My Experience With Behance and Pixelfed

As a photographer who also dabbles in graphics work, I’ve long been searching for a solid alternative to the likes of Instagram to showcase my work and connect with others. Don’t get me wrong; as much as I dislike the idea of “big tech” social media and the shenanigans that come with it, Instagram has some really nice features and the benefits of a huge user base. That being said, it has a lot of negatives too.

I’ve done a lot of searching into viable alternatives and have tried several out. Up until this point, all of them lacked something. In some cases, they lacked a phone app and could only be used through a web browser. In other cases, they tended to be glitchy and caused a lot of frustration. Some have even shut down operations or started charging excessive subscription fees. Two examples of the options I have tried in the past include Ello and Photocrowd.

So basically, the task of finding a suitable option outside of Instagram has been a real challenge.

Well, I think I finally broke through.

I had only heard of Behance a couple of times and had no real idea what it was. I decided to check it out and from there sign up and give it a try. Boy, am I glad I did.

First off, Behance is geared toward professionals, unlike Instagram, which has a bit of professionalism but is a generally amateur-feeling platform. You can tell pretty quickly that people on Behance take their art and their work seriously.

Another cool feature of Behance is that it allows users to list themselves as being available for paid assignments. Users can add a “Hire” button to their profiles, allowing potential clients to know such details as their availability, the types of services they offer, and the price range they charge for those services.

If you want, you even have the option to create specific services that you can offer to possible clients through the Behance platform. If you are familiar with tools like Fiverr and Upwork, it functions kind of like Fiverr’s Gigs or Upwork’s Projects Catalog.

While the user base is much smaller than Instagram (a bit over 24 million compared to approximately 2 billion on Instagram), it is still a huge audience. And in some ways, it’s more of a refined group and a less saturated environment.

Now, if you’re looking for something a little less focused on professionalism and a little more causal in nature, I would highly recommend that you check out Pixelfed. It looks and feels a lot like Instagram, which might be comforting to some. However, there are big differences.

Yes, Pixelfed has a tiny user base compared to the massive one offered by Instagram. At this point, the total user count is just over 270,000. However, it operates as a decentralized platform, allowing for more user freedom and protection of privacy, both things lacking on many of the biggest sites. Essentially, users make their own rules in many ways. If you are at all familiar with Reddit, it is kind of like how you can create Subbeddits with their own set of rules and forms of content moderation.

There is no Android app (not sure about Apple) for Pixelfed at this point. However, due to the website’s responsive design, opening it up on your phone through the native mobile browser looks and works just fine.

Even with the smaller user numbers on both Behance and Pixelfed, both platforms are very active and seem to have a lot of engagement.

All in all, both Behance and Pixelfed have a lot of promise and, at the very least, are worth a try.