most Shopify plans come with the eCommerce basics to operate an online store. That includes a POS system for in-person selling, social selling, discount codes, unlimited products, storage, and bandwidth. Though most bring an added cost, more advanced features can be added from Shopify’s well-stocked app store.

As an artist, you probably will appreciate Shopify’s stylish templates. They are among the best in the business. Of more than 100 mobile-responsive Shopify themes, you’ll find eight that are completely free and supported by Shopify. Paid themes are available for a one-time fee of $140-$180.

Unlike other online sales platforms, Squarespace was designed specifically for artists and makers. Aside from its superior templates, Squarespace includes tools for refining custom images, such as Image Zoom and Set Focal Point to center the best part of each image in thumbnails, galleries, automatic image scaling, and display effects.

Photographers especially will appreciate progressive image loading, a trick that speeds up image loading times for visitors.

With plans running from $0-$65/month, Squarespace allows users to create an artistic sales space without taking too much money out of a lean budget. However, if you’re interested in using a Squarespace site to sell art or jewelry online, you’ll need to sign up for a plan on the Business level or above, priced at $33/month up to $65/month.

A 3% transaction fee applies only to sales made using stores on the Business plan. You won’t have added transaction fees if you choose a higher subscription level.

You can accept payments on a Squarespace store using Stripe, PayPal, and Square POS. You can also accept Apple Pay and Venmo payments. For in-person sales, you can connect to Square POS and accept payments with a Square credit card reader.

Designed for artists and musicians seeking a venue for online sales, Squarespace offers templates with both stylish designs and top-notch performances.

It’s a cloud-based SaaS (software as a service) that requires only a monthly subscription to set up and operate an online store. Plus, Squarespace supports appointments, custom orders and requests, and in-person selling.

Squarespace web pages allow creators and makers to add a free link to their bio connecting social media, contact forms, and creative work. You can also set up a portfolio site, for $16/month, that does not support online selling but lets you include contact information with samples of your work.

Sites above these levels include basic eCommerce tools, such as unlimited bandwidth and storage, tools for inventory, taxes, shipping, product catalogs, and more. Each of the four eCommerce plans allows unlimited products. More advanced tools are available on higher-level plans.

Squarespace sites also include blogging capabilities, allowing artists to tell the story behind each piece of art or jewelry you include on the store site. Overall, Squarespace is an affordable, user-friendly option for any artist seeking an easy-to-use, design-forward business website that leaves you plenty of money to buy all those art and jewelry-making supplies you know you need.

Etsy’s marketplace averages more than 350 million visitors each month. Each of them is motivated to purchase handmade arts and crafts items, often by custom order. And Etsy shoppers are not always as price-conscious as visitors to other marketplaces, making it possible to set prices to earn a higher profit.

Although Etsy charges some noteworthy fees (we’ll explore them in the Pricing section below), don’t overlook the fact that the Etsy marketplace is designed to connect artists and makers with willing buyers. Whether it’s worth the added costs will be up to you.

Etsy offers two subscriptions. The Standard plan costs $0/month and lets you operate a basic Etsy store, with mostly basic tools. For $10/month, the Etsy Plus plan gives you more advanced customization options for your store and useful selling tools. If you want to set up a connected independent store, you can sign up for a Pattern website for $10/month.

You’ll find a host of automatically added fees that can be bewildering to sort out. Here’s a rundown:

• Listing Fee: $0.20/item
• Transaction Fee: 6.5% of the sales price
• Shipping Fee: 6.5% of shipping cost
• Gift Wrapping Fee: 6.5% of the amount you charge for gift wrapping
• Etsy Payment Processing Fee: 3% of the transaction total + $0.25 per transaction (these figures apply only to US sales; transactions in other countries may incur different processing fees.
• Currency Conversion Fee: 2.5% of sales total
• Etsy Offsite Ads: 12%-15% of the sale amount (optional for sellers with less than $10K in annual sales)
• Etsy Onsite Ads: Set your own budget

You can read more about Etsy seller fees to understand the true cost of selling on this marketplace. Despite the added costs, which can be onerous, many artists succeed with Etsy. So long as you are aware of the costs associated with selling there and accept them as the price you’ll pay to gain entry to this powerhouse marketplace, Etsy can be a great choice for selling art and handmade or vintage jewelry online.

