6 Best Portfolio Website Builders 2024 | Free & Paid (2024)

Professional portfolios are used for job interviews to advertise your previous successes and employment history. Used often in advertising roles, they need to strike a balance between features and design functionality. As well as images, they may also feature more quantifiable success measures like graphs and data sets, proving your competency for the role for potential employers.

Top Choice: Wix

Starting price: $17 per month
Read our full Wix Review

Wix is our best overall portfolio website builder and the number one choice if you need a portfolio when applying for jobs. It has over 800 professionally designed templates across multiple industries, giving you a great starting point for your portfolio. If you want more choice over your portfolio’s design, then Wix’s ADI feature uses artificial intelligence to design a personalized website for you – simply answer Wix’s short questionnaire.

Once you’ve chosen your template, the drag-and-drop editor lets you place the features you want – and trust us when we say there’s a lot. Wix has enough features and integrations to keep any website creator happy and it’s all in one place to boot. For portfolio users, this includes mixing images, videos, blog posts, and live data sets all on the same page. Better yet, you can always transition your portfolio site to an online store if you ever decide to start your own business – think of it like an investment, rather than a single-use site.

Additionally, employers like to see quantitative data to back up your portfolio (especially for marketing and advertising positions), and Wix is the only builder on this list that has in-built dataset integration, earning it the highest feature score in our research with 4.7 out of 5.

If you want more freedom with Wix’s design or are creating a web development portfolio and want to show off your skills, Wix Studio is a new platform that lets you design your portfolio using code. Getting your portfolio noticed on the web won’t be an issue either, as Wix has some of the best SEO capabilities and marketing on this list, letting you add a live social media feed like LinkedIn for instance, letting employers see your posts right on your portfolio.

What’s the Best Value Plan?

Wix has pricing for four premium plans:

• Light – $17 per month
• Core – $29 per month
• Business – $36 per month
• Business Elite – $159 per month

With a value-for-money score of 3.7 out of 5 in our research, Wix’s plans can be expensive for just a portfolio. These prices are the average monthly price for a year-long subscription paid in full, and the longer the subscription you pay, the less the monthly price. Wix does have a free plan, but you’ll have to contend with Wix banner ads and a Wix domain name, which can make you look unprofessional to potential employers.

Our recommendation is the Light plan. You can’t sell products on this plan, but for a professional portfolio, you probably won’t need to. Plus, we have a unique 10% off at checkout offer for our readers if they use TAKE10 at checkout.

Further Information:

• Take a look at the Best Wix Templates to see if you can find what you need

Alternative: GoDaddy – For Marketing Portfolios

Starting price: $10.99 per month
Read our full GoDaddy Review

If Wix’s prices for a professional template seem too high (money isn’t always flowing when job-hunting after all), then GoDaddy provides a great alternative solution for only $10.99 per month. It has many similarities to Wix, such as also having a free plan and using ADI software to build a personalized portfolio template.

However, these customized designs and premade templates aren’t on the level of Wix or Squarespace as they lack the same professionally-made aesthetic quality, and only score 3.4 out of 5 for design functionality in our research. There are also fewer features offered, including no SEO on the Basic plan. That being said, if you are short on time, GoDaddy may be the builder for you. GoDaddy’s editor is so streamlined that you can have a functional portfolio ready in under an hour!

If you do pay extra for SEO, you’ll be given some truly great marketing and SEO capabilities, like integrating Google’s Business messages and email automation. If you need marketing examples for a portfolio, you can track your own website’s success as proof of your abilities. Talk about two birds with one stone!

What’s the Best Value Plan?

GoDaddy’s pricing comes in four premium plans, plus its free plan:

• Basic – $10.99 per month
• Premium – $14.99 per month
• Commerce – $20.99 per month

We recommend the Premium plan. For only a few dollars more than the Basic plan, you get additional marketing capabilities, such as email marketing tools. This is crucial for showing your prowess in marketing and getting your portfolio seen by as many eyes as possible.

Further Information:

• Take a look at the Best Marketing Portfolio Templates

The most popular type of portfolio is a creative portfolio. This is a portfolio for presenting and curating your creative body of work to potential clients and employers, typically used by artists, photographers, animators, makeup artists, and models. For a creative portfolio, you need to pick a website builder that prioritizes design functionality and photo galleries.

Top Choice: Squarespace

Starting price: $16 per month
Read our full Squarespace Review

When creating a creative portfolio, your artistic talents should extend to the website design and follow a clear design philosophy that mirrors your artwork as a testament to your skills. Clients want to be impressed by your creativity, and no website builder has more impressive creative functionality than Squarespace, having some of the best-designed portfolio templates we’ve seen.

