artbase Pro is live: what you get and what it costs
Pro is the paid plan on artbase, priced in your local currency: US$4.99 a month or US$49.99 a year, A$69.99 a year in Australia. It adds profile themes, card styles, post boosts, scheduled posts, bulk uploads, username changes and unlimited private collections. Everything else stays free.
Pro is live. It is the paid plan on artbase, it costs about five dollars a month, and the details sit on artbase.au/upgrade.
What follows is the whole of it, in plain terms, including the parts that might talk you out of it.
What it costs
Pro is priced in your local currency, worked out from where you are rather than converted by your bank at the till. Two examples:
- In USD, US$4.99 a month, or US$49.99 a year, which the page shows as US$4.17 a month.
- In Australia, A$5.83 a month, billed A$69.99 a year.
Listing every currency here would be a chore to write and out of date by the time you read it, so the upgrade page shows you yours: both cycles, and the exact saving on the yearly one.
What is still free
Everything that makes artbase work.
Unlimited public posts. Follows, likes, comments. Tags and the discovery that hangs off them. Direct messages. Your profile, which is also your portfolio. dailydraw every day. Nine of the sixteen profile themes, in light or dark. One private collection.
None of that has a counter on it, and none of it is going behind the paywall later. If you never look at the upgrade page you still have a working art platform.
What Pro adds
- All 16 profile themes, seven more than the free plan, including Raspberry Space, Pixie Dreams and Deepwood.
- All 22 profile card styles. The card is the panel your name and bio sit on. The free plan has the solid one. Pro has the other 21: frosted glass, prism, petals drifting past, a gallery label, riso print, blueprint.
- Unlimited private collections, rather than one. Private means nobody sees it but you and site admins.
- A username change once a month. Your @handle is also your portfolio link, so this is the one to think about before you buy rather than after.
- Two post boosts a month. More on those below.
- Scheduled posts. Queue an upload and it publishes itself at the time you set.
- Bulk submissions. Upload a batch in one go instead of one piece at a time.
- An animated GIF profile picture.
- A Pro badge next to your username.
About the boosts
One boost puts one of your public artworks in featured placement on the explore feed for 24 hours. Pro includes two a month. You can stack up to three on the same piece if you want it sitting there for three days instead of one.
Two a month is deliberately not many. Boosts work because the explore feed is not wall-to-wall boosted art, and that stops being true the moment anyone can buy their way onto it indefinitely. So: a nudge for the piece you are proud of, not a reach lever.
Worth being clear that a boost is placement, not an audience. It puts the work in front of people browsing explore. Whether they stop is still down to the work, the thumbnail and the tags. If your tagging is loose, fix that first, because tags do more of the work than anything else on artbase and they are free.
Who should not buy this
If what you want is more people seeing your art, Pro is a weak way to get it. Two boosts a month will not outrun posting consistently, tagging properly and leaving real comments on other people’s work. Nothing in Pro changes how the feed ranks you, nothing weights your posts, and there is no version of this where paying makes the community notice you.
Most of Pro is presentation and convenience: a profile that looks the way you want, bulk uploads when you are migrating a back catalogue, a queue so you are not posting at midnight. Those are worth five dollars to some people and worth nothing to others, and both are reasonable.
If you are on the fence, stay on the free plan. It is not a crippled trial of a real product.
The billing bit
Stripe handles the payment.
Monthly and yearly are the same Pro. Yearly is the cheaper way in: in USD that is US$49.99 against US$59.88 for twelve monthly payments, about 17 per cent off for committing up front, and the page does the same sum in your currency. You can move between the two from your billing page, and the switch applies from your next invoice with credit for the time you have not used.
Cancel whenever you like, also from the billing page. Pro keeps running until the end of the period you have paid for, then the account drops back to free. Your posts, collections and followers are untouched. If you had a Pro-only theme on your profile it goes back to a free one, and the collections stay private.
Why it exists
Servers, storage and image processing cost money. Platforms that will not charge for that end up paying for it another way, usually with ads or by licensing your work to somebody. We would rather charge a small amount for some extra tools and keep the core free and unadvertised, with member artwork still never used to train AI models.
That is the trade. If it suits you, it is at artbase.au/upgrade. If it does not, carry on as you were, which is the point.
New here? What is artbase is the plain introduction, and the platform tour is the longer version.
Frequently asked questions
How much does artbase Pro cost?
Pro is priced in your local currency rather than one global figure. In USD it is US$4.99 a month or US$49.99 a year, which works out at about US$4.17 a month. In Australia the yearly plan is A$69.99, or A$5.83 a month. The upgrade page at artbase.au/upgrade shows the price in your own currency, and Stripe handles the payment.
What do you get with artbase Pro?
All 16 profile themes instead of 9, all 22 profile card styles instead of 1, unlimited private collections instead of 1, two post boosts a month, scheduled posts, bulk submissions, an animated GIF profile picture, a username change once a month, and a Pro badge next to your name.
Is artbase still free without Pro?
Yes. Unlimited public posts, follows, likes, comments, tags, messages, dailydraw and your whole portfolio are free, and nine of the sixteen profile themes are on the free plan. Pro adds tools on top rather than unlocking the basics.
What is a post boost on artbase?
A boost gives one of your public artworks featured placement on the explore feed for 24 hours. Pro includes two a month, and you can put up to three on a single artwork if you want it up there for longer.
Can I cancel artbase Pro?
Yes, from your billing page at any time. Cancelling leaves Pro running until the end of the period you have already paid for, and then the account returns to the free plan. Nothing you have posted is affected.
Can I switch between monthly and yearly billing?
Yes. Switching takes effect from your next invoice, with credit for the time you have not used on the old cycle. It is the same Pro either way.