How to Create a Portfolio Website (2026): 12 Platforms and What You Actually Own - PT

Zerply spent sixteen years hosting portfolios for film and animation crews. Em 28 setembro 2026 às 16:00 UTC, it stops working. The closing notice asks people to request their export by 21 setembro, because staff are processing those by hand. It also asks them to choose where their old profile URL should point afterwards: LinkedIn, IMDb, Framerate or Vimeo. read.cv ended the same way: anunciado 17 janeiro 2025, deleted 16 Maio 2025, and the domain now answers old links with a bare HTTP 402. Your work is not the fragile part of a portfolio website. The address is.

Resposta rápida: Already paying for Lightroom or Photoshop? Adobe Portfolio comes with it at no extra charge, which makes the USD 11.99/month Lightroom (1tb) plan the cheapest real portfolio here. Photographers who need proofing and print sales should start with Pixpa Basic at USD 5.40/month, renovando em USD 7.20. Anyone who wants the site to outlive the platform should run WordPress on their own hosting, or GitHub Pages for free if Git holds no fear. Avoid Format Basic: 70 images total is not a portfolio.

Última revisão: setembro 2026. Prices read from each platform’s own pricing page or page data on 12 setembro 2026.

How This Guide Was Researched

Two questions decided everything below, and neither one is “which builder is easiest”.

The first question: what does the platform do to your images? A portfolio is photographs and screenshots. So every platform here was checked against its own help documentation for upload size caps, pixel ceilings, automatic re-compression, and the format it actually serves to visitors. That produced the comparison in the next section, and it disqualified nothing, because the limits only matter relative to what you shoot.

The second question: what happens when you stop paying? Export capability was read from each vendor’s own documentation, not from review summaries. Where a vendor states plainly that no export exists, that sentence is quoted, because it is more honest than anything a comparison page will tell you.

Prices were read on 12 setembro 2026. Several of these sites inject prices with JavaScript and hand a blank page to simpler tools. So the Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, Format and Pixpa figures came from rendered pages, or from the structured pricing data inside the pages themselves. Where an advertised price is an introductory rate, the renewal is calculated and shown next to it. Two platforms publish enough detail to calculate that multiplier exactly, and both turned out to renew higher than their headline suggests.

What was excluded: any platform we could not confirm was still trading in September 2026, and any plan requiring more than a four-year prepayment. What was not done: no speed testing, no synthetic load tests, and no hands-on build. Where performance is discussed, the thresholds come from Google’s published definitions, not from our own measurements. Pixieset, SmugMug and Zenfolio were considered and left out, because they are client-delivery businesses that include a website rather than portfolio platforms as such.

What a Portfolio Site Has to Do in 2026

Start with the work, not the platform. The most common failure in a portfolio is not an ugly template. It’s twenty projects of uneven quality, where the weakest one sets the client’s expectation.

Three to six projects is the range most working reviewers and hiring guides converge on. Fewer than three reads as thin. More than six and nobody reaches the end. Each one needs the brief, your role, what you actually did, and the outcome. “Função” matters more than people think: on team projects, a reviewer who cannot tell which parts were yours will assume the least flattering answer.

Then the unglamorous pages. An about page with a real photograph of you. A contact method that is not only a form, because forms silently fail and people don’t chase them. A logo and a short tagline. You can produce both in an afternoon with one of the free logo makers we tested, and several now export SVG without charging. One or two short client quotes help as well, with a real name and company attached, because an anonymous testimonial reads as invented.

Two things that earn their place in 2026. Password-protected pages, if any of your best work sits under NDA, because the alternative is leaving it out entirely. And a plain-text list of what you do, in the words a client would use. That is what both search engines and AI answer engines read when deciding whether you match a query.

The Image Limits Nobody Checks Before Signing Up

Here is the part every general builder comparison skips, and it decides more portfolios than template quality does.

Upload caps vary by a factor of 25 across these platforms. Format accepts 100 MB per image and takes RAW files from Sony, Canon, Leica and Hasselblad. Webflow caps images at 4 MB, the tightest here by a wide margin, which a single uncompressed TIFF will exceed before you have finished the first project. Squarespace fica em 20 MB with a 120-megapixel ceiling. Wix permite 50 MB, Adobe Portfolio 50 MB, Cargo 25 MB, Cartão 16 MB.

Every one of these platforms resizes your work, and only some admit it. Squarespace generates up to seven widths from 100px to 2500px and serves WebP automatically. Wix converts uploads to AVIF and states that AVIF runs about 50% menor que WebP. Framer converts to AVIF at quality 80 with a WebP fallback, and never upscales. Pixpa is the most aggressive here, and the most transparent about it. Everything is scaled into a 2560 x 3840 bounding box. Changing the quality setting reapplies retroactively to images you uploaded months ago.

Webflow is the outlier, and the difference is worth understanding before you commit. Its AVIF and WebP conversion is manual, batched, and destructive: the documentation says the original asset files will be replaced. Framer does the same job on upload, automaticamente, por menos dinheiro. Two platforms sold to the same designers, opposite answers.

Five platforms never state what format they serve at all: Adobe Portfolio, Format, Pixpa, Cargo and Carrd. Four of those document that they process your images without saying into what. For a photography portfolio, that silence is the finding.

