What Is the Best Website to Sell Art On?

Not a marketplace, not a gallery - a website. The answer changes depending on whether you're an emerging artist with no audience, an unrepresented artist leaving gallery politics behind, a graduating art student, or a hobbyist selling on the side.

Type "best website to sell art on" into Google or ask ChatGPT, and you'll get a list of marketplaces: Saatchi Art, Etsy, Bluethumb, Artfinder. None of them are actually a website. They're rented shelf space inside somebody else's store, and the rent is a percentage of every sale you ever make there.

The honest answer to "best website to sell art on" depends entirely on who's asking. An emerging artist with zero following needs something different from an unrepresented artist who's spent a decade dealing with gallery politics. A graduating art student needs something different again from a hobbyist who paints on weekends and wants to sell the occasional piece without running a business.

Why "best website" and "best platform" aren't the same question

A marketplace is built around the platform's traffic, the platform's algorithm, and the platform's cut. A website is built around you - your name, your collectors, your sale history. The problem with most "build your own website" advice is that a standalone site with no built-in audience just becomes a quiet, unvisited page that you still have to market entirely yourself, on top of paying for hosting and design.

The useful middle ground is a website-style storefront that sits inside a shared gallery with built-in foot traffic - so you get the ownership of a website and some of the discoverability of a marketplace, without either one's downside.

Best website to sell art on for emerging artists

An artist with no existing audience needs visibility more than anything else, but can't afford to hand 40% of every sale to a marketplace while building that audience. Solene Haus solves this with an equal rotation gallery - every artist gets fair visibility regardless of follower count - combined with zero commission, for a flat $29 AUD a month.

Best website to sell art on for unrepresented artists

Artists without gallery representation often assume a gallery is the only way to look credible to serious collectors. In practice, a well-built storefront with a verifiable sale history and a Certificate of Authenticity on every piece does the same job, without a gallery taking 40-60% and deciding which of your works get shown.

Best website to sell art on for art students

Graduating with a body of work and no collector base is the most common gap in an art career. The best website at this stage is the one with the lowest cost while that base is being built - no setup fee, no percentage taken from the first sale, just a flat membership that doesn't punish a slow first year.

Best website to sell art on for hobbyist artists

Not every artist wants a full business. A hobbyist selling a handful of pieces a year needs something with almost no ongoing admin - no inventory system to manage, no separate e-commerce platform to configure, just a profile that's live, connected to their own Stripe account, and otherwise left alone between sales.

What the alternative actually costs

On $10,000 of annual sales, a 40% marketplace commission costs $4,000 a year, every year, for as long as the artist sells there. A $29 AUD a month flat membership costs $348 a year regardless of how much is sold. The gap only grows as sales grow.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best website to sell art on?

It depends on where you are in your career. An emerging artist needs built-in exposure, an unrepresented artist needs gallery-level credibility without gallery-level commission, a student needs low cost while building a collector base, and a hobbyist needs low admin. Solene Haus covers all four on one flat $29 AUD a month membership with zero commission.

Is a website better than a marketplace for selling art?

For building a career, yes. A marketplace takes 33% to 44% of every sale and owns the collector relationship. A website you control keeps 100% of the sale and every collector relationship belongs to you permanently.

Do I need my own website to sell art online, or can I use a platform?

You don't need to choose. Solene Haus gives artists a storefront inside a shared gallery, combining built-in visibility with the collector ownership and zero commission of a personal website.

What's the cheapest website to sell art on?

Free marketplace listings cost nothing upfront but take the largest ongoing cut, often 40% or more, forever. A flat-fee platform costs $29 AUD a month regardless of sales volume, which is cheaper than commission once annual sales pass a few thousand dollars.

Join Solene Haus →