If you have a side hustle or skills you want to promote, it’s worth keeping a portfolio online for other people to see what you’re capable of: you can mention the website at the end of your emails, on your business cards , in your social media profiles, and anywhere you can think of to show it off.
There are more of these portfolio builders than you might have realized, all ready to display your work online without needing any web coding experience. With their associated hosting costs, these services are rarely free, but they are a worthwhile investment for your business.
Below we’ve picked out some of the best options we’ve seen, and in some cases suggested the type of portfolio they might be best for. We’ve also tried to avoid some of the more common website and blog builders – WordPress, Tumblr, Medium – which are also an option.
Sized for almost anything
What immediately impresses me about Format is its versatility. The portfolio builder can help you whether you are a photographer, videographer, model, architect, illustrator, artist, designer or almost anything else. If you want to show something, Format can help you. There’s a wealth of templates to choose from and it doesn’t take long to get started.
You pay to use the site – starting at $10 a month – but for that you get a lot of features, including video hosting (so you don’t have to rely on YouTube or Vimeo) and ecommerce tools to sell directly from the portfolio you’ve created. There’s a free trial so you can see if you like Format before parting with cash.
Writer’s residency for writing
Sign up for your own page at Writer’s Residence and you get an online space where you can combine writing samples of all kinds: you can type text directly on the site, in a blog style, you can link to articles elsewhere and you can upload PDFs and images if you have had your work in print. Whatever format your work is in, you can show it here.
You can build your portfolio without any coding or complicated design processes, but there’s a lot of flexibility in terms of colors, fonts, a header image, and more. There is also a separate room for a CV. Your portfolio will cost you $9 a month, but you can try it for free for 30 days.
Portfolio box for Photography
Once you land on Portfoliobox, you can see the countless ways the site’s templates and layouts can be used to create a photography portfolio. You may think there aren’t many ways to display a grid of photos on a website, but Portfoliobox proves you wrong – and it’s great for designers and artists, too.
There are some nice extras here, including the ability to add watermarks to your images, a password-protected gallery feature if you want to keep certain photos off the public eye, and options to sell your work online. Prices start at $5.50 per month – you can sign up for free to see all the features, but you can’t go live without paying.
Carbon made for video
In addition to showing off your work on YouTube or Vimeo, Carbonmade is also the place to go if you want to create a videography portfolio – and it actually works great for any kind of visual creative professional. You can upload an unlimited number of videos, which of course comes at a cost: starting at $9 per month, after your first free trial is over.
You get a lot for your money. An intuitive layout designer that is easy to use and offers almost unlimited possibilities, built-in analytics, domain name management and much more. On the video side, there’s support for 4K resolutions, auto-play and auto-repeat content, and even background videos.