Why does any of this matter commercially? Google’s thresholds are public and unchanged. Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 segundos, Interaction to Next Paint at 200 ms ou menos, Cumulative Layout Shift at 0.1 ou abaixo. Each is measured at the 75th percentile of real page loads. AVIF now reaches about 95% of browsers and WebP about 97%, so a platform serving neither is leaving weight on the page for no reason. One practical rule from Chrome’s own October 2025 orientação: never put loading=”preguiçoso” on your hero or first gallery image, because the browser then discovers your biggest image last.

Self-hosted WordPress has a second ceiling that catches photographers out. Desde a versão 5.3, core downsizes anything over 2560px on the long edge and serves a file marked “-escalado”, keeping your original in place. On top of that sits your host’s PHP upload limit. SiteGround fixes shared plans at 256 MB and won’t let you raise it. Kinsta sets 128 MB, Bluehost 50 MB. Então um 100 MB TIFF that sails past Format’s cap dies on Bluehost before it lands.

Adobe Portfolio – Best if you already pay Adobe

You may already own a portfolio site and not know it. Adobe Portfolio is bundled with the Creative Cloud photography plans. Adobe’s own comparison page lists it against both tiers, with the line “Build your own website and share your best work.” The cheaper qualifying plan is Lightroom (1tb) às US$ 11,99/mês. Fotografia (1tb), which adds Photoshop, is USD 19.99/month. Both are annual plans billed monthly.

Run the comparison and it is uncomfortable for the specialists. Format charges USD 17/month at renewal for the portfolio alone, no photo editor attached. If you already subscribe to Lightroom, your marginal cost for a portfolio site is zero, and that is a number no other platform here can match.

What you get is narrow but sound. Up to five separate websites per account, each with its own domain and password. Images up to 50 MB, with Adobe generating multiple renditions and serving at most 3840px wide. Per-page passwords are pitched by Adobe for exactly the case that matters here: sharing different work with different clients or recruiters.

Os limites são reais. There is no store, no cart and no print sales documented anywhere. There is no proofing workflow. The lightbox is a site-wide toggle that ships switched off, and the layout options stop at responsive photo grids. Adobe also publishes no storage figure for the site itself, so treat the 1 TB in the plan name as Lightroom cloud storage, which is what it is.

Prós

• Zero marginal cost if you already subscribe
• Five separate sites, each with its own domain
• Per-page passwords aimed at client and recruiter sharing
• 50 MB uploads, comfortably above Webflow and Carrd

Contras

• No ecommerce or print sales of any kind
• No export, no self-hosting, no code access
• Lightbox off by default, few layout choices

Preços: included with Lightroom (1tb) at USD 11.99/month or Photography (1tb) por US$ 19,99/mês. No standalone subscription exists. The domain is bought separately from a registrar; connecting it is free and SSL is automatic.

Melhor para: photographers and designers already inside the Adobe subscription. Pular se: you want to sell anything.

Veredito: If Lightroom is already on your card, build here first and spend the saved money on the domain. If you need to sell prints, this is the wrong tool and Pixpa does that job from USD 5.40/month. If you want to leave one day with your files, go to WordPress instead, because Portfolio offers no exit at all.

Squarespace – Best design quality per dollar

Start with the exit, because it is worse than its reputation. Squarespace exports a single WordPress XML file. Its own support documentation lists what does not come with you: portfolio pages, album pages, cover pages, index pages, blocos de produtos, audio, vídeo, rascunhos, page-specific headers and footers, style settings and custom CSS. Leia essa lista novamente. Portfolio pages are the exact page type a portfolio is built from.

What you buy is the best template quality here, and unusually generous media handling. There is no published cap on total image storage, unlimited bandwidth on every tier, and automatic WebP delivery. Caps are per container instead: 250 images per gallery section, 60 projects per portfolio page.

Execuções básicas USD 19/month billed annually, que é USD 228 um ano, or twelve times what Carrd charges for a one-page site. Core is USD 29, Mais dólares americanos 49, USD avançado 99. Custos de faturamento mensal em USD 25, 39, 65 e 139. Video is metered in minutes and Basic gets only 30 deles.

Two dated facts a buyer needs. Squarespace raised annual prices by up to 26% in early July 2026, moving Core from USD 23 para USD 29 por mês. It published no announcement, and existing subscribers meet the new rate at their next renewal. Separadamente, a partir de fevereiro 2026 the old Personal, Business and Commerce plans closed to new signups. Any guide still quoting a “Plano pessoal” price is describing something you can’t buy.

The proofing gap matters for photographers. Squarespace has password-protected pages, one shared password per page, sessions expiring after four hours. It has no client proofing, no favouriting, no download tracking. Photographers routinely bolt on a second subscription such as Pixieset to cover that, which changes the real monthly cost.

Prós

• Strongest templates here with no design work required
• No published image storage cap, Largura de banda ilimitada
• Automatic WebP on every plan
• Password-protected pages on all tiers

Contras

• Exportação excludes portfolio pages and all styling
• No proofing, so photographers pay twice
• Lightbox works on grid layouts only, not slideshows

Preços: Basic USD 19/month annually (US$ 228/ano), Núcleo USD 29, Mais dólares americanos 49, USD avançado 99. Flat list pricing rather than a promo, though the list itself rose in July 2026. Domínio personalizado gratuito no primeiro ano em planos anuais. 14-dia de julgamento, and refunds are 14 days on annual plans only.

