10 Best Online Portfolio Sites For Graphic Designers
Nowadays, digital presence for designers is synonymous to being in the best online portfolio sites for graphic designers.
Portfolios are the best way to make your digital presence felt.
This is because thousands of potential customers can see you 24/7 :
- In search engines
- On social media
- In industry forums
A rich, appealing and engaging portfolio will lead you to your target audience in no time.
That’s because you can make an excellent first impression with it.
For this, you’ve to create a super killing portfolio to present yourself in the best light.
This portfolio should include every bit of information about yourself.
With that said, selecting the best portfolio website could be overwhelming.
Many websites are out there bragging about their quality.
This experience is true whether you’re an amateur or a professional in graphic design.
As a result, this article will guide through the top ten best online portfolio sites for graphic designers.
Once you’re done reading this article, you’ll have an overall idea about choosing a portfolio website.
With that said, let’s dig into details!
Table of Contents
1. Behance
If you’re seeking to develop your knowledge while creating a portfolio, Behance is the best portfolio.
It’s considered the number one social media platform which has gained the best portfolio reviews from all over the world.
This is a worldwide network site where you can self-promote yourself in the best way.
There are many reasons why you should choose Behance as its advantages are uncountable.
You can set up your profile, include your social media accounts and contact info.
Once you’re done with your project, you can link it to your social media accounts.
Furthermore, when you post a project in Behance, you can sync it with LinkedIn and your personal website if you’ve one.
This allows you to showcase your experience and level of creativity.
In addition, this website is easy to use.
If you lack technical knowledge, this is the ideal website to showcase your talents without getting into any technical issues.
Moreover, this site also helps you to sort your work type when you apply for a job.
You can peep into other designer colleagues’ portfolios as the “search tool” gives you that facility.
This “search tool” is highly beneficial.
That’s because it allows you to see how other designers work when you run out of ideas.
In addition, you can improve yourself and get motivated.
It also allows you to get feedback and suggestions from peer groups enabling you to be innovative.
This site helps you to organize and maintain your projects by arranging their details, letting you just share the link of your profile when it’s showtime!
2. Dribbble
Creating a portfolio in Dribbble is not as easy as in Behance, because to share any of your work requires an invitation from a member of the Dribbble community.
You can sign-up, but it’s posting, which requires an invitation.
Getting an invitation in Dribbble is rare, but once you’re in, its happiness is on another level.
As you can view other people’s work in Dribbble as well, it allows you to be more innovative, motivated, and aware of the current trends.
What is best in Dribbble is that you can highlight your best work by hiding the less performing ones marking them as “low profile.”
Once you mark your low quality work as a low profile, no one can see them when you visit your portfolio.
You can get feedback and suggestions from your colleagues once you get in so that you can strengthen your weaknesses by learning to minimize mistakes.
The process in Dribbble is super easy, and you can create your portfolio without a significant effort, exposing your best work.
Also, you can search for jobs, making hiring managers so easy to find you.
Dribbble allows you to find the right, fitting job for you, enhancing your confidence to see the best version of yourself.
The Dribbble team is welcoming and supportive.
Thus, you don’t have to be clueless and helpless about what’s going on in the platform.
You can search for more peers to follow and engage with them to increase your exposure.
As in, you can tag your work, which will cater to the other members on the platform to find you easily.
This portfolio website is budget-friendly.
It just costs $3 per month.
3. Adobe Portfolio
If you need a personal portfolio, but you don’t have too much work to put on it, Adobe Portfolio is the ideal portfolio for you.
This website gives you the chance to display your work efficiently with a quick turnaround.
The flexibility compared to other websites is low, but you’ve benefits like customizing your portfolio with a personalized URL and password-protected pages.
It’s unnecessary to know HTML or coding, as the user interface of this platform is easy to use.
This comes with eight Adobe Portfolio themes, allowing you to choose the one you prefer to make the looks of your portfolio great.
On the other hand, this is a negative point because it limits your options, and these templates are not that versatile.
They’ll only allow you to change the colors and fonts, limiting the looks of your portfolio to a few colors and fonts.
This website is suitable for beginners, since you can create the portfolio for a fair price ($ 9.99)
If you already have Adobe Creative Cloud membership, this is free.
The customer service of Adobe portfolio is excellent.
It gives you guiding videos on how to integrate Adobe products, portfolio basics, website setting, and troubleshooting.
Also, you’ve a chance to link your Adobe Portfolio to Behance.
As a result, it allows you to showcase more of your work or directly place your sync from Behance in a single click.
The presence of “stylish layouts” lets you find the most suitable one for you in a wide variety of art forms.
