6 Best Portfolio Website Builders

Squarespace scores a great 4.6 out of 5 for its website features, and it’s easy to see why. All of its plans come with tons of built-in tools, including Squarespace Video Maker and custom merch.

And if you need extra features, you can access third-party apps via Squarespace Extensions, giving you plenty of room to enhance your portfolio without having to upgrade.

You can also subscribe to one of Squarespace’s paid tools, such as Squarespace Scheduling to take bookings from customers – prices start at $16 per month (billed annually). Alternatively, if you want to sell products with your portfolio site, you’ll need to upgrade to one of Squarespace’s ecommerce-friendly plans that start at $23 per month (billed annually).

Getting clients to contact you is next to impossible if you can’t be found online, so it’s reassuring that Squarespace makes it easy to tag your content correctly to ensure your pages are found by search engines. This is why it scores a perfect 5 out of 5 in our SEO research.

There’s a suite of tools to enjoy via Squarespace’s SEO panel, including:

• SEO page settings
• Sitemaps
• Clean URLs for indexing
• Built-in mobile optimization
• Automatic SEO-friendly pages for products
• Google My Business listing

The platform also offers an in-depth SEO checklist to explain how to optimize each part of your portfolio, helping you improve your website’s visibility. This is essential to drumming up traffic and gaining some potential new clients.

Its on-site guides include both text and video, which is really helpful for different types of learners. Some people learn best by watching and repeating, but others might process information better by reading a text explanation instead. Thankfully, Squarespace caters to both!

Squarespace gives its subscribers unlimited storage across all of its plans, which means you can upload plenty of media files to your portfolio, such as images, music, and podcast episodes. You also get an allowance of 30 minutes when it comes to video storage – and this is available from Squarespace’s cheapest plan, Personal.

A lot of other builders limit the amount of storage you can get on their cheaper plans. Squarespace gives you unlimited storage from day one, but Wix – which is our second highest-rated provider for portfolios – starts you out with a 2GB storage limit on its $16 per month plan.

The primary goal of most websites is to turn viewers into clients and views into opportunities. Most of Squarespace’s portfolio-specific templates come with built-in contact forms and member areas, but if you choose one that lacks this feature, you can easily add it.

For example, contact forms and other design elements can be added for free when editing your pages, but you’ll need to pay extra for member areas – subscriptions start from $9 per month, billed annually.

You can also add feature testimonials to your portfolio, as well as a blog and a newsletter sign-up. Social media icons and live social feeds connect your website with other platforms, allowing you to build a cohesive brand image.

In addition to these handy features, Squarespace also offers email marketing software to expand your portfolio’s reach. You’ll get plenty of email layouts to choose from, allowing you to match your emails to your portfolio’s branding.

However, Squarespace’s Email Campaigns feature isn’t included in your monthly subscription. You’ll get a limited free trial to start with, but if you want full access then you’ll need to pay an additional fee – pricing starts at $5 per month.

Squarespace scores 4.4 out of 5 for its ease of use, putting it in joint first with Wix. This is an area that saw a significant boost (11%) since last year’s research, largely because of its user-friendly interface and helpful prompts when building.

So, if you’re looking to build an online portfolio, you can rest assured knowing that Squarespace will make the process headache-free!

Squarespace uses a grid-style editor, meaning you can’t drag anything anywhere, but you can create a clean and professional portfolio without any coding skills. This style of editor ensures your site will still look good no matter the changes you make, while building with a drag-and-drop editor, like Wix, can easily result in a messy-looking site.

If you do get stuck, Squarespace has some of the best customer support, scoring 4.8 out of 5, sharing the top position with Wix (again). It offers in-depth tutorial videos and guides in its Help Center, as well as 24/7 email and social media support. You can also reach out to Squarespace through its live chat feature, available Monday to Friday.

With a score of 3.5 out of 5 for value for money, Squarespace isn’t the strongest option if price is an important factor for you. For our portfolio website builder analysis, we’ve placed greater emphasis on free plans – this is something Squarespace lacks and its strongest ecommerce features (if you’re looking to sell) are only accessible if you pay more.