Melhor para: service businesses and designers who want it to look expensive without hiring anyone. Pular se: you might move later.

Veredito: Buy Squarespace when design quality closes the sale and you expect to stay for years. If you are a photographer who needs proofing and prints, Pixpa does both natively for a fraction of the cost. If the possibility of leaving matters at all, WordPress is the only answer on this page that keeps your layout.

Format – Best proofing, worst entry tier

Seventy images. That is the total Format Basic allows you to publish, across the whole site, por USD 120 um ano. Pixpa Basic allows 200 por USD 64.80 in the first year. The comparison is not close, and the 70-image ceiling is the single most important number Format publishes.

Look past Basic and the platform is the strongest photographer workflow here. Uploads run to 100 MB per image, the highest cap in this guide, with RAW support for Sony ARW, Canon CR2 and CR3, Leica DNG and Hasselblad 3FR. Client galleries handle favouriting, email-gated viewing and download limits you set by longest edge. Pro raises the image ceiling to 1,500 e adiciona 100 GB de armazenamento; Pro Plus is unlimited images with 1 tb.

Now the pricing trap, which Format’s own page shows if you look at the struck-through numbers. Pro advertises USD 12/month billed annually against a regular rate of USD 17. Pro Plus advertises USD 15 contra USD 26. Those are introductory rates covering the first year only, applied with codes at checkout, tão Pro renews at 1.42x and Pro Plus at 1.73x. Format’s page states the codes must be redeemed by 30 setembro 2026 às 11:59 PM. PST, which gives this a deadline rather than a permanent discount.

The store is commission-free and self-fulfilled, que corta nos dois sentidos: you keep the full price and you also pack the boxes. Digital downloads are capped at 100 MB and one file per product. Basic cannot sell at all and gets no custom domain in year one.

Prós

• 100 MB uploads with genuine RAW support
• Proofing, favouriting and download controls built in
• Commission-free store on Pro and above
• 14-day trial with no card required

Contras

• Básico limitado em 70 images total
• Advertised annual rates expire after year one
• Text and hosted video cannot be exported

Preços: Basic USD 10/month annually (US$ 120/ano, the only tier whose price does not move). Pró USD 12 first year then USD 17 (USD 204/year). Pro Plus USD 15 então USD 26 (USD 312/year). O faturamento mensal é em USD 14, 24 e 36. Format’s terms of service state that no refunds are provided on cancellation, which contradicts help-desk material describing a 30-day window, so treat the stricter document as binding.

Melhor para: working photographers who deliver client galleries and want one subscription. Pular se: USD 204 a year is above your budget.

Veredito: Take Format Pro if proofing and delivery are part of how you get paid, and budget the USD 17 renewal rather than the USD 12 título. If you want the same workflow cheaper, Pixpa includes proofing on every tier and costs less at renewal. If you only display work and never send galleries, you are overpaying here and Adobe Portfolio does the display job for nothing extra.

Pixpa – Best value for photographers

Where Format gates proofing and selling behind a USD 204 renovação, Pixpa puts client galleries, favouriting and a commission-free store on all four tiers, incluindo o mais barato. That is the whole argument for it, and it holds up.

It is also the one platform here that publishes its own discount mechanics clearly enough to calculate the real price. Pixpa’s pricing page spells it out. Yearly and 2-yearly plans “include a 25% intro discount on the first billing period and renew automatically at standard pricing thereafter”. Yearly then sits at 20% off the monthly rate. Basic bills monthly at USD 9. Twenty percent off is USD 7.20. O USD anunciado 5.40 is that figure minus the intro discount. assim Basic renews at USD 7.20, a 1.33x step up, and the same arithmetic applies to every tier.

Image handling is the most tightly specified in this guide. Everything is resized into a 2560 x 3840 pixel box. Four quality levels are available, and changing the setting reapplies to images already uploaded. Storage of 3 GB on Basic sounds small until you read what it meters: originals in client and ecommerce galleries only, not the web versions on your site. Basic is separately capped at 200 imagens; higher tiers are unlimited.

Pixpa is also the only platform here that names a print lab, WHCC, alongside self-fulfilment and custom vendor routes. Gallery control runs deeper than anywhere else: mais que 20 layouts, plus lightbox settings for maximum resolution, zoom behaviour on desktop and mobile, and slideshow timing.

The exit is the flat no. Pixpa’s help centre states that its websites “can only be hosted on our servers” e “cannot be downloaded or hosted elsewhere”. You can retrieve your uploaded images and your order data. The site itself stays.

Prós

• Proofing and 0% commission selling on cada nível
• Named print lab integration, not just merch drop-shipping
• 15-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee
• Deepest gallery and lightbox controls here

Contras

• Advertised yearly price is an intro rate, renewing 1.33x higher
• No export of any kind, stated plainly in their own docs
• Básico limitado em 200 images and no custom domain

Preços: Basic USD 5.40/month first year then USD 7.20, Creator USD 9 então USD 12, Dólar profissional 12 então USD 16, USD avançado 15 então USD 20, all billed yearly. Monthly rates are USD 9, 15, 20 e 25. Free custom domain for year one on every plan except Basic.

Melhor para: photographers who sell prints and send client galleries on a tight budget. Pular se: you want the option to migrate.