Etsy Payments is the required payment processor for almost all Etsy sellers. Etsy Payments allows you to accept credit and debit card payments, Etsy Credit and Etsy gift cards, and PayPal transactions. You’ll also be able to utilize some bank transfer services and digital wallet payments such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Etsy is a global online marketplace for artists and crafters that limits listings to originals and vintage items only. Etsy has an extensive art subcategory where you can find original creations in almost any media, including original art prints and jewelry. Custom work is a vibrant category, with original paintings of pets and animals among the top sellers.

One advantage to selling original art on Etsy is that shoppers are already interested in buying unique, hand-crafted objects, and they’re willing to pay for what they want. However, Etsy is a crowded field, even for original creations.  So you can’t necessarily depend on art and jewelry lovers to find your shop there on their own.

Etsy aims to make selling jewelry and artwork simple, and the tradeoff is that some of its features are fairly basic, especially compared to some all-in-one options like Shopify. Keep in mind that Etsy is a marketplace, not an individual store.

Open an Etsy store, and you can sell on the marketplace and social media sites and operate an independent, linked store using Etsy’s Pattern software. If you use Square to take payments, you can also use Square POS to sell in person. You’ll do best if you’re prepared to drive traffic through advertising and social media marketing.

Best known as an auction site where buyers can find a little bit of everything, eBay also has a dedicated and thriving jewelry section as well as a smaller but still viable art section.

eBay Art includes drawings, photographs, posters, prints, sculptures, paintings, and even NFTs. The platform’s top jewelry categories include fine jewelry, vintage and antique jewelry, engagement and wedding jewelry, and men’s jewelry.

eBay charges listing fees and transaction fees. Sellers can list at least 200 items/month before listing fees kick in. You can also expect to pay a listing fee between $0.35 and $2 per item after that.

Transaction fees are based on the final sale value and start at 10%. Expect to pay sales fees of 12.85% of the final value of jewelry and watches, with a maximum fee of $750. That cap means that eBay can be a good place to sell high-value items. Be prepared to offer authentication documentation, if you have it, and build your reputation on the marketplace by sharing your credentials as a seller.

eBay uses an internal payment processing system called eBay Managed Payments. All major credit cards are accepted through this system, plus PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Payment processing costs usually are included in the transaction fee.

Despite the sales platform’s lingering reputation as an auction site, the majority of eBay sales are now fixed price. So you don’t have to worry about being locked into selling to the highest bidder.

Artists selling their works on eBay can list them as auction items with a minimum price requirement and include a “buy now” price. eBay sales policies are broad and allow lawful sales of original and vintage jewelry, original artwork, reproductions that don’t violate trademarks, exact replica paintings that are listed as reproductions, and art with alterations or repairs as long as the listing description includes details about what work was done.

Sellers are responsible for the authenticity or legality of items described as genuine and must be able to provide evidence of authenticity. While it’s true that opportunities for fraud are rampant, eBay vendors successfully list and sell items from Pandora, Chanel, Cartier, Tiffany & Co., and other top brands.

Creators and resellers looking for additional sales would do well to take another look at eBay. If you operate a standalone store on Shopify, for example, you can link your Shopify store to eBay to facilitate sales. While anything can be sold successfully and for a profit on eBay, art is not one of the auction site’s top-selling categories. However, we believe that eBay can work well for artists when it’s used as one sales channel among others.

Saatchi Art is a global online art gallery, representing artists in 100+ countries and with more than 12 million monthly page views. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photography from a range of price points are displayed online in a curated environment.