While you can enjoy its 14-day free trial, Squarespace’s four paid plans start at $16 per month:

• Personal: $16 per month (annual)
• Business: $23 per month (annual)
• Basic Commerce: $27 per month (annual)
• Advanced Commerce: $49 per month (annual)

You can sell through your website if you opt for the Business plan or above. These fully specialized ecommerce plans start from $27 per month and are useful if you want to sell artwork directly through your portfolio.

Wix is the best for website features, scoring 4.9 out of 5 in our 2023 research. We were particularly impressed that its free plan offers a ton of powerful features, including social sharing tools and a mobile editor.

However, you must upgrade to one of Wix’s paid plans to unlock the top features. These are jam-packed with high-quality internal features, including visitor analytics, the ability to create events, managing and adding videos to your site, and showcasing music.

With all of these powerful features, you won’t need to rely on third-party apps like Shopify. But don’t fret – Wix still offers a huge app store if you do need any extra services.

One of the best ways Wix helps you build a successful portfolio is by making SEO as easy as possible – this is why it scores 5 out of 5 for SEO. We know SEO can be a daunting step when establishing yourself online (especially for beginners), but Wix has plenty of helpful guides to get you started. There’s even SEO Wiz, which creates a personalized, step-by-step guide for you to follow.

Wix’s SEO Wiz has been enhanced since last year’s research, but the most notable SEO improvement is Wix’s integration with the keyword support tool, Semrush. With this, your portfolio should easily target new clients who are searching the web.

Depending on the plan you’re on, Wix will offer varying amounts of storage to its users:

• Free: 500MB
• Light: 2GB

These are Wix’s non-ecommerce plans, so they’re best suited to portfolios. But if you want to accept payments from clients through your portfolio website, then you’ll need one of Wix’s ecommerce plans which come with generous storage allowances:

• Core: 50GB
• Business: 100GB
• Business Elite: Unlimited

So, you’ll need to pay $159 per month (billed annually) for Wix’s Business VIP plan if you want unlimited storage. In comparison, Squarespace offers unlimited storage from its cheapest plan.

As we’ve established, Wix is the best portfolio website builder when it comes to website features. It should come as no surprise then that it has a whole ream of high-quality marketing tools for you to access and use to promote your portfolio.

Wix lets you add a blog with a click of a button, which is ideal for content marketing and when sharing your expertise and updates with fans or clients. Keeping a blog is also a great way to create fresh content for Google to crawl (which is the term used to describe how Google reads and sorts your website content) and potentially boost your site’s rankings, too.

Additionally, Wix comes with a massive app library, which is great for expanding your portfolio’s functionality. You can add a live social media feed, as well as integrate with one of the many email marketing solutions, such as Mailchimp and Constant Contact.

It’s also worth mentioning that a free version of Ascend by Wix is pre-installed on your account. It offers you a comprehensive business solution that provides amazing marketing tools, from social integrations and on-site live chat to email marketing. If you want to upgrade this feature, Ascend by Wix plans start at $10 per month.

Wix is extremely easy to use – in fact, it came joint first with Squarespace in our ease of use testing, scoring 4.4 out of 5.

Wix’s drag-and-drop editor is a familiar and intuitive system that makes designing your portfolio incredibly simple. Unlike Squarespace, Wix has hover-over tooltips on hand to explain what features do, and you can drag elements to wherever you want for an unrivaled level of control.

That being said, it doesn’t score a perfect 5 out of 5 rating because this type of interface and editor isn’t ideal for everyone. For many, the large number of tools and elements on offer can be overwhelming and it’s easy to end up with a messy-looking portfolio.

The good news is that Wix scores an eye-watering 4.8 out of 5 for its help and support – the same as Squarespace. This means that if you ever get stuck, you can contact Wix easily for assistance, whether that’s via 24/7 live chat or phone support. There’s also priority customer support available if you upgrade to Wix’s Business Elite plan.

Wix scores 2.7 out of 5 in our value for money testing – the lowest score out of all six builders, sitting just below Webflow.

This is largely because we’ve had to adapt our pricing algorithm to reflect marketwide price increases, which has impacted Wix negatively. It’s an expensive option, and what really lets Wix down is the fact that it locks its strongest features – including advanced SEO tools and localized currency – behind its premium plans.

If you want the best for your site, you’ll need to pay more for it if you go with Wix.

