Recommended Photography Business Services

Please note – this page is constantly being updated with new recommendations. Be sure to bookmark this and return for the latest updates!

Having our own photography business, we’ve come into contact with a lot of tools that have made our lives easier as business owners. Some things, like insurance, are essentials. While other things, like a client booking platform, help to streamline processes for collecting payments in a way most people expect in the 21st century.

Our recommended photography business services are handpicked based on our personal experiences.

We actually use each and every one of these platforms!

In addition to just listing these services, we also provide some detail so you can see how you, your business, and (most importantly) your clients will benefit. In many cases, we also have additional articles on our website talking about these platforms as well (some of which we’ll link to when it makes sense), but be sure to use the search function on our website to find more information if you need it!

Client Management Services:

One of the key tools your photography should be built around is a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM).

There are a wide range of products in this space – but only a handful that have been built from the ground up with photographers and other creatives in mind.

A good CRM will allow you to send and sign contracts, send out invoices and get paid, automate workflows, communicate with clients, and more.

Our Trusted Pick for Your Client Management Service: Honeybook

honeybook-booking-platform Honeybook has been our client management service of choice since the start of our business. We had tested out a few other options on the market, but none fit as perfectly as this.

This service is one of the most important business services you can purchase. Few other services play such a direct role in your ability to onboard new clients. Not to mention, the benefit is something you will feel, and your clients will recognize, too!

First off – Honeybook is rich with a lot of useful features that help simplify many things you would otherwise spend a lot of time and waste a lot of energy doing (we know from experience!).

Some of our favorite Honeybook features include:

Send and sign contracts online
Send invoices and receive payments via debit, credit, and check
Create templates for contracts, invoices, emails, questionnaires, etc.
Generate financial reports (useful for filing sales tax)
Automate parts of your workflow – such as sending an automated follow up response to an inquiry
Connect with other creatives in the Honeybook community

How Honeybook can benefit you:

Honeybook simplifies the client booking process for you and the client.

We knew we were using the right platform after receiving several compliments from clients about how easy it was to book with us. In some of these cases, they talked about how they had met with other photographers before us who would require signing in person, providing payment in the form of cash, and other inconveniences that just don’t work in the modern world.

Being able to send out a contract (that took about 2 minutes to put together since you can work off of a saved template) and have it signed in a matter of minutes is really an amazing thing. It’s helped reduced clients walking away from signing by reducing the amount of time they have to sign – this means more secured revenue in your pocket.

The benefits are immediately recognizable once you’ve signed up. With a free trial, why not give it a try and see how you like it?

Our Special Limited Time Offer:

We are able to offer 50% off the first year of your annual subscription to Honeybook. This is a special offer we are able to give out because we’ve used HB heavily and have grown our business using the platform.

Want to learn more? Read our comprehensive Honeybook Review and check out the Honeybook FAQ we put together answering some common questions.

[maxbutton id=”1″ ]

Financial Services:

Putting the business in photography business, these are a few platforms that we use to better track our financial information and maximize our tax deductions. If there is anything we have learned in starting our own wedding photography business, it’s how important it is to get bookkeeping right – and that saving money (when possible) is usually better than spending it!

Bookkeeping Software – Intuit Quickbooks:

quickbooks-review Bookkeeping is probably one of the most boring yet critically important parts of running a photography business.

If you are at all like us, you’d much rather be taking pictures instead of sitting behind a computer screen and writing down all of your purchases and sales. In the first 2 years of our business, we did exactly this in the most tedious manner imaginable – in an Excel spreadsheet that ended up filled with errors that took at least a week to go through and fix.

Our move to Quickbooks made our lives much better in this area. Instead of having to constantly monitor and update a file every time we bought something or booked a new client, we can now jump in there once a month or two and update things in a manner of minutes.

The way Quickbooks works is it syncs with your business bank account – then let’s you quickly sort sales items and expense items. For some events that are pretty repetitive (like making a sale through Honeybook, or making a business purchase from a camera shop), these can even be setup to automatically be incorporated into “your books” – making this type of tracking even more streamlined.

When tax season rolls around, you can provide access to your Quickbooks account directly to an accountant, or you can use this information to file taxes on your own using a platform like TurboTax – which is by the same company!

Sign up for Quickbooks today and let tracking your business expenses and sales become super easy!!

Mileage Tracker – Microsoft MileIQ:

MileIQ is one of the few business products that actually pays for itself.

MileIQ was created to mileage tracking easy so you can claim a sweet tax deduction at the end of the year.

As you may know, in the United States business owners have the option to deduct expenses for their driving in two different ways:

Keep receipts for all car repairs and fuel fill ups and deduct the total
Track miles driven and multiply that number by the standard deduction (58 cents per mile in 2019)

Needless to say, for most people, going the route of option #2 makes the most sense. Not only is it easier, but you will actually end up saving more money in the long run.

Tracking miles can be done with pen-and-paper, but this method is extremely time consuming and, frankly, agitating. We even tried that ourselves.

We quickly found MileIQ to be a much better solution as it works by setting up an app on your phone to track your driving miles automatically. It does this by pinging WiFi spots as you are driving along – and will defer to GPS if (for some reason) they are not available.