Veredito: Pixpa is the best-value photography platform here, and Creator at USD 12 renewal is the tier most working photographers should buy. If you shoot large files and need RAW uploads above 50 MB, Format’s 100 MB ceiling beats it. If you ever intend to move the site elsewhere, neither of them will help you, and self-hosted WordPress is the only route that does.

Wix – Best free plan to test with

Two gigabytes. That is what Wix Light gives you for USD 17/month, and for a portfolio it is the number that ends the conversation. Core at USD 29 salta para 50 GB, Negócios em USD 39 para 100 GB, Business Elite at USD 159 para ilimitado. Squarespace publishes no image storage cap at all and costs USD 19 na entrada, which makes Light poor value for image-heavy work.

Wix earns its place on two other counts. The permanent free plan, 500 MB and a Wix subdomain, is the most usable way to test a builder properly before paying. And the image pipeline is quietly excellent. Uploads convert to AVIF automatically, which Wix states is roughly 50% menor que WebP. Você consegue 50 MB per image and no published pixel ceiling.

The Pro Gallery is a real gallery system with a lightbox through Expand Mode and built-in image protection, which matters more here than in a general builder comparison. One caveat on password protection. Wix warns that protecting a page also stops search engines crawling and indexing it. NDA work stays private, and that page contributes nothing to search.

The exit is the hardest on this page. Wix offers no code export in any form. Texto, images and blog posts can be saved manually. Projeto, layout and functionality can’t leave.

Prós

• Automatic AVIF conversion on upload
• 50 MB per image, generous for a mainstream builder
• Permanent free plan for genuine testing
• Unlimited bandwidth on every paid plan

Contras

• Light gives only 2 GB de armazenamento
• No export of any kind, the strictest lock-in here
• Password-protecting a page also deindexes it

Preços: Light USD 17/month, Núcleo USD 29, USD empresarial 39, Elite Empresarial USD 159, tudo cobrado anualmente. Flat list pricing, não é uma promoção. Free domain for one year on every paid plan. 14-janela de reembolso do dia.

Melhor para: people who want to try three designs this weekend without paying. Pular se: your portfolio is photography-heavy and you planned to buy Light.

Veredito: Use the free plan to find out whether you like building at all. Then buy Core at USD 29 rather than Light, Porque 2 GB won’t hold a photography portfolio. If design quality is what you are buying, Squarespace does it better for USD 19. If you want the AVIF pipeline without Wix’s lock-in, Framer converts images the same way and costs USD 10.

Webflow – Best code export, worst upload cap

Four megabytes per image. For a platform aimed at professional designers, that is a startling number, e isso é 25 times tighter than Format’s 100 MB. Anyone uploading photography at print resolution will hit it immediately.

What Webflow sells instead is an exit, and it is the only real one among the hosted builders. Code export is a Workspace feature, not a site feature, which changes the arithmetic most write-ups get wrong. Workspace Core costs USD 19/month billed yearly and lists code export among its features. If you export and host the files somewhere else, aquele dólar 19 is all you pay. If you want Webflow hosting and export rights together, it is Premium at USD 25 plus Core at USD 19, so USD 44/month. Export also drops CMS content, so a project collection does not survive the trip.

Site plans start free on a webflow.io subdomain with 2 static pages. Basic is USD 15/month billed yearly with a custom domain, 300 static pages and no CMS at all. A blog or a project collection needs Premium at USD 25.

One dated change to know: Webflow merged its CMS and Business site plans into a single Premium plan, anunciado 13 Maio 2026. Existing sites move at their next renewal from 29 Junho 2026, and legacy accounts from 16 novembro 2026. CMS allowances rose sharply in the process. Bandwidth for sites coming from the old Business plan fell from 100 GB para 50 GB, which is the part the announcement is quietest about.

Image variants are generated only above 3200px, and they skip rich-text images, background images and anything imported by CSV or API. The AVIF and WebP conversion tool is manual and replaces your originals.

Prós

• Real code export with no attribution required
• Export costs USD 19/month alone if you self-host
• Lightbox element ships built in
• Unique password per page on Site plans

Contras

• 4 MB image cap, tightest in this guide
• Export drops all CMS content
• Basic has no CMS, so a blog costs USD 25

Preços: Site plans Starter free, Basic USD 15/month, Premium USD 25/month, faturado anualmente. Workspace Core USD 19/month yearly for export. Flat list pricing with no promo step-up. Annual plans are billed upfront and are not generally refundable, with a 14-day statutory right in the EU, EEA, UK and Turkey.

Melhor para: designers who want to own the HTML and can work with a class-based editor. Pular se: you upload full-resolution photographs.

Veredito: Buy Webflow when leaving with your markup is worth USD 19/month, and plan to compress every image before it goes near the asset panel. If you want the same design freedom without the second bill, Framer is USD 10 and converts images for you, though it never lets you leave. If photography at full resolution is the point, Format’s 100 MB ceiling makes this the wrong platform entirely.

Framer – Best canvas, ships no gallery

For a tool sold to designers building portfolios, the omission is remarkable: Framer ships no gallery, no slideshow and no lightbox. None of its nine help categories documents one. You either build the grid yourself on the canvas or install a component from the marketplace.