You can get started with Wix’s free plan, which is a great option if you’re looking to get your portfolio up and running quickly and affordably, but you’ll be limited when it comes to growing your site.

If you upgrade from the free plan – and we highly recommend that you do – you can expect these annual costs:

• Light: $16 per month
• Core: $27 per month
• Business: $32 per month
• Business Elite: $159 per month

The Core and two Business plans are equipped for selling online, so you’ll need to choose one of these if you want to allow clients to purchase directly from your portfolio.

GoDaddy sits in the middle of the pack, scoring 3.6 out of 5 for its website features – this puts it between Shopify and Webflow. When looking at marketing and blogging, in particular, we found that GoDaddy struggled to keep up with the competition, only offering its users a basic set of tools.

For example, if you want to add a blog to your portfolio, you’ll be limited to simply writing and scheduling posts – that’s all!

Its free plan is incredibly limited, so we’d recommend upgrading to its cheapest paid plan to unlock the following website features:

• Website and marketing analytics
• Consolidate customer messages in one inbox
• One-time appointments
• GoDaddy Studio (for branded content)
• Social media integration
• Email marketing

… and more. You’ll need to upgrade to the Premium plan or above for recurring classes, event scheduling, online payments, and ecommerce functionality.

GoDaddy has its own SEO wizard, like Wix, which is a beginner-friendly way for users to start optimizing their portfolios. Like its ADI builder, GoDaddy asks you questions about your site and creates a custom SEO plan for you to follow. It even suggests which keywords you should target to rank higher on Google!

However, it’s important to note that although basic SEO tools are included in GoDaddy’s cheapest plan, you won’t have access to advanced features. For example, you’ll need to upgrade to the Premium plan to access Google Smart Campaign and social post boosting – tools that help improve your site’s visibility on search engines and attract new customers.

GoDaddy also has a team of SEO experts to help you take that extra step – you talk through your goals and they put a plan in place. To put it simply, the SEO team will analyze your site and market before making regular SEO updates, improving your site’s chances of appearing in search results.

GoDaddy isn’t too forthcoming about how much storage you get with each plan, but it seems that you get unmetered storage and bandwidth across all plans. Unmetered storage means you’re not charged based on the amount of storage you use.

However, this doesn’t mean your storage is unlimited. It’s unlikely you’ll reach GoDaddy’s cap, and it really shouldn’t be a problem for the majority of portfolios. If you use video as a medium, though, it’s worth considering whether GoDaddy is the right fit for your needs. You could opt for a builder with guaranteed unlimited storage instead, such as Squarespace.

Helping entrepreneurs build their online presence is something GoDaddy is clearly passionate about.

No matter which plan you choose, your site will automatically come with helpful marketing tools, covering email, social media, and ads. While you can’t connect directly with third-party marketing apps due to GoDaddy’s lack of an app store, you’ll receive some really useful in-house features.

For example, its cheapest plan allows up to 100 email marketing sends per month, but this increases to 100,000 on the Commerce Plus plan. GoDaddy also supports Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can even use GoDaddy’s software to create social media posts that reflect your portfolio branding.

Thanks to its ADI functionality, building a portfolio with GoDaddy is incredibly easy – since it does all of the hard work for you, we awarded GoDaddy an ease of use score of 4.1 out of 5. This puts it just behind the top dogs, Squarespace and Wix.

After your tailored website has been built, you can tweak your pre-made template to suit your brand once you get into the editor. However, customization and design flexibility are limited, so we’d recommend GoDaddy for basic portfolios. If you’re looking to build something unique or want more control, you’d be better off with Wix.

According to our 2023 research, GoDaddy is the best value for money when it comes to portfolio website builders, scoring 4.3 out of 5. Compared with the builders ranking above, GoDaddy is considerably cheaper, with plans starting at $11.99 per month, billed annually.

There are four paid plans to choose between:

• Basic: $11.99 per month, billed annually
• Premium: $21.99 per month, billed annually
• Commerce: $24.99 per month, billed annually
• Commerce Plus: $44.99 per month, billed annually

If you aren’t ready to commit to a premium plan just yet, GoDaddy also offers a free plan to help you find your footing. It doesn’t offer much in the way of features, but it does keep the costs down! Based on our research, we’d suggest upgrading to a premium plan as soon as possible.

