Format Reviews

The themes and customization of the design is the best part about Format. Each design looks truly professional and creative. The way the images are displayed is critically important for me as a photographer and I've found that Format has the best designs out of many portfolio hosting sites. I'm also amazed at the price per month - other portfolio webhosts can charge more for essentially the same features.

I live in Toronto and since this is a Toronto based company I would prefer the price to be in CAD.

Building a website takes all of 10 minutes. Lots of customization options and with my package I can upload as many images as I'd like to show off to clients. I also love using the proofing options so my clients can view and pick out there favorite images from their person session.

There is no automatic slideshows for my website. I'd love to have my main page have pictures that fade in and out automatically.

I love that it is quick and easy. I can change anything I need to in a matter of seconds. I love that the format team is always making improvements and doing their best to keep the user interface simple while giving their customers what they ask for.

I think there could be more plan options. I recently had to upgrade my website because I was going over in image count due to a recent shoot I was proofing for a client. I was shocked at the huge jump in price just for more image count. Not a whole lot of bang for the amount of bucks ($$$) there. I'll be downgrading again as soon as my client is done proofing their shoot.

I would like to see format increase the amount of themes available. I feel as though what I am using currently is *almost* what I want. But there are more things I would like to change but simply cannot. I would love to be able to create custom gallery sections, just like you are able to fully customize other pages (about pages, text sections, contact pages). I would also love to see some slideshow options - I want a rotating image section on my homepage and on my about page!

What I like the most is that it is extremely User-friendly. Setting it up your self explanatory. Nice modern layout

What I find most difficult is using it on a cellular device. On the computer it is quite easy to maneuver. However on his cell phone somethings need to be changed as far as downloading pictures

I really like how they upgrade and add new options continuously. Great support is there when you need it, and fairly quick as well. They added proofing, which was so important for me, and recently added some helpful tools like batch moving within the proofing category. This literally saves me hours of time. The themes are clean and versatile. If I want to have a change, it's really quick and simple to move to another theme. I really like that I can incorporate video, makes for a more interesting site for viewers.

I really don't have anything I dislike, except that I'm in Toronto, and that's their home base, however, I have to pay in US funds.

I love its graphic style and easy user interface, it is easy to design your website by quickly reviewing your changes.

The inability to have different sorts of galleries within one website- I would like to display my images in different ways on different pages. I would also like to be able to link to individual galleries by clicking on a single image as opposed to that just bringing up that single image.

-easy to use -amazing customer service -expanding template gallery -shop feature -the way "photo galleries" look -always being updated and improved

That it's easy to use. I love the professional look of the themes but most importantly, I love the price point! If it was more money - it probably wouldn't be worth it but with the price point now in comparison to SquareSpace and other sites - its the best! I LOVE that it's a Canadian Company!

It has a few bugs with editing. I also wish the page designs were much for customizable! I wish that each page was able to have a separate "design theme". Sometimes certain galleries and projects deserve or need different designs or gallery viewings! Its limited for the entire website to one theme and type of gallery viewer!

My friend told me about Format after i needed to find a decent website builder to show my work and they weren't wrong. Three months later of hard building I had the best possible site to show my art and the hits have been amazing.

Its easy, fast and so clear and shows all styles for everyone that wants a professional website.
Text fonts, tones and unlimited pages and amazing colours and templates.

I would not suggest any other website builder then Format.

I do wish it would also offer a free usage for beginners or students who cannot afford to pay a month charge.

The accessibility, navigationsystems, the themes and clean UI/User Interface is what makes Format easy to use. What I do love the most with Format is how easy it is to create the pages you truly dream of.

Some pages won't show up in the correct order. An example would be:

The pages come up alphabetically in the "Pages" menu, but when you want to import images or pick a site to link up, the pages in the menu would show the pages in "oldest to newest" order. Quite confusing at first, but I can get used to it.

Multiple themes that designed to show case my portfolio. I've been using slideshow themed to showcase my portfolio to my clients, and most of them found that my portfolio site is very easy to navigate.

All I can say this software is almost flawless. I think the 14-day trial is way too short for some of the first time portfolio builders. In my own opinion, I think trial day should be a at least 30 days because I spent more than a week just designing the layout how I wanted.

User friendly, straight forward and clean. Anyone with min understanding of how to create a website can use and navigate it.

More options in designs and themes. Would love to see some new and exciting options, like when you can just roll the pages down instead of clicking and going to another page and...

I like the templates in Format and the ability to be able to use them and customise the different options. I like the way they work on mobiles and different formats.

I don not like the way the Videos are embedded on either Youtube or Vimeo, I would like them to be native to format. Also better options for Video style formats.

The crisp design and layout! I love how easy it is to upload images. This system is easy to use and I am not a tech person. I truly believe I'm getting an awesome value for my money!

I would like to have stats about visits to my page and useage. I need to know who is visiting my page and how.

The possibility to change site style so rapidly and yearly subscription as well is a great opportunity to review your work

What I think must be improved is the flexibility in fonts choise and the quantity as well; also the pictures positioning should be more simple and with more options

They constantly innovate to enrich the client & end user experience. They help when needed and staff are awesome.
Value for money is a no-brained with Format: it is excellent.

There is very little to say about the downside of this software. I love it and would change.nothing about it.

The easyness of approach in the construction of a webpage available for people like me, that know nothing about html language or programming. The possibility of choosing between different themes to give the best professional look at the galleries showing my photographic works.

There are very few things that I like the least of this software, mostly technical.
But as I wrote above I have little knowledge of programming.
Would love to have more flexibility in fonts and writing parts. And more possibilities to create a cover to start the webpage.

Usability is key in the template designs and it gives me freedom of polishing the design to my own needs. The information/help is good and I think the helpdesk chat is very good. I'm always taken seriously and the answers are always straight and not packed in commercial sales type wording. Compared to the big other sites they don't change things dramatically into something I don't need or pay for. It's value for money.

ssl is still not available but it's on the list of high priority. Sometimes photos loading time is a bit too slow on broadband lines and 4g. Some of the design tweaking brings in some trial and error which slows down the proces but I can live with that.

Easy to set up and nice templates and they set up and linked my domain name that I found extremely helpful

Format is easy to use with nice templates but the ease is also because the choices of things you can control are limited this for me was mostly an asset so I did not get lost in a sea of choices but a pity I could not implement a few more design features like centering text in the additional text boxes, making a subtitle in a special font and adding call to action buttons

I love that it's so easy to use! I'm not great with graphic design & all that tech stuff but I was able to make a nice looking website on my own. And when I needed help someone was always available & if not they got back to me quickly

I can't integrate custom fonts. For some of my pages I'd like to use fonts that I've purchased for a more customized look