If you have a side hustle or skills that you want to promote, it’s worthwhile to keep a portfolio online so other people can see what you’re capable of: You can list the website at the end of your emails, on your business cards, in your social media profiles, and anywhere else you can think to feature it.
There are more of these portfolio builders than you might have realized, all ready and waiting to get your work displayed online without you needing to have any web coding experience. With their associated hosting costs, these services are rarely free, but it’s 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 that they might be best for. We’ve also tried to stay clear of some of the more general-purpose website and blog builders—WordPress, Tumblr, Medium—which are also an option.
Format for Almost Anything
What instantly impresses me about Format is its versatility. The portfolio builder can help you whether you’re a photographer, videographer, model, architect, illustrator, artist, designer, or almost anything else—if you have something to show off, Format can help. There are a wealth of templates to pick from, and getting up and running doesn’t take long at all.
You pay to use the site—from $10 a month—but you get a lot of features for that, including video hosting (so you don’t have to rely on YouTube or Vimeo,) and ecommerce tools for making sales right from the portfolio you’ve created. There is a free trial, so you can see whether you like Format first before parting with any money.
Writers Residence 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 types: You can type text straight into the site, blog-style, you can link out to articles elsewhere, and you can upload PDFs and images if you’ve had your work in print. Whatever format your work is in, you can show it off here.
You can put together your portfolio without any coding or complicated design processes to wade through, but there’s lots of flexibility in terms of colors, fonts, a header image, and more. There’s also a separate space for a résumé. Your portfolio is going to cost you $9 a month, but you can try it out for free for 30 days.
The Writer’s Residence will show off your written work.
Writer’s Residence via David Nield
Portfoliobox for Photography
As soon as you land on Portfoliobox, you can see the numerous ways that the site’s templates and layouts can be used to craft a photography portfolio. You might not think there are all that many ways to display a grid of photos on a website, but Portfoliobox will prove 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 pictures away from the public, and options for selling your work online. Prices start at $5.50 a month—you can sign up for free to see all of the features, but you won’t be able to go live without paying.
Carbonmade for Video
Besides just showing off your work on YouTube or Vimeo, you can also turn to Carbonmade if you want to make 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 with a cost: From $9 a month, after your initial free trial is over.
You do get plenty back for your money. An intuitive layout designer that’s straightforward to use and offers an almost unlimited number of possibilities, built-in analytics, domain name management, and much more. On the video side, there’s support for 4K resolutions, auto-playing and auto-looping content, and even background videos.