What it does ship is the best image pipeline here. Framer converts most JPEG, PNG, WebP and GIF uploads to AVIF at quality 80, serves WebP where AVIF is unsupported, and never upscales. Variants run 512, 1024, 2048 and up to 4096px. Webflow makes you do that work by hand, and charges USD 5 more a month for the privilege.

Basic is USD 10/month billed annually and includes a custom domain and 2 CMS collections, which is enough for a project list plus a blog. Pró é USD 30, Escala USD 100 on annual billing only. The free tier publishes to a Framer subdomain and cannot connect a custom domain.

Then the wall. Framer’s help centre states that it “does not offer HTML export for self-hosting”, because pre-rendering, image optimisation, font subsetting and server-side rendering run on Framer’s infrastructure. There is no tier that unlocks it. Third-party scrapers sell you a static copy, not your source.

Video deserves one warning. Framer accepts native uploads but states it does not alter or optimise the file in any way and serves it as-is. Upload a 4K showreel and a phone on mobile data downloads a 4K showreel (your visitor’s data plan pays for your production values).

Prós

• Automatic AVIF at qualidade 80 with WebP fallback
• USD 10 entry undercuts Webflow Basic by a third
• Genuine design canvas, closer to Figma than a block builder
• Custom domain from the cheapest paid tier

Contras

• No export at any price, stated by Framer
• No gallery or lightbox component ships with it
• Uploaded video is served completely unoptimised

Preços: Livre, Basic USD 10/month, Pro USD 30/month, Scale USD 100/month annual only. Flat published rates with no promo step-up; subscribers from before October 2025 keep their old rates until they switch. Framer cut its lineup from five plans to three paid tiers on 9 Outubro 2025, removing the Mini plan and dropping Basic from USD 15 para USD 10.

Melhor para: designers who want motion and scroll effects without writing code. Pular se: you want a ready-made gallery out of the box.

Veredito: Choose Framer when the canvas and the animation are the product, and accept that the site can never move. If you want that same modern output but need to own the files, pay Webflow’s USD 19 Workspace and export. If you simply want a grid of images working tonight, Squarespace gives you six gallery layouts and Framer gives you none.

Cartão – Best one-page site under USD 20

Worth knowing before you buy the cheap tier: the custom domain is not on it. Carrd Pro Lite at USD 9/year keeps you on a carrd.co subdomain. The domain arrives at Pro Standard, US$ 19/ano, which is the tier that matters and still the cheapest real portfolio address in this guide. Squarespace Basic costs USD 228 a year for the same custom-domain privilege, twelve times more.

Carrd builds one page. For a designer with three projects, a photographer with a single series, or anyone who needs a credible address by Friday, one page is often the honest format. Uploads run to 16 MB for images and 64 MB for video on Pro tiers, which is more headroom than Webflow allows.

Two limits to price in. There is no CMS, so a project collection means adding sections by hand and a blog means embedding someone else’s. And password protection covers the whole site only, with no per-page option, and it requires Pro Plus at USD 49/year. If you need to show one NDA project privately while the rest stays public, Carrd can’t do it at any price.

Carrd publishes no export documentation either way, so treat the site as hosted-only. Em dólares americanos 19 um ano, that is a smaller bet than anywhere else here.

Prós

• US$ 19/ano with a custom domain and no branding
• 16 MB images and 64 MB video on Pro
• Free tier publishes 3 sites for real testing
• Prices unchanged since 2021

Contras

• Uma página, no CMS, sem blog
• Site-wide password only, and it needs the USD 49 camada
• O dólar 9 tier still leaves you on a carrd.co URL

Preços: Pro Lite USD 9/year (3 sites, nenhum domínio personalizado), Pro Standard USD 19/year (10 sites, domínio personalizado), Pro Plus USD 49/year (25 sites, site password). Somente faturamento anual, renovação plana, 7-day Pro trial with no card. All sales final, with refunds only where legally required.

Melhor para: a sharp single-page portfolio or a link hub that costs less than lunch. Pular se: you need per-page privacy for client work.

Veredito: Buy Pro Standard at USD 19 if one page tells your story, and ignore Pro Lite, which exists to catch people who did not read the domain row. If you need several project pages and a blog, Framer at USD 120/year is the next step up. If you need to hide individual client work behind a password, Adobe Portfolio does per-page passwords and Carrd does not.

Cargo – Best flat price for unlimited sites

Cargo runs two live products at once, and mixing them up will waste your afternoon. Cargo 3 is the current builder at cargo.site. Cargo 2 is the older system, still fully operational, and Cargo’s documentation states plainly that Cargo 2 sites will not be discontinued. There is also no migration path: you cannot edit, import or move a Cargo 2 site into Cargo 3. Moving means rebuilding it by hand.

The pricing is the simplest here and one of the best deals. One tier, USD 14/month billed yearly ou dólares americanos 19 por mês, covering unlimited public sites on cargo.site subdomains with one free custom domain connection. Extra domains are USD 2/month. Squarespace charges USD 19/month for a single site, and Adobe Portfolio caps you at five. Cargo sets no cap at all. Students can get it free through participating universities.

The layout engine is built for art and design work rather than marketing pages. Five layouts ship: Rede, Columnized, Justify, Freeform and Slideshow. Justify arranges images in rows of uniform height, as if they were words in a paragraph, and Freeform lets you drag images anywhere on the page. Clicking an image enters Zoom mode. Images upload to 25 MB, and video up to 250 MB through the File Library.

