17 Best Services for Creating an Online Portfolio Website 2024
The world can work in many strange ways, but it’s a fact that having your website can be so helpful and rewarding. These days, websites are platforms for sharing, creating, selling, and learning. It’s just like having a diary, though a website makes the diary experience more colorful and more exposed to an audience.
Anyone who does any creative work will know the word ‘portfolio’- your archive of the work you have finished within your choice of art. You can always accumulate all of your work and create a portfolio. Creating a portfolio is the first step towards a deeper exposure to your work.
At Colorlib, we are artists, too. We have our WordPress portfolio themes and take great pride in our accomplishments. The same goes for anyone else; whether it’s an individual or an agency, it’s impossible to guess where the next big sale will come from, but having an open space for your work that the public can access is a great starting point.
We also know how expensive and technical to start your website. So much goes into finding a domain name, launching a website, and then finding a design. That can cost a lot of money. With the evolution of modern technology, several businesses have launched in the last decade offering a solution — platforms that can help creatives to start their website with just a few clicks. The selection of platforms you’ll see here today was hand-picked and thoroughly analyzed to help you find the best portfolio-building platform for any needs.
1. Wix
Still, with a careful selection of themes, it is possible to achieve the desired result of launching a portfolio website, whether for a photographer or a web designer. Wix focuses on the broader spectrum of website building. These guys allow you to create a site of literally any kind. It accommodates even the most peculiar requests they get from creatives, making this platform a great choice to create your portfolio.
At the top of the features lists, we find mobile device compatibility, a drag-and-drop website editor for making personalization changes, a range of over five hundred unique templates built by leading design talent, a selection of forty different gallery widgets to showcase your portfolio with, video and audio support, and many other features. Photographers and designers who are serious about their work and wish to promote it and sell it can also utilize Wix’s eCommerce and Business solutions to get the job done.
Here are live Wix portfolio examples to see what this website builder can do.
2. Squarespace
Squarespace was launched 20 years ago. It was known as a ‘meh’ platform for building a free website for the first couple of years. There wasn’t much traction happening, and people were still skeptical about the potential of such free website building platforms, though for Squarespace, this changed quickly, as soon as modern web development became an actual thing, Squarespace began to attract investors and more employees to work on what’s most important to website creators — the ability to control design, and to have a vast array of choices for designs too. Nowadays, Squarespace excels in both categories, providing webmasters with a fully adaptable website editor, including a library of designs.
Two library categories are for photographers and artists, a set of templates and features that allow creative minds to create stunning websites based on their need to enlist their photography or work portfolios. There are seven portfolio templates to choose from, all adaptable to your edits and design requirements. All this comes at a cost, though severely cheaper than doing all the website building work yourself.
Here are Squarespace portfolio examples to see what others have created with it.
3. Weebly
You do not need to be a pro to build a stunning and impactful portfolio website. Thanks to a tool like Weebly, you have everything right in front of your eyes. Of course, you do no need to know how to do code and design work. None of that is necessary when working with powerful and highly practical Weebly. The tool brings you all the necessary page layouts and components to mix and match. Indeed, do not forget to implement your creative touch to it and personalize your up-and-coming portfolio page. Keep in mind, you can have a full-blown online presence ready to go live in little to no time.
That said, you manage and maintain your website from the comfort of one account. Moreover, Weebly also takes care of hosting and domain name for you. Also, if you ever need additional assistance, you can reach out to the professional support team, and they will be happy to guide you.
4. Weblium
Instead of relying on 3rd-party platforms, make yourself appear even more professional than you are with a portfolio website. Creating one is a child’s play with Weblium. After all, this page builder rocks everything to take to your total advantage and shine online. Spread the word out, expose your work, win over more clients, and take your business to new heights. Yes, all thanks to a page you are about to forge with Weblium.
In the kit, you will find a collection of over 250 predefined templates, all creative and very appealing to the eye. Moreover, Weblium’s AI helps you with the entire process, saving you even more time and energy, which you can instead invest in marketing yourself to a new clientele. Amazing styling functions, tons of available images, built-in integrations, and handy marketing tools- all this and more awaits every Weblium user.
5. Viewbook
Viewbook is an up-and-coming portfolio platform for photographers. Dozens of high-grade photographers have already established Viewbook as their home platform for publishing photos and generating buzz around them. It has grown on photographers who are also actively using Adobe Lightroom. Viewbook provides a special plugin that allows photographers to upload their newest pictures to their portfolio directly from Adobe Lightroom. Everything happens through Viewbook’s intuitive and adaptable platform that lets anyone launch a photo portfolio in a matter of minutes. All your photos are sent to Cloud instantly, and you don’t have to worry about losing any of your data, as the site’s policy strictly protects it. A feature that you won’t find elsewhere! All designs adapt to devices like iPhone and iPad but will work flawlessly on any device regardless of its model.
