Currently hanging · August 2026
Does your work survive the template?
Through the window. The cut is made to the work, and the work is not ours, so the aperture is empty on purpose.
Under the board. The nav bar, the sidebar rail, the plan badge and the cookie strip the builder adds around it.
Every platform here is judged on one question, because for a portfolio it is the only question that matters. A site that flatters its own layout while compressing your images is not a portfolio; it is a brochure with your name on it.
On the wall — top three
Currently cut · August 2026
The three widest windows
01
Squarespace
Best templates, no client galleries
9.0 / 10
02
Pixpa
Proofing on every plan, 0% commission
8.7 / 10
03
SmugMug
Unlimited storage, four print labs
8.3 / 10
Each window is cut to the builder’s score out of 10 on the full ranking. Squarespace takes first on templates alone and has no client galleries at all; Pixpa and SmugMug earn theirs on the working half.
Recently cut
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Read the cutCurationHow Many Projects Should a Portfolio Show?
Read the cutA 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.