Shopify offers its users fairly basic features, catering to growing businesses rather than portfolio websites. It also uses its app store as a way to fill in any gaps internally, unlike Wix, which has incredible built-in features. For this reason, Shopify scores 3.7 out of 5 for its website features.

If you find yourself stuck or think a process could be streamlined when using Shopify, take a look at the 6,000+ apps and widgets available. You’ll likely find a solution to any problem – whether that’s Shippo, Pinterest, or DSers. The only downside is that most of these apps come with an additional charge, so bear that in mind before choosing Shopify.

While Shopify handles a portion of SEO on your behalf – think page tags, meta descriptions, and your portfolio’s sitemap – you’ll have to look elsewhere for advanced SEO tools. In fact, Shopify’s SEO guide encourages you to check out the app store!

That being said, there are a handful of SEO-related video tutorials and guides if you want to learn more. You just won’t have a checklist of tips or an SEO wizard – like Wix – to hand with Shopify.

All of Shopify’s plans come with unlimited storage space, making it a good choice for portfolios, especially if you plan to use lots of media to promote and sell your work.

Though Shopify’s plans are more expensive than others on this list, it can be worth the price if you get all the storage allowance you need. In this case, the sky’s the limit!

Shopify’s general website features are fairly simple in nature, but as a site equipped to support online stores, you’ll be happy to know that there’s no slacking to be seen when it comes to marketing tools.

We know that marketing is important for portfolio websites, so we’ve taken the time to really investigate Shopify’s performance in this area and there’s a lot to unpack. Make the most of Shopify’s built-in features, including blogs and social media integration. Or you can target customers in a different way, whether that’s via email with personalized campaigns, or through direct messages with Shopify Inbox.

You’ll also have access to a detailed marketing dashboard, so you can view your data and track your portfolio’s performance.

Sitting in fourth place for ease of use, Shopify scores 4 out of 5 in this category. This puts it just ahead of Hostinger, and while Shopify doesn’t take a podium position on this list, its rating is still to be applauded.

Some of our website testers found Shopify a little tricky to get to grips with, largely because you have to bounce between the editor and backend for certain website elements.

If you’re prepared to dedicate time to learning the ins and outs of Shopify, you can create a powerful portfolio with ease. Still, we’d probably recommend Shopify to those with web-building experience as opposed to total beginners – unless you’re keen to sell a lot of products.

Shopify gives users three plans to choose between. When billed annually, the prices are:

• Basic: $29 per month
• Shopify: $79 per month
• Advanced: $299 per month

Due to the lack of a free plan and its expensive prices, Shopify scores 3 out of 5 in our value for money category. However, you can start all of these plans from just $1 per month for the first three months – which cuts down the costs just a smidge!

Alternatively, if you don’t want to set up a whole online store alongside your portfolio, you can opt for the Shopify Starter plan for $5 per month. This will let you sell across social channels.

Hostinger receives a low score of 2.9 out of 5 for its website features, making it the weakest option out of the six portfolio website builders. With only one plan on offer and no app market, you’re stuck with what you get – and that’s not a lot, especially when compared with the likes of Squarespace or Wix.

For example, you can expect basic ecommerce features, the ability to take online bookings, marketing tools, and unlimited storage. While this pales against competitors, you should be pretty comfortable if you’re looking to build a simple portfolio website.

Unfortunately, Hostinger is also let down by its limited SEO tools, meaning it’ll be hard to promote your portfolio to clients effectively. Its plan comes with AI-powered SEO tools to help boost rankings and traffic, and you can edit your page SEO settings in the backend. But without advanced keyword support and built-in integrations, Hostinger’s strength doesn’t lie in SEO.

With Hostinger’s Website Builder & Web Hosting package, you can enjoy unlimited storage and unmetered traffic, all for a low price. So, no matter the scale of your portfolio, you’ll be in good hands with Hostinger!

Hostinger offers an assortment of marketing tools to support your portfolio website. These include integrations with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Hotjar, and Facebook Pixel – they help you monitor your website’s analytics and customer needs so you can create effective marketing campaigns.

