Showit and 500px represent two fundamentally different answers to the same photographer’s question: where should my work live online?
500px is a photography community and discovery platform where your images can reach millions of photographers and photo buyers worldwide but where your brand largely disappears into the crowd. Showit is a brand design platform where your website looks exactly like you, tells your story your way, and builds a search-visible business presence but where discovery comes from your own marketing, not a built-in audience.
Choosing between them is not actually the hardest question. Understanding exactly what each one does and what it cannot be.
What 500px Actually Is
500px was founded as a photography sharing community where photographers could upload their work, receive ratings, connect with peers, and gain exposure to a global audience. Over the years it has expanded to include photo licensing, print sales, and a portfolio website feature for Pro members.
The platform’s community infrastructure is its genuine differentiator. 500px has a “Pulse” algorithm that surfaces new and popular images, giving high-quality photography organic reach within the platform. Photographers can participate in challenges, follow peers, gain followers, and license images to commercial buyers — all within the 500px ecosystem.
The portfolio website feature, available to Pro members, gives photographers a simple way to build a custom website using three ready-made templates with light or dark mode options. According to Digital Photography Review, the templates “are simple and designed to show off pictures without distractions.” This is a portfolio website as a feature of a community platform — not a website builder designed to compete with Showit.
500px Pro membership costs approximately $71.88 per year at annual billing, with the portfolio website included in that subscription.
What Showit Actually Is
Showit is a canvas-based website builder for creative professionals — built to give photographers, designers, and coaches a website with no design constraints. It does not have a built-in audience, discovery algorithm, or community feed. What it has is a professional-grade platform for building a brand website that can attract clients through search, convert visitors through design quality, and grow in search authority through its WordPress blog integration.
Showit plans start at $19/month for a website-only plan, with blog integration available from $24/month. The platform includes 20GB of media storage, hosting, HTTPS security, and regular design backups.
The Core Comparison: Discovery vs. Ownership
This is the most important distinction between these two platforms, and it reframes the entire comparison.
500px gives you access to an existing audience. When you upload a strong image, the platform’s community can discover it, engage with it, and potentially license it — without you having to build an audience from scratch. For photographers who want exposure to a global photography community, stock image buyers, and potential licensing opportunities, 500px’s audience infrastructure is valuable.
But that audience belongs to 500px, not to you. If 500px changes its algorithm, adjusts its licensing terms, or shuts down entirely, your presence disappears with it. The photographers who have built their business on 500px alone have built on rented land.
Showit gives you owned land. Your domain, your design, your content, your SEO authority — all of it compounds in your name, not a platform’s. Every blog post you publish, every backlink you earn, every client who finds you through Google builds equity in your business, not someone else’s platform. For photographers building a sustainable business, this distinction is the foundation of every smart platform decision.
Portfolio Presentation
500px’s portfolio website feature is intentionally minimal. Three templates, light or dark mode, and a clean image-forward layout. For photographers who need a basic public-facing URL to share with potential clients, this is functional. For photographers who need a website that communicates brand identity, tells their story, and converts visitors into inquiries — it is not designed for that purpose.
Showit’s portfolio presentation is built around visual excellence. The canvas editor lets photographers design the exact portfolio experience they want: full-screen image galleries, editorial layouts, custom hover effects, layered design elements, and scroll behaviors that create an emotional experience before a potential client reads a single word. The platform’s separate desktop and mobile canvas editing ensures the portfolio looks intentional on every screen.
GetPerfectWebsite’s guide to designing a high-converting homepage covers the specific design principles that separate a beautiful portfolio from one that actively books clients — a distinction that 500px’s three-template portfolio feature was not designed to address.
SEO and Client Acquisition
For photographers building a business through local search — wedding photographers, portrait photographers, commercial photographers — this comparison is not close.
500px’s portfolio pages are indexed by Google, which gives your profile some search presence. However, 500px’s domain authority primarily benefits 500px’s search rankings, not yours. A photographer whose primary website is their 500px profile has limited ability to rank for location-specific photography search terms, build an authoritative blog, or develop the kind of keyword-rich content that attracts local clients through organic search.
Showit, with its WordPress blog integration, gives photographers full access to professional-grade SEO infrastructure. Location-specific photography pages, wedding venue content, blog posts that target specific search queries your ideal clients type into Google — all of this is possible and effective on a Showit website. The Showit SEO guide for beginners at GetPerfectWebsite walks through exactly how to use this capability to build search visibility for a photography business.
For photographers who want to be found by clients actively searching for a photographer in their city, Showit builds that capability. 500px does not.
Licensing and Revenue
This is where 500px has something Showit does not, and it is worth being direct about.
500px’s marketplace allows photographers to license their images to commercial buyers. If you shoot commercially attractive photography — landscapes, lifestyle, architecture, people — you can upload those images to 500px’s licensing marketplace and earn revenue when they are purchased. This is a passive income stream that Showit does not replicate natively.