Commerce is a paid add-on at USD 5.50/month billed yearly, through Stripe and PayPal, and Cargo takes no per-transaction fee. What Cargo 3 documents nowhere is what it does to your images: no compression, redimensionar, metadata or delivery-format statement exists. There is also no refund policy and no documented export, and Cargo tells you backups are your responsibility.

Prós

• Unlimited public sites on um dólar 14 inscrição
• Layouts built for images rather than landing pages
• Commerce add-on with no per-transaction fee
• Free for students at participating universities

Contras

• No refund policy at all
• Image processing entirely undocumented in Cargo 3
• Cargo 2 users face a reconstrução manual to upgrade

Preços: USD 14/month billed yearly or USD 19 por mês, one tier. Commerce add-on USD 5.50/month yearly or USD 9 por mês. Extra custom domains USD 2/month yearly. Flat rate with no promotional step-up.

Melhor para: artists and designers running several sites, or anyone who wants Freeform layout. Pular se: you need a documented answer on image handling.

Veredito: Take Cargo if you maintain more than one site, because USD 14 covering all of them beats every per-site price here. If you run exactly one portfolio and want proofing with it, Pixpa costs less and does more. If you are still on Cargo 2, understand before you start that upgrading means building the whole thing again.

Páginas do GitHub – Best free option, if you can use Git

Livre, com um domínio personalizado, with automatic HTTPS, and with no branded subdomain forced on you. No other platform in this guide matches that combination at any price. Cartão, the cheapest paid option here, still wants USD 19 a year before it will point your own domain at anything.

The price isn’t the obstacle. The skills are. There is no visual editor. Content changes are Git commits. You need a static site generator, Jekyll being built in, plus a domain from a registrar and enough DNS confidence to point it at GitHub. For a developer this is an hour’s work and a portfolio that outlives every company on this page. For a photographer it is a wall.

Published limits are generous for a text-and-screenshot portfolio: 1 GB maximum published site size, a soft bandwidth limit of 100 GB per month, e 10 builds per hour. Those same numbers make it a poor home for a large photography archive.

The exit is the inverse of Framer’s. Your site is a Git repository you already own. Cloning it or moving it to another host takes one command, because the files were never anywhere else.

Prós

• Free custom domain hosting with automatic HTTPS
• No branding, sem anúncios, no subdomain requirement
• The site is your repository, so migration is trivial
• Runs any generator through Actions

Contras

• No visual editing whatsoever
• 1 GB site cap and 100 GB de largura de banda mensal
• Serving from a private repository needs a paid plan

Preços: USD 0, permanentemente, on GitHub Free with a public repository. The domain is bought separately. Serving Pages from a private repository requires GitHub Pro, Team or Enterprise.

Melhor para: desenvolvedores, and designers comfortable in a terminal. Pular se: you want to drag a photograph onto a page.

Veredito: If you write code, build here and spend the saved USD 228 a year on the domain and better glass. If you want ownership without the terminal, self-hosted WordPress is the same principle with an admin panel. Se as palavras “gerador de site estático” mean nothing to you, take Carrd at USD 19 e siga em frente com o seu dia.

WordPress (Self-Hosted) – Best long-term ownership

WordPress 7.1 “Mary Lou”, released on 19 agosto 2026, moved image compression, resizing and thumbnail generation into the browser. It also added native support for AVIF, HEIC and HDR gain maps. That matters more for portfolios than any other dated change here. It sidesteps the PHP memory limits and upload timeouts that made large photo uploads fail on cheap shared hosting.

The trade is the familiar one. You own the files, the database and the design, and you can move all three to another host in an afternoon. In exchange you handle updates, backups and security yourself, or pay someone to.

Hosting is where the numbers diverge sharply. Hostinger’s Premium plan advertises USD 2.99/month, which requires a 48-month prepayment of USD 143.52, e renova em USD 10.99. That is a 3.68x step up. Bluehost runs USD 3.99 entrada contra USD 9.99 renewal on a 36-month term, a 2.5x step. Pressable charges USD 20.83/month billed annually and states that the price you see is the price you pay at renewal, which makes its multiplier 1.0x. Over eight years, Hostinger’s route costs USD 143.52 então USD 527.52. Worth knowing before the four-year term ends.

Two technical details specific to image work. Core downsizes anything over 2560px on the long edge by default. WordPress is also the only platform here that documents its metadata handling precisely. On resize it strips everything except colour profiles, IPTC copyright, EXIF orientation and XMP rights. On hosts using the GD library rather than Imagick, nothing survives at all. If your copyright metadata matters, that is worth checking with your host.

Prós

• You own the files and can move hosts freely
• Browser-side image processing since August 2026
• Documented metadata handling, único aqui
• No cap on how many images you publish

Contras

• Cheap entry pricing renews at up to 3.68x
• Atualizações, backups and security are your job
• Host PHP limits still cap single uploads

Preços: Hostinger Premium USD 2.99/month on a 48-month term (USD 143.52 adiantado), renovando USD 10.99, com 20 GB e 3 sites. Bluehost Starter USD 3.99 renovando USD 9.99 em 36 meses, 10 GB, 10 sites. Pressable Signature USD 20.83/month billed annually, apartamento na renovação, 20 GB e 1 local. Compare the field with our ferramenta de busca de hospedagem.