Drawing on the power of AI again, Hostinger also has an AI heat map tool that helps website owners keep track of and predict visitor behavior. Not only will this inform relevant updates to your portfolio, but it’ll also help you target your clients effectively since you know what’s important to them.

Hostinger scores 3.9 out of 5 for ease of use, sitting just above our weakest performer on this list, Webflow. Hostinger uses the familiar drag-and-drop editor, which is a great interface for beginners and very simple to wrap your head around. Alternatively, you can hand it all over to AI – Hostinger’s employed ChatGPT to build a website for you, which is similar to GoDaddy’s ADI builder.

However, once you’ve settled into the editor yourself, Hostinger’s customization options are limited and the lack of design elements makes it difficult to put your own stamp on the site. You also can’t swap templates once your website is live – so be sure you’re happy with your choice before publishing!

On a positive note, Hostinger is one of the best options when it comes to value for money, scoring 4.2 out of 5 in this year’s research. This isn’t too surprising considering its single plan is also the cheapest option on this list, costing just $2.99 per month (billed annually).

However, it’s also worth noting that this price is simply an introductory price – the plan’s fee will increase to $11.99 per month after the first year. The good news is even the renewal price is much cheaper than others, especially if you consider that Squarespace and Wix both start at $16 per month.

Webflow sits near the bottom of the pack for website features, scoring 3 out of 5 in our 2023 research – this puts it just above Hostinger. This is because what Webflow has to offer is pretty basic, and you’ll need to upgrade to at least the CMS plan (for $23 per month) to unlock useful tools, including a site search function and the ability to schedule posts.

With all plans – including the free plan – you’ll have unlimited backups, mobile optimization, and weekly email support. But you’ll need to opt for a paid plan if you want to remove ads, have access to a custom domain, and create up to 100 static pages.

Unfortunately, Webflow offers no SEO support on its free plan, so you’ll have to shell out for this feature. Once you’re on the Basic plan, you’ll unlock:

• 301 redirects
• Sitemap controls
• Help optimizing SEO rankings
• Open Graph meta tags
• Search support to improve site visibility

These are all valuable tools when promoting a portfolio online – it’s just a shame that you have to pay for them.

Storage space is limited with Webflow – the allowance depends on the plan you choose.

• Free: 1GB
• Basic: 50GB
• CMS: 200GB
• Business: 400GB
• Standard: 200GB
• Plus: 400GB
• Advanced: 400GB

The same can be said for your site’s capacity for visitors. Your maximum monthly site visits vary, with the free plan permitting 1,000 per month while the Business plan jumps up to 300,000 per month.

Once your site is live, Webflow is a little underwhelming for website marketing, focusing its attention on web design instead of growth. Despite its lack of built-in tools, you can deploy a range of third-party apps, such as Google Analytics and Mailchimp to find what you need.

Still, it’s a shame Webflow hasn’t improved its internal functionality, especially when it’s competing against the likes of Wix, which has so many amazing built-in features, including social sharing and Wix Multilingual to support your content around the world.

If you want to build a portfolio website builder, Webflow is the hardest to use – it scores a low 2.1 out of 5, putting it at the bottom of our top six. As we’ve already mentioned, Webflow uses a section-based editor instead of the user-friendly drag-and-drop style. This means the builder has a steeper learning curve than others, such as Squarespace, and is better suited to those with website building experience.

We have to admit that our website testers didn’t enjoy their experience with Webflow either, ranking it as their least favorite with a customer satisfaction score of 2.3 out of 5.

Webflow ranks just above Wix in our value for money category with a score of 2.9 out of 5. There are three “General” plans, and three online store options:

• Basic: $14 per month
• CMS: $23 per month
• Business: $39
• Standard (Ecommerce): $29
• Plus (Ecommerce): $74
• Advanced (Ecommerce): $212

There’s also a free plan if you aren’t ready to subscribe fully, and an Enterprise plan for those with large-scale businesses. For portfolio creators, we’d recommend the CMS plan out of the six plan options, due to its enhanced storage space, CMS tools (including post scheduling and API access), and search function.

Its starting plan is fairly affordable – with a similar price to GoDaddy – but Webflow doesn’t put much on the table, with weak website features and little in the way of additional tools, such as SEO or marketing. You’re better off spending your money with GoDaddy, for instance, since you’ll get more for your cash!