Does your work survive the template?

A portfolio site has an unusual job. It is not trying to explain a product or convert a shopper; it is trying to get out of the way of the work and then disappear. Most reviews of portfolio platforms score them as websites — templates, SEO, pricing tiers. We score them as galleries.

What we look at

Image handling first: what a platform does to a file after you upload it, what it caps, what it re-encodes, and what it refuses. Then the things that decide whether the site can carry a working practice — client galleries, proofing, print fulfilment and the commission taken on a sale. Then, last, the parts every other reviewer starts with: templates, pricing and the editor.

That order produces conclusions the usual order hides. The platform with the best templates has no client galleries, no proofing and no print lab at all, and it still ranks first for most people. The one that charges a percentage of every print sale ranks seventh. The full ranking explains why.

Why there are no photographs on this site

A site that lectures creatives about image performance while shipping a homepage full of stock photography would be arguing against itself. So the frames here are empty on purpose: drawn in CSS, weighing nothing, loading instantly. The point of a gallery wall is the work that hangs on it, and none of the work is ours.

Independence

No platform reviewed here sees a label before it is published. Some outbound links earn a commission at no cost to you; several of the platforms we rank pay nothing, and one of the recommendations we make most often is free and unlinked. The disclosure sets out the terms in full.

Start with your discipline

Photographers have the most to weigh, because the site has to deliver to clients and often take money too — start there. Designers are choosing a tool that is itself a work sample, which changes the answer — that case is made here. And if the platform is already decided and the real question is what to put on it, read how many projects a portfolio should show or browse what good looks like.