As well as the exquisitely designed templates, Squarespace has the best user experience score we’ve seen with 4.7 out of 5. Its drag-and-drop editor lets you place elements wherever you want, and from our own experience, it’s actually hard to make a bad-looking website. While not having true ADI like Wix or GoDaddy, Squarespace Blueprint is a feature that can build you a personal template for your portfolio simply by answering a few questions.

For most creative portfolios, you’re going to need plenty of images and galleries. Squarespace gives its subscribers unlimited storage across all of its plans. You also get an allowance of 30 minutes when it comes to video storage – and this is available from Squarespace’s cheapest plan for $16 per month (billed annually). You can get more video allowance by upgrading to pricier plans. Wix – our highest-rated provider for portfolios – starts you out with only a 2GB storage limit on its $17 per month plan.

What’s the Best Value Plan?

Squarespace’s pricing comes in four premium plans:

• Personal – $16 per month
• Business – $23 per month
• Commerce Basic – $27 per month
• Commerce Advanced – $49 per month

We recommend the Personal plan for creative portfolios. You’ll get unlimited storage to share as many images as you need, plus a 30-minute allowance for video. There’s a 14-day free trial you can use so you can test its features, and once you do decide, at Website Builder Expert we’re currently running a 10% discount for our readers if you use the code WBE10 at checkout.

Further Information:

• See who tops our list as the Best Website Builder for Artists.
• See how Squarespace manages in our Wix vs Squarespace article

Alternative: Pixpa – For Photography Portfolios

Starting price: $4 per month

Unlike the others on this list, Pixpa is a dedicated portfolio builder, with a special focus on photography portfolios. This means you can only build portfolios with it, and gain access to niche features, especially for photographers. You have access to over 25 options when it comes to gallery layouts, as well as exclusive features such as Progressive Image Loading, which reduces the slowdown that can occur on your site if you have too many high-quality images.

Pixpa also has over 150 mobile-friendly templates to choose from across industries like Wedding Photography and Fashion and to protect your images from potential plagiarists and thieves, you can use Pixpa’s watermark feature. However, if photos aren’t the main focus of your portfolio, then you’ll find Pixpa very featureless – its starting plan lacks features like blogging, a domain name, and custom fonts.

Additionally, for a portfolio website builder, it is disappointing that there’s even a limit on how many images you can upload (200 on the Basic plan). However, the prices are a lot more reasonable than Squarespace and Wix. Overall, Pixpa may be lacking some features, but for photography portfolios it’s still the best option as no other builder is as dedicated to a particular medium.

What’s the Best Value Plan?

Pixpa has four premium plans:

• Basic – $4 per month
• Creator – $7.50 per month
• Professional – $10 per month
• Advanced – $12.50 per month

We recommend the Creator plan for creative portfolio users – the image limit in the Basic plan holds it back from being able to show the full breadth of your creativity, while the Creator plan gives you unlimited images. The average price is also still lower than many on the list, and it serves as a great alternative to Squarespace.

Technical portfolios are like creative portfolios but are less reliant on images and video to show off your ability. Computer programmers and game designers need to be able to integrate their work into their site, which requires a more open-source website builder.

Top Choice: Webflow – For Computer Programmers

Starting price: $14 per month

Read our full Webflow Review

Webflow is a web development platform with over 3.5 million users worldwide. Instead of simplifying the website building process for beginners like Wix or Squarespace, Webflow is more similar to professional web development. As such, it can have a steep learning curve – but for those who want to show off their programming or web design skills, it’s perfect.

What makes it perfect for technical portfolios, especially for computer programmers and game developers, is that its advanced customization means you can integrate your skills or demos into your website as long as you can code it. You also get access to Webflow’s marketplace of user-created content. From templates to animations to features, users can share and download their creations with each other.

Compared to the novice-friendly Squarespace, Webflow is only really suited for users proficient in coding or possessing advanced design skills, as you do get more control over your site’s design. Webflow has over 2,000 templates to choose from across a spectrum of industries, with most of them being free. Webflow also has a free plan you can use, and unlike Wix, it has no ads, so you can use it and still be professional – though you’ll be limited by 1GB of storage and 1K visitors per month.

What’s the Best Value Plan?