Saatchi Art’s online art gallery draws serious buyers from around the world. If you’re seeking an audience for your artwork, Saatchi could help you connect and sell. Saatchi does not require exclusive arrangements with listing artists, so you can list with Saatchi and continue selling in other channels.

There’s no charge to set up an account as an artist, and Saatchi handles the payment and shipping details for you.

Saatchi takes a 35% commission on all sales conducted through the site. As the artist, you set the prices for your pieces. The buyer will pay the cost of shipping artwork, although the artist is responsible for packing the work in a suitable container for shipping.

Buyers make their payments to Saatchi Art, and artists can request a payout seven days after the buyer has safely received their artwork. Funds can be paid by check, wire transfer, or PayPal, with most payouts completed within 14 days from the date of the payout request.

Saatchi is a curated art sales website that includes a printed catalog, featured categories, and editorial features such as Rising Stars and Artist of the Day.

In exchange for a 35% commission fee on sales, Saatchi offers social media promotion, curation services, social media promotion, paid online and offline advertising, and PR support. An artist newsletter offers tips for improving sales, and an artist handbook and blog share best practices, opportunities for promotion, and general tips.

Artists of all types, working in almost all media, are eligible to join the marketplace. As a non-exclusive online gallery, Saatchi allows listings from artists under gallery representation elsewhere.

What if you could set up a website and put your artwork and jewelry designs in front of a global audience, at no cost to you?

That’s the basic premise of ArtPal, and it seems to live up to the promises it makes. With no membership fees and no commissions on sales, you can use ArtPal to sell your art and jewelry online on a website that gives you unlimited selling space.

Did we mention that ArtPal is completely free? It’s also a non-exclusive marketplace. That means you retain all rights to your jewelry design and artwork and you can advertise and sell elsewhere.

ArtPal is free to use. You’ll pay no membership fee and no commission on sales. If you use ArtPal’s print-on-demand to sell your artwork, the printing costs will be added to your base price, so you’ll still receive 100% of the sale.

ArtPal handles the payment for you, securely processing customers’ payments and transferring funds directly to you. The buyer pays you immediately if you sell and ship your art yourself. If you sell print-on-demand items, your sales will be paid out on the 15th of every month.

ArtPal transfers funds to you via PayPal.

With tools to help creators expand their reach and connect with new buyers at no cost, ArtPal is an attractive option for selling art and jewelry online. It’s an inclusive art site where shoppers can find paintings, prints, photos, sculptures, jewelry, crafts, and more. It’s appropriate for artists, collectors, galleries, and anyone with any art to sell.

You can even use ArtPal’s print-on-demand services, at no cost. Customers who select print services will pay the printing and shipping costs directly.

Setting up a gallery on ArtPal is quick and easy. You’ll be assigned a unique URL that you can use to drive traffic to your site. You can set up one big store or subdivide by collections to make browsing easier. Be sure to set up your artist profile, with a profile image and an About You section.

If you want, you can pay a $0.99 fee to highlight any piece of your artwork, so more people see it. After you add an item, you can activate social media automations to make posts to your choice of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. That’s an effortless method of multichannel marketing that costs you nothing.

Printful is a print-on-demand business that works on a low-risk dropshipping model. This one is aimed squarely at artists, with a low financial investment required to join.

It’s free to join Printful and set up a shop, and you will set the price for your work. When you make a sale, your profit is the difference between what you charge customers and what Printful charges you for printing and shipping the order. You pay nothing until a customer places an order with you.

You can use Printful with absolutely $0 cost for the basic plan that allows you to create an account that you can connect to unlimited stores and product designs. Premium features are available on Printful’s Plus and Pro plans, at $9/month and $49/month, respectively.

When customers place an order, they pay for the product’s price, shipping costs, and taxes plus a profit margin that you determine for your products.

Customers pay for their order through your online store, covering the set retail cost of the items they want (including the item’s cost, your markup, and additional costs like shipping and taxes). You then pay Printful for their share of the costs, including the item itself, production costs, and shipping.

