What to check before you pick a portfolio maker

Most portfolio maker comparison charts show a checkmark for "custom domain" and another for "no branding," as if those were fixed features. They aren't. On the pricing pages we checked, both depend on which tier, which billing cycle, and sometimes which year you're in, and the checkmark doesn't say that.

Someone on our team was helping a friend pick a portfolio maker last week, and the two of them had four pricing tabs open side by side. Every plan had a green check next to "custom domain." Every plan had a green check next to "no watermark" or "no branding." On paper the tools looked interchangeable. They weren't, and the difference only showed up once we read the fine print instead of the feature grid.

The checkbox hides a timer

Format's pricing page lists "Free Custom Domain (First Year)" on its Basic plan, currently $10/month billed annually. Read quickly, that's "custom domain: yes." Read the parenthetical, and it's "custom domain: yes, for twelve months, then you're paying for the domain yourself going forward," which is normal for how domain registration works but isn't what the checkmark in a side-by-side comparison communicates.

Squarespace does the same thing from the other direction. There's no free plan at all, only a 14-day trial on every account, and its own FAQ page confirms that only annual plans include a free domain for the first year; month-to-month billing doesn't include it. Two different companies, the same pattern: "free domain" almost always means "free for one billing cycle," not "included forever."

None of this makes either tool a bad choice. It means a feature grid with a single checkmark can't tell you what you're actually agreeing to, and the only way to know is to open the pricing page and read past the checkmark to whatever's in parentheses next to it.

Branding removal is usually gated on a specific tier, not "paid"

The second thing that varies is exactly which paid tier gets you rid of the tool's own branding. It's tempting to assume "paid = no watermark," but that's not always true, and it's worth checking on your own product before you tell someone else's.

On our pricing page, a Nameplate profile carries a small "Made with Nameplate" badge on both the free plan and the $5/month Starter plan. Starter buys you the full set of content blocks, gates, and AI writing help, but the badge stays. Removing it, along with getting a custom domain, is a Pro-plan feature at $10/month billed annually. Free and cheapest-paid look the same on this one axis; it's the tier above that that changes it.

That's not a criticism unique to us. Wix keeps its watermark on free sites and removes it on paid plans, and Canva does the same with its "Designed with Canva" footer. The point isn't which company does it; it's that "I'm paying, so the branding is gone" is an assumption worth checking against the actual plan you're on, not the cheapest paid tier you found.

If you're deciding between makers for a client-facing page, this is the moment to open the specific plan page (not the homepage pricing table) and confirm it in writing, because a page with someone else's name on it in fine print at the bottom is the kind of thing a client notices before they say anything.

Page and image caps only bite once you've filled them

The other thing a feature grid rarely surfaces is capacity. Format's Basic plan caps out at 10 pages and 70 high-resolution images; the next tier up removes the page cap and raises the image ceiling to 1,500. If your portfolio is a handful of case studies with a dozen images each, 70 disappears fast, and you won't notice the ceiling until you're mid-upload on your fourth project.

This is the kind of limit that's genuinely hard to plan around before you've started, because most people don't know how many images their finished portfolio will need until they've built it. The practical move is to build the first version on whatever free or cheap tier is available, watch where you actually bump into the limit, and upgrade to fix that specific limit, rather than guessing up front and paying for headroom you might not use.

A five-minute check before you commit

Before creating an account on any portfolio maker, open its pricing page (not a review site's summary of it) and confirm four things:

1. Is the custom domain permanent, or does it renew at a cost after year one?
2. Which specific tier removes the platform's own branding: is it the cheapest paid plan, or the one above it?
3. What's the page or image cap on the tier you're actually about to pay for, not the top tier in the comparison table?
4. Can you get your content out if you switch tools later, or does leaving mean starting over?

That last one matters more than it looks. If your work is public and case-study-based, browsing portfolio examples by profession before you commit to a tool is faster than guessing which layout style will fit your field. Photographers, developers, and writers end up wanting different page structures, and it's easier to see that from finished examples than from a features list.

What none of this fixes for you

Worth saying plainly: none of the four checks above will make a thin portfolio look complete. A tool with a permanent custom domain and zero page limits still won't help if there are only two projects on it, or if neither one explains what you actually did. The mechanics we've covered here decide whether the site holds up under scrutiny; they don't decide whether the work on it does.

And we'll say the same thing about our own product that we'd want said about anyone else's: Nameplate doesn't currently let you export a page's content to take it elsewhere if you switch tools later. You can duplicate a profile within your own account on Pro, but there's no one-click download of your blocks and layout to another platform. If "can I leave without starting over" is the deciding factor for you, that's a fair reason to weigh us against a tool that offers it.

Common questions

What's the difference between a portfolio maker and a portfolio builder?

In practice the terms overlap, but "maker" often points at tools built around a single format, turning a PDF or a set of images into one shareable link or embed, while "builder" more often implies a full site with multiple pages, its own URL structure, and page-level SEO controls. If you need more than one page, check that the tool you're calling a "maker" actually supports that before you commit.

Is a free portfolio website good enough?

For a single page showing a handful of projects, yes. Most free tiers, ours included, publish a real, working page rather than a locked preview. The tradeoffs are usually a small branding badge and a cap on how many profiles or pages you get, not a limit on how much you can put on the one page you have.

Do I need a custom domain for my portfolio?

Not to publish something that works. A subdomain (yourname.nameplate.cc, for example) is a complete, shareable link. A custom domain matters more once you're sending the link in a context where a branded subdomain looks less finished, such as a client proposal, a printed card, or an email signature, and at that point it's worth checking whether your plan includes it permanently or for a limited window.

Does upgrading always remove the "made with" watermark?

Not automatically, and not always on the first paid tier. Check the specific plan page: some tools remove branding on any paid plan, others reserve it for a tier above the entry-level one. We fall into the second category ourselves; see the branding section above.

Can I export my portfolio if I switch builders later?

It depends heavily on the tool, and it's worth checking before you build rather than after. Some platforms offer a downloadable static export; others expect you to rebuild on a new platform with nothing more than what you can screenshot or copy out manually. Saving your project write-ups separately, outside the tool itself, is cheap insurance regardless of which one you're on.