Webflow has five premium plans, split between general and ecommerce plans – plus its free plan:

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

Depending on the size of your website, we recommend either the free or the Basic plan. They have low storage and traffic limitations, but if you’re using your portfolio just for job-hunting, then you’ll find it suitable. If you want a home for all your projects, you may need to upgrade your plan for bigger storage.

More Information:

• See how Webflow shapes up against Squarespace in our Squarespace vs Webflow head-to-head

Alternative: Hostinger – For Student Portfolios

Starting price: $2.99 per month + 3 months free (if you opt for the 48-month plan)

Read our full Hostinger Review

If you need a simple portfolio on the more budget-conscious side and don’t need to populate it with hundreds of images, then Hostinger could be the builder for you. For only $2.99 per month, you can have a perfectly functional portfolio website – and if you sign up now for a 48-month plan you can get the first three months free. Its handy suite of AI tools is also a huge time-saver if you’re balancing multiple projects at once.

Hostinger’s cheap starting price makes it perfect for student portfolios, since it’s a super affordable way to create an ad-free website that looks professional and can be displayed to professors, universities, or prospective employers.

It’s certainly not the most powerful builder on the market, with limited features compared to Wix and Squarespace (no email marketing tools or app market, for example), meaning we don’t recommend it for marketing a growing business. But if you need something simple and affordable then Hostinger is a smart choice.

Like Wix and GoDaddy, Hostinger uses AI to build you a personal template based on your answers to a questionnaire. In testing, Hostinger created our demo site in less than 30 seconds!

Hostinger’s ADI is newer than that of Wix and GoDaddy, but if you like AI website builders, Hostinger is a major forerunner. It has an AI assistant, AI meta tags, AI writer, AI logo maker, AI SEO Support, a really helpful AI chatbot, and even an AI Heatmap that tells you where your visitors have clicked.

Thanks to these features, Hostinger scored 4.5 out of 5 for user experience in our research, meaning it should definitely considered if you want an easy time building your portfolio.

What’s the Best Value Plan?

Hostinger has two paid plans:

• Premium Website Builder – $2.99 per month
• Business Website Builder–$3.99 per month

For a simple student portfolio, we recommend the Premium plan. It has everything you need to show off your skills while also being easy on the wallet. Readers can also take advantage of 10% off using code WBE at the checkout.

More Information:

• Keen to share your projects? Read our 15 Best Writer Websites for examples of fantastic writing websites

While we’ve shown you the best portfolio website builders, we understand you may still need a bit of direction on how to pick the right portfolio website builder for you. Your choice will differ depending on your needs, but we’ve broken it down into three essential goals that every portfolio should accomplish:

Showcasing – Are you able to show off your best work on your portfolio? Whether this is simply through images and video or specific integrations like with programs, your portfolio needs to be able to present your work in an engaging and professional manner – whatever the medium.

Storytelling – Are you able to tell a convincing story through your portfolio’s presentation? Whether you want to show how your achievements grew in past roles or your creative evolution as an artist, a portfolio website builder needs to have an easy-to-use editor you can use to present yourself in the best way possible.

Searchability – Are you able to be found online through your portfolio? The benefit of an online portfolio is that it exists for all to see, and with good SEO tools, your portfolio can be found by the right person at the right time, perhaps leading to opportunities you never saw coming.

Before we can confidently make any recommendations on the best portfolio builder we carry out in-depth testing on the website builders themselves. This is an important step – we want our articles and reviews to be data-led and based on experience with the platforms.

We analyze builders in six key areas and then give it a score out of five which averages out to an overall score. However because portfolios are different from online stores, so are their user demands. Therefore, different categories will have different weighting when it comes to their overall score to reflect the actual wants and needs of our readers.

Here are the unique weightings for our portfolio category:

• Design Functionality – 35%
• Website Features – 30%
• User Experience – 20%
• Help & Support – 5%
• Customer Score – 5%
• Value for Money – 5%

A portfolio can be used to present your body of work professionally to employers or just as a place to hold all of your previous work. Either way, you will need a website builder in which you can show your work and your own inherent creativity, but also build a presence and bring a certain level of professionalism.

For that reason, Wix is our best overall portfolio website builder. It allows you to make a portfolio that will impress your clients or employers in any industry and medium while also giving you fantastic freedom of choice in its creation. For the perfect mix of professionalism and creativity, Wix is our number-one choice in portfolios.

But there are many different options for portfolios, just like there are many different careers. If you are still unsure of what a portfolio should even look like, then read our guide on How to Make an Impressive Online Portfolio in 10 simple steps.

That’s all from us here. We wish you luck with your new portfolio!