Moreover, Adobe Portfolio allows you to have five websites on your same account.
4. Wix
Wix is super user-friendly as it processes with a drag and drop mechanism.
This portfolio website gives you fifteen exceptional templates from where you can select the best one for you to highlight your work more.
These templates are customizable.
That is to say, you can change every minute detail in your portfolio according to your requirements.
The flexibility of designs and templates allow you to look professional and flawless in your clients.
The user interface is easy.
You can create your portfolio as you wish without any difficulty and without getting stuck.
In case you get stuck, you can solve your issue from the FAQ section.
Wix supports sixteen languages, which comes in handy if you target a multilingual audience.
You’ve all the essential tools in Wix, and you can get done with what you want with a few mouse clicks.
The free Plan of Wix only permits you to use 500 templates.
These templates come in categories allowing you to find the best template according to your need.
Creating a portfolio in Wix means, you get the highest public recommendation and top-rated clients.
Irrespective of your skill level, you can display your capabilities through this site.
Through “portfolio examples,” you can get an overall idea of how you should build your portfolio.
Wix is mobile-friendly; you can manage all your Wix related work from your phone.
The inability to change the template you’ve already selected may be off-putting to some users.
Wix is budget-friendly as you’ve to pay no hosting bills and maintenance fees.
5. Weebly
If you want to showcase your individuality and unique work, Weebly is the most useful website for you.
This website processes with a drag and drop tool, making the portfolio process super fast and easy.
Weebly lays the foundation for you to stand out in front of your digital audience and to show off your potentials in its best way.
You can link your site with your domain name.
The templates are customizable, so, you can change every detail according to the way you want the portfolio to be.
Weebly pays attention to updating its platform’s technology, which makes the user interface more comfortable and more relaxed.
One of the best features in Weebly is that you can grant access to other editors.
This will help you to expand your knowledge, get motivated, and to get feedback and suggestions.
The presence of widgets like image galleries, tables, and calendars which add extra functionality to your workflow.
The best is, the storage space is unlimited in Weebly!
If you find this site difficult to handle, you can always get help from the help center, the FAQ, and via emails and calls.
The Weebly Knowledge Base gives you tutorials and step-by-step guidance through which you get answers to all your problems.
The undo button is a useful feature if you’re not confident about what you type in text boxes.
6. Squarespace
Through Squarespace, you can showcase all your work in one interface.
If you want to give your portfolio a beautiful and fresh look, Squarespace is the best portfolio website for you.
Squarespace comes with more than a hundred templates giving you a range of options.
You can choose the most fitting template and change as you wish because of tits versatility.
All these templates are perfect as they have a professional look and are responsive.
If you find it challenging to create your portfolio, you can get instant answers since you can live chat with the support system.
If not, you can contact the support service via FAQ, chat, and emails other than live chat.
Unlike other portfolio websites, Squarespace is not easy to understand at first, but you’ll get the hang of it.
Squarespace, too, has a drag and drop tool.
Thus, you can create your portfolio correctly with a few mouse clicks.
Besides, you can arrange and organize the portfolio using this tool.
You can use Squarespace without knowing a single word about coding.
A variety of unique layouts are available, facilitating a variety of ways to display your work.
In fact, you can highlight many projects at once, allowing your website visitors to see a range of your work.
There’s an “About” page where you can include information about yourself.
Most importantly, this allows you to add testimonials from past clients.
To add your portfolio to appear in search results, you can verify your site in Google Search Console.
This site will help you to make your portfolio appear in Google search results, and the best is, this service is entirely free!
7. Portfoliobox
The specialty in Portfoliobox is easy portfolio creation using standard web browsers without any special software or tools.
You don’t even need to be an expert as a graphic designer.
Above all, you can easily create a portfolio as the user interface is highly user-friendly.
There’s a variety of customizable layouts.
Unlike the other websites, Portfoliobox doesn’t have any templates.
This will make your site unique.
Portfoliobox allows you to link a personal domain to your website, however, this is only available in the Pro plan.
There are two plans in Portfoliobo: one is the free Plan, and the other is the Pro plan.
Free plans only allow you to create up to ten pages and to use three custom pages.
This doesn’t give you the privilege to link your domain and to get rid of ads.
The Pro plan only costs $6.90per month.
It offers you super features like, for instance, unlimited pages and access to a thousand images and many more.
Hence, Portfoliobox is budget-friendly and cost-efficient.
With the low price and easy to use a feature, we can recommend this to newbies in graphic design.
Also, you can edit SEO settings to appear in the search results.
Besides, there are no themes in Portfoliobox unlike the other portfolio websites.
You’re free to create your portfolio using your creativity, according to your own style.