6. Fabrik
Fabrik’s portfolio platform emphasizes what’s most important for getting your photos exposed — sleek design with modern features to help polish the presentation of the portfolio. Suppose you are a filmmaker, photographer, designer, artist, or work in an agency. In that case, Fabrik will significantly complement your photographic passion and allow you to build portfolio websites that will feel unique and stand out from the crowd.
Ultimately, we want our portfolio websites to be professional, appealing and emphasizing our content. The platform adapts to your design needs quickly. All themes (six of them) come with carefully engineered features that allow you to change the design’s layout, colors, and objects to best work with how you wish to present your portfolio. All themes allow you to use your custom HTML and CSS and blog posts. You can also schedule your blog post for publication at a later time.
7. Format
Welcome to Format, a beautiful portfolio platform built specifically for creatives, photographers, and illustration artists who want to showcase their amazing work professionally. With 30 active employees, Format works day and night to help artists create portfolio websites that they will fall in love with. Format themes come with a selection of different page layouts, so you can best adapt to your current photo style and whatever layout preferences you have on your own.
Real-time editing from the front-end is also possible, with the addition of customizing the CSS and HTML of your designs. Want to give your clients access to your work? The format has a special platform just for that purpose, to help you streamline your work directly to your clients from within your portfolio. All work can be copyrighted through watermarks, so you never have to worry about someone taking what is not theirs.
8. Carbonmade
Carbonmade from an organic home project into a full-scale portfolio platform home to more than one million unique portfolios, with several active and ongoing projects. These guys have figured out the way towards creative artists hearts and provide a great selection of themes that are supported by an even greater selection of features — all themes can be personalized to your liking, navigation for each theme is customizable, there’s high-priority support available, projects can be archived and reinstated later, support for video content and also audio, you can use your custom domain name, password protect your content individually, and even gain access to detailed stats about your homepage and how it is performing.
9. WordPress
You might have heard of this name before — WordPress! It’s the most famous blogging platform on the planet, with hardly any alternatives coming close to its market share. It’s a beast for blogging, but also business solutions. Aside from the self-hosted WordPress package, there’s also WordPress.com — a free platform that enables anyone to launch their blog within seconds.
We recommend WordPress.com as a portfolio platform because it offers a choice of themes built to serve as portfolio templates. The other thing is that WordPress.com connects you with millions of bloggers, who can find your published work using keywords or tags, and this can quickly reinforce your talent by having people across the planet leave comments, and feedback for your work. It’s also one of those platforms where new opportunities could spark from, without investing any work into the marketing process.
10. IM Creator
IM Creator is another remarkable website builder for creating online portfolios without breaking a sweat. With millions of sites built already, you know that IM Creator is a serious competitor. It is an alternative that everyone will have a blast using. Whether you build your first website or a senior web developer with IM Creator, you win the game either way.
What’s also worth noting that you need not worry about technicalities. Your website will be responsive, cross-browser compatible, fast loading, and SEO-ready. You can even sell your creative works online, thanks to the integration of the eCommerce segment. There are three different pricing packages available, starting for free. Finally, if you need to gain inspiration, check out a few of the creators out there who are actively employing the potential of IM Creator.
11. Jimdo
Jimdo is a solution for creating a portfolio website that will amaze everyone. The software takes care of just about anything and everything your heart desires. Along with building a page, Jimdo handles web hosting and domains. Your site will also automatically optimize for mobile and desktop devices, retina screens, popular web browsers, and search engines. You do not need to learn anything when working with Jimdo, as the process is effortless and self-explanatory. No matter how meticulous your taste, with Jimdo you will build your dream portfolio website like a champ.
Put all your masterpieces on display and reach a broader audience with your newly established webspace. You can choose between the portfolios you want to bring to fruition and go from there. Never lack a solid page again, thanks to the convenient Jimdo.
12. Dunked
Dunked has received a lot of praise from artists who have managed to land new jobs and opportunities by building their site with Dunked. We feel that the reason for that is best attributed to the fact that although Dunked makes it very easy to build your portfolio, it doesn’t forget important features and aspects of managing a website: fast and reliable hosting, analytics integration, your domain name, search engine optimization, content protection, and great support behind the platform are what makes Dunked such a wise choice for artists, designers, photographers, and other creatives who wish to spread the word about their work, without investing thousands of dollars into hiring an external developer to do all the work for them. Dunked constantly save your work in the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about losing any of your projects.
13. PhotoShelter
PhotoShelter’s business model isn’t just about helping creatives to create their digital portfolios, PhotoShelter also works hard in the area of business, helping creatives to sell their work directly from the portfolios they have built using PhotoShelter. This cloud-based platform lets anyone quickly create a portfolio website and join an existing community of over eight thousand photographers creating, sharing, and selling their work with huge success.