Showit photographers who want to sell images or licenses use third-party tools: stock photo platforms, print fulfillment services like Printful, or digital download tools like Payhip. The guide to adding a Shopify buy button to Showit covers one practical approach to selling through a Showit website.
If image licensing is a meaningful revenue stream for your photography business, 500px’s marketplace is worth maintaining regardless of which website platform you use as your primary business site.
Community and Inspiration
500px’s community is genuinely valuable for photographers who use it for what it was designed for: creative inspiration, peer feedback, skills development, and staying connected with the global photography conversation.
Showit does not offer a photography community. It is a website tool, not a social platform. Photographers who want community engagement alongside their business website use 500px, Instagram, or dedicated photography communities — and Showit simply as the home base their marketing points toward.
When to Use Both
The honest answer for most photographers: these two platforms are not competing with each other they serve different functions and can work together.
Use 500px as a community and discovery platform: participate in challenges, gain exposure within the photography world, explore licensing opportunities, and stay connected with peers. Use Showit as your primary business website: the branded home for your portfolio, your SEO-driven blog, your inquiry form, and the web presence that attracts paying clients.
Many photographers maintain both. 500px handles community and inspiration. Showit handles brand, SEO, and client acquisition. Together they cover both sides of a photographer’s online presence.
Pricing Reality Check
500px:
- Free plan: limited uploads, basic community access
- Pro: ~$71.88/year (approx. $5.99/month) — includes portfolio website, licensing participation, unlimited uploads
Showit:
- Website only: $19/month ($228/year)
- With Basic Blog: $24/month ($288/year)
- With Advanced Blog: $34/month ($408/year)
At $5.99/month, 500px’s Pro plan is one of the most affordable ways to maintain a photography community presence and a basic portfolio URL. As a supplementary platform alongside Showit, the combined cost is manageable for any working photographer.
Who Should Prioritize 500px?
Photographers who primarily want community recognition, peer feedback, and portfolio visibility within the photography world. Fine art and commercial photographers who shoot content with licensing potential. Photographers who are not yet focused on local client acquisition through search, and for whom community engagement is the current priority.
Who Should Prioritize Showit?
Photographers who are building a client-facing business where their website is the primary tool for attracting, converting, and retaining clients. Wedding, portrait, commercial, and family photographers who want to rank in local search results. Any photographer for whom the brand quality of their website directly affects the quality of clients they attract.
If your photography is your livelihood — not your hobby — your primary website needs to be built for business, not community. Showit is built for business.
GetPerfectWebsite offers Showit website design services for photographers who want their Showit site designed professionally from the start. The 10 reasons Showit is the best platform for creatives is a useful read for photographers still weighing the investment.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Showit | 500px |
| Primary Purpose | Business website and brand platform | Photography community and discovery |
| Portfolio Templates | Premium marketplace, unlimited customization | 3 templates, minimal |
| Design Freedom | Pixel-precise canvas | Fixed layouts, light/dark toggle |
| Community/Discovery | None | Built-in global photographer community |
| Image Licensing | Third-party integration | Native marketplace |
| Blogging/SEO | Full WordPress integration | No blogging, basic page SEO |
| Local Client SEO | Strong | Minimal |
| Mobile Design | Separate custom canvas | Responsive auto-scale |
| Pricing | From $19/month | ~$6/month Pro |
| Best For | Business-focused photographers | Community-focused photographers |
The Verdict: Know What You Are Building
500px and Showit answer different questions. 500px answers “how do I get my work seen within the photography world?” Showit answers “how do I build a website that books clients and grows my business?”
The smartest photographers use 500px for what it excels at community and licensing exposure and Showit for what they need most: a branded, SEO-powered business website that works on their behalf every day.
If you are at the stage where your photography is your business, start building on the platform designed for that stage. Explore the Showit optimization service at GetPerfectWebsite to see how your photography website can be built to perform, not just to look good.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can 500px replace a real business website?
Not for most professional photographers. 500px’s portfolio feature is a basic, three-template website designed for community members to share a simple URL. It is not designed to compete with purpose-built website platforms for client acquisition, local SEO, and brand storytelling.
Does 500px have blogging?
No. 500px does not offer blogging functionality. Its portfolio website is purely image-focused.
Is 500px worth paying for in 2026?
For photographers who actively want community engagement, peer feedback, and image licensing opportunities, 500px Pro at approximately $6/month is reasonable value. For photographers who only want a portfolio website, there are better-suited platforms.
Can I use my 500px images on my Showit website?
Yes. You can download your images from 500px and upload them into Showit’s canvas. There is no direct integration between the two platforms, but the process is straightforward.
Does Showit have a community for photographers?
Not built into the platform. Showit has a user community and Facebook group for Showit users generally, but it is not a photography-specific social or discovery platform in the way that 500px is.