In 2018, we earned a $4,606 tax deduction (see below) because of all the driving we did. For a product that costs only $60 a year – you can really see how MileIQ pays for itself.

mileiq-savings

The best part about MileIQ? It’s absolutely FREE to use for up to 30 drives a month. If you don’t drive a whole lot, it’s a completely free service. At the low annual cost, paying for MileIQ to upgrade is super cheap, too! Sign up for MileIQ today!

Need more convincing? Read our detailed write up – MileIQ: A Review After 2 Years of Use.

Recommended Business Insurance:

Insurance is one of the major things a lot of photographers put off. It’s easy to see why – insurance can’t really be appreciated until it is needed, and by then it’s too late if you don’t have it.

We can all relate to the need for insurance of some type. Health insurance is incredibly common throughout the world, and it’s something we don’t really care about until we’re in an accident or get sick, then suddenly we have a way to actually afford our medical costs.

Business insurance works in the same way. We hope every single day that we’ll never need to use it to replace gear that breaks or is stolen, or protect ourselves in court, but we’re glad we have it in case.

The Best Business Insurance for Photographers: Hiscox Insurance

hiscox-small-business-insurance

Our decision to go with Hiscox for our business insurance needs was based on our own research into this topic looking for a company that could offer quality services at an affordable price.

Currently – we have 2 business insurance policies in place.

We have a Business Owner’s Policy (which through Hiscox is basically a combination of the General Liability Policy & Property Policy).

Breaking it down, the General Liability insurance is often required by many wedding and event venues we shoot at. It is becoming increasingly common for it to be asked for. This type of insurance would support us in the event we ever caused property damage or sustained an injury (or somehow caused a venue employee to be injured). If you were running your own portrait studio, this type of policy would also include coverage for injuries sustained at your place of business.

The Property insurance provides coverage for our business goods. As photographers, the main thing this covers is all of our business equipment and photography gear. We have $50,000 in coverage – which means if we would drop our gear bags off a cliff and lose everything, our insurance policy would pay out to replace these items. It also covers our office equipment such as computers, printers, etc.

In addition, we picked up a Professional Liability Policy as well – which provides us a good deal of coverage if we ever were sued. This coverage would cover professional services (ie: hiring a lawyer), temporary staff coverage, claims & damages, etc.

If this sounds like a lot – we understand! In reality, we get all of these things at great levels of coverage for about 70$/month. That is about 840$/year for peace of mind. We’ve never had to pull on our insurances (knock on wood – we never will), but have it in place just in case something unexpected would happen.

Get Hiscox Insurance today for your photography business!

It all starts with getting a free quote to see how much it will cost you.

Remember: insurance is your best friend in the event something horrible and unexpected would happen – don’t do business without it!

Print Services

We have worked with a number of print services over the years to produce prints, albums, canvases, and more for our clients. Below are our top recommendations.

CanvasPop

CanvasPop strictly produces canvas art prints. We actually were exposed to them as a result of needing a couple of very large custom order canvas prints to fulfill some work we had done for a large commercial movie theater chain. Our prints ended up being quite expensive, but we were HIGHLY impressed by the quality.

Because of this great hands on experience, we recommend CanvasPop exclusively for canvas prints.

You can read our in depth CanvasPop review for more.

Also feel free to see how CanvasPop helped us in our first commercial photography experience.

And – go ahead and check out CanvasPop for yourself!

ZNO

ZNO produces great quality prints, albums, and other physical products at low prices. ZNO was the first supplier we used to sell our own prints – and we still love the quality. For photographers who are just starting out, or that want to keep their print prices low for clients, this is an excellent way to go.

Online Photo Gallery Services

All modern photographers need an online gallery system to provide digital images to their clients. While we most commonly use these to share portrait and wedding photos, we have also used these systems for commercial clients to see digital proofs of images that would be converted into physical goods.

Pic-Time

The current online photo gallery provider we use is Pic-Time. They are a relatively new online gallery service that we consider to be one of the best available.

They are competitively priced, and have a leg up on the competition by providing a really beautiful online gallery store that allows our clients to design and create their own photo albums.

This is actually the #1 reason we switched to Pic-Time from Pixieset.

It is a huge time saver, and a really cool feature to show off to our current clients.

Check out Pic-Time today!

Pixieset

We used Pixieset for the first 2 years of our photography business. We actually consider their platform to be very good – however they lagged behind the times in the area of the virtual storefront. This is the only thing that caused us to switch. Otherwise, Pixieset is an excellent option for anyone needing an online gallery service, and we still recommend them as an option to consider.

You can read our full length Pixieset review for more!

Photography Business Resources:

In this section, you will find our choices of special education materials, courses, eBooks, and more that all contribute significantly to running an effective business.

Signature Edit’s Photography Marketing School

Signature Edit’s Photography Marketing School is one of the best values you will find online. It contains a staggering number of products that include Lightroom editing presets, online marketing courses, templates, guides, and so much more.

Hands down – this is one of the most AMAZING products you can buy as a photography just starting a business, or as a current photographer struggling to book enough clients.

You can read our highly detailed (over 5,000 words!) post checking out every product included in this package.

Get the Photography Marketing School Today!

[maxbutton id=”12″ ]