Melhor para: anyone whose portfolio is a business asset they expect to keep for a decade. Pular se: you will not maintain it.

Veredito: Run self-hosted WordPress when the portfolio feeds your income and you intend to keep the address for years, and budget the renewal rather than the teaser. If you want that ownership without the maintenance, Pressable’s flat USD 250/year removes the renewal shock. If you never want to see an update notice, Squarespace is the honest alternative and you should accept the export limits that come with it.

WordPress.com – Best managed middle ground

Same software, someone else’s problem. WordPress.com runs the platform for you. Desde a 2 abril 2026, every paid plan includes plugins, Global Styles, font uploads and custom CSS. That removes the old reason to jump straight to the expensive tier.

Personal at USD 4/month billed annually, USD 48 um ano, buys a custom domain for the first year, 6 GB of storage and the ability to upload a theme. Compare that with the self-hosted route: Hostinger’s four-year prepayment is USD 143.52, roughly three years of Personal, and you maintain the server yourself. Premium at USD 8/month gives 13 GB, Negócios em USD 25 adiciona preparação, SFTP and database access.

The free plan is not a portfolio option. One gigabyte, nenhum domínio personalizado, no plugins, no theme upload, ads shown to your visitors, and stats limited to the last seven days.

Duas advertências honestas. Storage is thin for photography: 6 GB on Personal against Wix Core’s 50 GB at a higher price. And WordPress.com’s own pricing grid reads as though Personal and Premium cannot upload custom themes, while its support documentation and the Personal plan feature page both say they can. The support docs were reviewed more recently, so that is what this guide follows, but you may see the contradiction yourself.

Prós

• US$ 48/ano with domain, plugins and theme upload
• Manutenção, backups and security handled
• Standard WordPress export, so migration is real
• Plugins on every paid plan since April 2026

Contras

• 6 GB on Personal is thin for photography
• No staging below the USD 300/year tier
• Pricing grid contradicts the support docs on themes

Preços: Free USD 0, Personal USD 4/month (US$ 48/ano), Prêmio em dólares americanos 8 (USD 96/year), USD empresarial 25 (US$ 300/ano), Commerce USD 45. Monthly billing costs roughly 2.2x the annual rate. Free domain year on annual plans.

Melhor para: writers and designers who want WordPress without a server. Pular se: you need staging or heavy photo storage.

Veredito: Take Personal at USD 48/year if you want a real CMS and a domain with nothing to maintain, which is the best-value managed option in this guide. If you shoot a lot and need storage, Pixpa Creator costs less and meters storage more generously. If you want SFTP and staging, self-hosted WordPress gives you both for less than the USD 300 Camada de negócios.

What the Domain Really Costs

The address is the only part of a portfolio you can genuinely own, and it is the part people spend least time on. Three things are worth knowing before you buy.

Primeiro, creative TLDs are priced as traps. At Porkbun in September 2026, .photography costs USD 5.66 for the first year and USD 29.35 renovar, a 5.19x jump. A .design is USD 10.81 então USD 46.86, which is 4.33x. A .studio runs USD 11.84 então USD 32.44. Against those, a .com at USD 11.08 renova em USD 11.08 and a .me at USD 17.27 mantém-se plano. Run it over five years and the gap is stark: .photography costs USD 123.06, while .com costs USD 55.40. The cheap first year on a creative extension is the most expensive decision on this page.

Segundo, .portfolio does not exist. It is not in the IANA root zone, which does contain .design, .estúdio, .photography and .me. Anything advertising a “portfolio domain” is selling you something else.

Terceiro, a change that affects everyone. Verisign is raising the wholesale .com registry fee from USD 10.26 para USD 10.97 por ano, eficaz 1 novembro 2026. Announced in April 2026, it is the first rise since September 2024. Registrars selling at cost will pass it through. Cloudflare states that its domains are “sold at cost, for the exact price offered by registries”, and Porkbun prices close behind. If you are registering anyway, doing it before November saves you a year at the old rate. Nosso guia para registro de domínio barato covers the registrar comparison in full.

How to Choose Your Portfolio Platform

Forget feature lists. Four situations cover almost everyone who reads this.

Despesas: zero extra. You already pay Adobe. Use Adobe Portfolio. It is included with the Lightroom (1tb) plan at USD 11.99/month that you are already buying, it allows five separate sites, and it handles 50 MB uploads. Skip Format, whose Basic tier costs USD 120/year and caps you at 70 imagens. Skip Squarespace at USD 228/year unless template quality is what closes your sales.

Carga de trabalho: client galleries. You shoot clients and deliver proofs. Buy Pixpa Creator, USD 9/month in year one and USD 12 depois de. Proofing, favouriting and a commission-free store are on every tier, and WHCC is wired in for prints. Skip Squarespace here despite the better templates. It has no proofing at all, so you end up paying for a second subscription such as Pixieset to cover the gap. Choose Format Pro only if you upload files above 50 MB, desde a sua 100 MB ceiling is twice Pixpa’s. Budget the USD 17 renovação, não o dólar 12 promoção.

Público: hiring managers. Three to six projects, no more. Carrd Pro Standard at USD 19/year is enough, and a sharp one-page site beats a sprawling one. If any of that work is under NDA, Carrd can’t help you. Its password is site-wide and sits on the USD 49 camada, so use Adobe Portfolio’s per-page passwords instead. Developers in this situation should use GitHub Pages, pay nothing, and point a USD 11 .com at it.