Customer support is excellent in Portfoliobox.
The knowledge base of Portfoliobox gives guidance and tutorials, and there’s a live chat option.
8. Cargo Collective
This website builder is great for those who want to keep their portfolios simple.
Among all the website builders, Cargo Collective is the easiest one to handle.
You’re almost done creating your portfolio once you’ve chosen your template.
Cargo Collective is that fast and straightforward!
You don’t have to know a thing about HTML or coding, as the user interface is easy to use.
Customer service provides you guidance tutorials to make it more user-friendly.
This website builder is highly versatile.
In other words, you can edit every detail in order to manage the way your portfolio looks.
The best feature of Cargo Collective is the custom built video player.
As a result, you don’t have to upload your video in Vimeo or YouTube to put them on your profile. (no hosting needed)
The free version of Cargo Collective offers you 100 MB of image storage, twelve projects to upload, three pages of content, cloud hosting, and the ability to edit the CSS.
The upgrade version, which is $9 per month, gives you unlimited projects to upload, 6 GB of image storage, pages, and bandwidth and access to all Cargo Collective designs.
Some tools and applications are easy to use yet useful, which helps the users showcase their portfolio in the best way.
Even without logging in, you can see other user’s portfolios as they have built the user interface around the work.
Through this facility, you can get an overall idea of how you should build your portfolio.
9. WordPress.com
WordPress is excellent for those who want to display their portfolio separate from their blog posts and pages.
You can choose a theme that highlights your work more, out of the several available themes.
WordPress offers you sixty-one specific portfolio themes.
The “Open Live Demo” allows you to preview themes before choosing, so you can get an idea on how each theme fits your portfolio.
WordPress is budget-friendly.
Hence, you can choose a plan that supports your budget.
This comes with four plans:
- Personal Plan – $5
- Premium Plan – $8
- Business Plan – $25
- eCommerce Plan – $45
Each set has a unique set of features, that is to say, the more you pay, the more are the privileges.
Since there’s no drag and drop tool, customizing the templates is not that easy.
If you want to combine your blog along with your portfolio, this is the ideal website for that purpose.
You wouldn’t be able to find alternatives that match the flexibility of WordPress.
Once you’re done creating your portfolio, you should make it visible to others.
For that, WordPress creates for you the link automatically.
You can use plugins so that you can have more functionality and get more attention to your portfolio.
Plugins will help you to enhance the theme you’ve chosen, since you can integrate the plugin into an existing theme.
Also, plugins are incorporated to display all elements in the portfolio together.
Consequently, you can make a good impression to your clients and visitors.
Some people find it challenging to handle WordPress.
However, features like popularity, cost-efficiency, and ease of use make it one of the best portfolio website options.
10. Carbonmade
If you’re looking to get a fresh, colorful, and lovely look at your portfolio, Carbonmade is one of the best options.
Low customizability may be off-putting, as it only offers two fonts and a limited color palette, and it consists of only three pages.
Nonetheless, this website builder is better for those who want to keep their portfolios uncomplicated and straightforward.
You can make your portfolio with a quick turnaround with no coding skills.
Carbonmade gives you the ability to customize the preview of your portfolio, which will appear when you share your URL on social media.
The first impression is everything!
This site doesn’t offer templates and themes because Carbonmade lets your creativity flow without any limitations.
Carbonmade lays the foundation, and then you can start creating your portfolio editing and changing in a few clicks.
The best feature is you can add three domain names; one main domain and two subdomains.
Furthermore, this site provides you with unlimited storage space.
You can upload limitless photos, galleries and also you can upload files of any size.
The drag and drop tool makes the process easy and fast.
Carbonmade comes with three pricing plans as Beginner, Pro, and Expert.
The Beginner plan only costs $8 per month and allows you to showcase only eight projects in your portfolio.
The Pro plan costs $12 per month, allowing you to post 50 projects in your portfolio.
The expert plan is $18 per month, which gives you almost every facility.
We think that Carbonmade is cost-efficient as all the plans are under $20.
This is one of the best options for newbies to create their profiles with less budget.
More information are available here:
9 Best Portfolio Website Builders
Best Free Online Portfolio Creators – 2020 – Showing Off Your Best Work For FREE
15 Most Important Features to Include on Your Portfolio Site (featuring Weston & Create)
Final Thoughts
We have presented the best online portfolio sites for graphic designers.
Now, you can choose the best one fit that suits your portfolio.
Each website’s advantages and drawbacks would’ve helped you narrow down your choice
All these portfolio websites are affordable.
We’re sure that these websites are worth spending your money for!
We hope that you’ve enjoyed this article.
Do check some of our other articles for more informational readings.
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