The sales features come in large quantities. You can choose to sell your products from HCC, AdoramaPix, EZPrints, BWC, and Loxley Colour (UK) or create your standardized versions on your portfolio. The fees are surprisingly low, without ever surpassing ten percent per sale. It also grants you shopping cart access. The creators designed this card specifically for selling photographs. PayPal and Stripe are valid payment methods you can accept for your work.
14. Krop
Krop has two different business modules tied to it. The first is an online job board for experienced creative artists who wish to work in leading companies. The developers created this for people leading a certain movement. The second is a platform for launching your online portfolio. Both complement each other without having to think twice. Web designers, graphic designers, and photographers are welcome to use Krop. It can rapidly get a production-ready portfolio website up and running. Free themes, social media and SEO tools, gallery features, internal resume builder, and exposure to the public Krop directory where companies constantly look for new and exciting talent, such as yourself.
15. ALLYOU
Over fifty thousand creative minds use ALLYOU as their trustworthy and highly reliable platform for hosting their portfolio. This number speaks volumes when you consider how niche this market can be. It also shows how difficult the process of acquiring customers truly is. ALLYOU does this not because of its marketing powers but because it has built a product that talks to customers. It provides sophisticated features and tools that enable a much more relaxed process for uploading your portfolio items. You can then expose them for the world to see.
It’s a professional online portfolio tool for graphic designers, photographers, artists, stylists and many more. ALLYOU enables everyone to set up a fabulous website in just a few clicks. The intuitive front-end editor lets you drag and drop your website into place. You need to choose a template to get started and use the various customization options to create your unique design.
16. Adobe Portfolio
It’s the most established digital photography firm in our little world! Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash, and so many more household names have come from this amazing company! Their product range has greatly increased (but also decreased). Not too long ago, Adobe began offering their platform where designers can start their portfolio websites.
Feature list is reasonable. All Adobe Portfolio users can access the Adobe Typekit (thousands of premium fonts that cannot be accessed outside of Typekit). There are five layouts to choose from, and all your work is directly synchronized with your Behance (one of the leading design websites) account, helping you be more productive as you continue to create great content. You also get a live-editing platform to help you make and see design changes in real-time. Moreover, it includes a feature to edit all design aspects to your taste.
17. Pixpa
Pixpa is an easy yet powerful DIY website builder designed for creative professionals. It enables creative pros to build a professional website easily and quickly without coding knowledge. It has 20+ beautiful, customizable, responsive themes and a clean and intuitive interface. Pixpa stands out from other website builders, focusing on simplicity, flexibility, and powerful editing features.
Building your website on Pixpa is fun, with 10+ layouts to showcase your work. The drag-and-drop PageBuilder and plug-and-play content blocks enable you to build your website exactly how you want. No wonder over 12,000+ creatives worldwide use Pixpa to power their online presence.
Wondering how these portfolio website builders are stacking against each other? Here you can see the entire picture of website builder market share.
The Best Platform for Creating a Portfolio
No one knew what the web would look like in the late ’90s. It was all just starting, and engineers were learning about new technologies and the evolution of JavaScript. Much of what we know and are out there is still very new.
It’s an exciting time to be alive in the technology field. We look forward to the evolution of website builders like the ones we covered. Portfolios are the kind of websites you don’t need to hire a designer for, there are plenty of portfolio templates in the free market that your choices are unlimited. Please let us know how you liked these platforms and whether you have found one. We hope you will enjoy the experience of using one of the tools/platforms on the list. We would LOVE to look at the portfolio you’ve come up with.
What is with the personal photos ? how do you have a creative job online getting ridiculed and cyberstalked.
Alex,
No one forces you to share private photos unless you want to do so. Thes online portfolio sites are about sharing your work and not personal photos.
Online sites are used for business nowadays, it’s helping small businessman to promote their own products by free. Thanks for posting this great blog!
Great list! I’d add Exhibit (getexhibit.com) to this too. They are newer, but have a super easy process for creating a pro portfolio.
All these stupid website names and referencing photos is why im not getting on with anything nor can i do anything online since Tim Berner Lee or Google started this, even Duncan Jones and Joseph Levitt who should have been approached by the London police participated in this.
None are free… I am building a FOREVER FREE site backed by the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC. A platform for artists and designers, not for investors.
Then use WordPress or some other self-hosted platform. Never depend on hosted platform which is free because they will charge money eventually or you will run out of free resources at some point anyway. Self-hosted is the only option if you are looking for free/low-cost solution.
Great content. I use a platform called Showject. It’s free for the first 3 projects. Very easy to share with everyone.