Situation: a ten-year asset. This portfolio is your business. Self-hosted WordPress. Pressable at USD 250/year if you want the price to stay still, or Hostinger at USD 143.52 for four years if you accept the USD 10.99 renewal afterwards. This is the only route where a platform decision in 2026 does not become a rebuild in 2031. If the maintenance will not happen, WordPress.com Personal at USD 48/year keeps the same export path without the server. For the wider builder-versus-WordPress question, nosso comparison of WordPress and website builders goes deeper than there is room for here.

One legal note, since it worries freelancers unnecessarily. The European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 Junho 2025. It reaches portfolio sites only through its e-commerce limb, which covers services provided “with a view to concluding a consumer contract”. A portfolio that shows work and invites an email does not conclude contracts online. Even a site that does sell is exempt as a microenterprise. The test is fewer than 10 empregados, with turnover or balance sheet total at or under EUR 2 milhão. Most freelancers are outside this twice over. Build accessibly because it is good work, not because someone told you it was mandatory.

perguntas frequentes

Is Adobe Portfolio really free if I already pay for Lightroom?

sim, with no separate website bill. Adobe’s plan comparison lists Portfolio on two plans: Lightroom (1tb) at USD 11.99/month and Photography (1tb) por US$ 19,99/mês. There is no standalone Portfolio subscription to buy. You get up to five websites, each with its own domain and password. You still buy the domain itself from a registrar, and if your subscription lapses the site goes with it.

Is Format or Pixpa better for a photography portfolio?

Pixpa for most photographers, Format for large files. Pixpa includes client galleries, proofing and a 0% commission store on every tier including Basic at USD 5.40/month, renovando em USD 7.20. Format gates proofing and selling behind Pro, which renews at USD 17/month, and its Basic tier allows only 70 images in total. Format wins on one specific point: 100 MB uploads with RAW support against Pixpa’s 50 MB and a 2560 x 3840 redimensionar.

How many projects should a portfolio website include?

Three to six, and the weakest one sets your price. Reviewers rarely reach a seventh project, and each additional weak piece drags the average down rather than demonstrating range. Show the brief, your specific role, and the outcome for each. On team projects, say exactly which parts were yours, because a reader who cannot tell will assume the least impressive answer.

Can I password-protect client work on a portfolio website?

Most platforms do it per page, but two popular ones don’t. Adobe Portfolio, Squarespace, Wix, Webflow and Cargo all support per-page passwords, and Adobe pitches the feature for sharing different work with different clients. Carrd protects the whole site only, and that needs Pro Plus at USD 49/year. Framer documents no native per-page option either, and points you to marketplace components instead. One warning specific to Wix: it states that password-protecting a page also stops search engines indexing it.

Do I need a .design or .photography domain?

Não, and the renewal maths argues against it. At Porkbun, .photography costs USD 5.66 no primeiro ano e USD 29.35 todos os anos depois, a 5.19x increase, while .design runs USD 10.81 então USD 46.86. A .com at USD 11.08 renews at the same USD 11.08. Note also that .portfolio is not a real extension; it does not appear in the IANA root zone.

Will large images slow my portfolio down?

Only if your platform makes you handle it, and several do it for you. Squarespace serves WebP automatically, while Wix and Framer convert uploads to AVIF, which covers roughly 95% de navegadores. Webflow leaves conversion to you as a manual batch job that replaces your originals, and self-hosted WordPress needs a plugin or a filter. Google’s threshold is Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds at the 75th percentile, and the quickest win is never putting loading=”preguiçoso” on your first gallery image.

Veredicto Final

Adobe Portfolio is the best-value portfolio site in 2026 for anyone already paying Adobe. The marginal cost is zero, and five sites is more than most people need. It cannot sell prints and it cannot export, so treat it as a shop window rather than a business system.

Pixpa wins for working photographers. Proofing, favouriting and commission-free selling sit on every tier, including Basic, and no competitor here does that. Budget the real number: USD 7.20/month on Basic and USD 12 on Creator, once the introductory year ends.

Cartão at USD 19/year remains the best cheap address on the internet, provided one page is genuinely enough and no client work needs hiding. Páginas do GitHub beats it at zero for anyone who can use Git, e Cargo at USD 14/month is the pick for artists running several sites at once.

For ownership, self-hosted WordPress is still the only answer that survives a platform’s bad quarter. The August 2026 release finally fixed the large-upload problem that made it painful for photographers. If maintenance is not realistic, WordPress.com Personal at USD 48/year keeps the same export path.

Two to think twice about. Webflow sells the only real code export here, and caps images at 4 MB, which is an odd combination for a designer’s tool. Framer has the best image pipeline and ships no gallery at all, and its own documentation confirms there is no way to take your site anywhere else.

Resumindo: pick the platform for what happens in year three, not week one. Zerply switches off on 28 setembro 2026. The people who had put a domain they controlled in front of their work will lose a host, not an audience. Still weighing the wider options? Our no-code builder guide tests all twelve on what you can take with you. The cheapest website builders covers the budget end in more detail. Building a store rather than a portfolio? Hospedagem de comércio eletrônico WordPress is the guide to read next.