Printful lets artists create an online store on the eCommerce platform of their choice. You sell Printful products through your store, and orders are fulfilled automatically as soon as they are received. You pick what products to make available in your Printful store. Your customers can choose and pay for the products they’d like to have your designs printed on.

Printful offers premade templates and plugins, or you can connect with a marketplace like Amazon or Etsy. You can also reach out to your target audience on social media and monetize your presence on sites like TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Instagram.

Printful allows users to sell their designs printed on 342 products like T-shirts, patches, mugs, hats, posters, and phone cases. Printful’s unique business model allows you to focus on your art — or perhaps on your day job if your art is a side hustle — while they take care of the printing and shipping for you.

Like other art dropshipping platforms, Fine Art America lets artists share their creations with a wide audience. However, Fine Art America stands out with its focus on high-quality wall prints. You also put your artwork on clothing, phone cases, and greeting cards or sell them as digital downloads through Fine Art America.

And it allows artists to set their own profit margins, with the company’s profit coming from your customers, rather than off the top of your sales. With no paid subscription required and no commissions charged, Fine Art America can allow artists to make money off their craft.

Fine Art America offers artists a free plan or you can sign up for a $30/year plan that allows you to sell from your own website.

Fine Art America sets the base price for each product it makes available. You set a markup to cover your own fees. Sales are processed through Fine Art America. Artists are paid for their sales on the 15th of each month for sales made prior to the 15th of the previous month.

If your goal is selling high-quality prints online, it’s worth taking a closer look at Fine Art America for your online art store. In addition to high-quality wall art, Fine Art America also lets your customers purchase your designs printed on items like greeting cards, T-shirts, phone cases, mugs, and more.

Artists can upload high-resolution images and offer them for sale as different types of prints, including canvas, framed, metal, acrylic, wood, posters, and more. You set the sizes you want to make available for each piece. Then, when a customer orders, Fine Art America takes care of the printing, matting, packaging, shipping, payment processing, customer service, and everything else that’s involved in delivering the customer’s order.

Shopify integrations are included on both the free and the paid plans. Free accounts are limited to 25 images, while the paid plans allow unlimited.

You can also sell originals on Fine Art America — commission-free. Any site visitor interested in purchasing one of your originals can contact you directly through your profile page. You’ll have to handle such transactions on your own, but you keep all the money.

Each account includes a customizable artist profile page and individual pages for showcasing your art. There’s also a mobile app; you can connect to your Shopify store and auto-promote on social media.

Not every jewelry maker or artist needs an online store. If you are already generating interest and sales via in-person events, social media, email, or an existing website, the solution you need may be as simple as a few lines of code you can embed into any webpage to create an avenue for online sales.

That’s where Ecwid comes in. Pronounced EK-wid, its name comes from the words “eCommerce widget,” and that’s a concise description of this easy-to-use shopping cart plugin.

Ecwid takes an early advantage in the pricing category over many other solutions on this list because you can use Ecwid’s Forever Free plan to list up to 10 products on a simple, one-page storefront and to turn any webpage into an online sales site.

If you want to include more products or develop a complete store, you can sign up for a plan priced between $15-$99/month to gain more features and support options.

The free plan lets you accept payments via Apple Pay. You can add a POS option, choosing Square, Clover, or Alice.

Ecwid offers an easy way to add eCommerce to your existing sales strategy, whether you want a full focus on online sales or just another way for customers to find you.

Screenshot of Ecwid webpage, captured 6/24/2021

Ecwid is incredibly easy to use, with a simple control panel that’s a snap to navigate. If you choose a paid plan, you can select a predesigned or custom theme for an online store. Users on the free plan are locked into a single theme, called Instant Site, that offers limited customization. However, you can use Instant Site’s intuitive editor to make changes to the layout, colors, images, typography, and so on, with no coding required.

The free plan includes Apple Pay, unlimited bandwidth, GDPR compliance, $0 transaction fees, and POS options. Additional features are available on paid plans.