Best Website Builders for Students

The Verdict: Carrd is the most underrated website builder on the market. For just $9 per year — not per month — you get a beautifully simple tool for creating single-page websites that look clean, load fast, and work perfectly on mobile.

I've recommended Carrd to dozens of freelancers, creators, and small business owners who need a web presence but don't need a full website. A landing page for your side project, a link-in-bio page, a simple portfolio, a coming-soon page — Carrd handles all of these elegantly.

The catch is right there in the name: Carrd is for cards. Single pages. If you need multiple pages, a blog, ecommerce, or any kind of complex functionality, you've outgrown Carrd before you started.

The Verdict: Squarespace is the most beautiful website builder available today, period. Every template is designed to magazine-quality standards, and even the most design-challenged user will end up with a site that looks professional and polished.

I've used Squarespace for photographer portfolios, restaurant sites, wedding pages, and small business storefronts — and every time, the result looks like it cost thousands to design. The editor strikes a smart balance between flexibility and guardrails, preventing you from making ugly design choices while still giving you meaningful control.

The trade-off is that Squarespace is more opinionated than Wix. You can't drag elements to arbitrary positions, and the ecosystem of third-party integrations is much smaller. But for most users, those limitations are actually features — they keep your site looking good.