Guide: Should you build your startup website in Carrd (in 2023)?

So you are thinking about using carrd.co to build your startup website? Great because Carrd can be the perfect choice – of course it totally depends on your website needs and your startup’s size and maturity. Our guide helps you decide find the type of startup you are and gives a recommendation.

What is Carrd?

Carrd is a no-code website builder. Carrd allows users to create simple websites for many different purposes. It offers an easy-to-use editor interface and a range of features including contact forms, payment processing, and integrations with many third-party services. Websites can be created from scratch or by using Carrd templates. Carrd.co is super popular among individuals and small businesses looking to create a professional-looking website quickly and affordably.

Why choose Carrd for my startup?

Simple and fast – Carrd has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy for users to create their website without any coding or design skills. This takes you from idea to launch in hours or days not weeks.

Affordabble – Carrd offers a range of plans that make it an affordable option for individuals and small businesses who may not have a large budget for website development. There is a free plan that allows you to create a basic website at no cost. You can get a Pro plan including custom domains for just $19 per year (that is $1.59/mo) and even the full featured Pro Plus plan is just $49 per year.

Customization – Carrd offers a variety of templates and design options, allowing users to create a website that reflects their brand and style. Websites like Zite offer Carrd templates for more professional use like SaaS landing pages and agency website templates. More customisation is possible with custom CSS styles and code embeds.

Integrations – Your Carrd website can integrate with a wide range of third-party services. This includes payment processors, email marketing tools, social media platforms, analytics, and more. No coding needed to add additional functionality to your website or use it with systems you might already have in place.

Is Carrd right for my startup’s website?

The answer is easy: it depends. We broke it down for you by startup type and goals you may or may not have. This will help you figure out whether Carrd is the right website builder for your startup.

There are a lot of cases where Carrd will be your perfect choice. And others where you will be better off with a more complex website builder. Here’s a summary for all types of businesses. Scroll down to see our specific recommendations by startup type:

SaaS landing page in Carrd
Agency website in Carrd
E-Commerce website in Carrd
Content creator website
General SMB website
Photographer website

Carrd is the best choice for your startup website if

you are trying to validate an idea or
you want to run marketing experiments
your business is simple and you offer only a few products or services
you are looking to build an audience with a signup page
you want a professional design but don’t want to spend much time designing
you want some choice for templates for your business website
you are on a budget
you want to launch now and improve later
you want to be able to update the site quickly and without external help or developers’ time
you do not want to write code and configure a system to get up and running
you want great customer support

Maybe look at other options if

you are looking for custom, app-like functionality
you need to integrate your website to display live data from your database
you really need full flexibility for your design regarding fonts, colors, positioning. Carrd comes with constraints here so it remains easy to use
you know you will have a complex site structure, possible with a login area for customers
you have a large number of content items. Carrd does not have a CMS for managing large content databases.
your site is multi-language and has many pages
you want to run a blog. Blogging options for Carrd exist, though. Our favorite is Blogstatic.

Is Carrd a good choice to build my SaaS product landing page?

Say YES to Carrd if

you want have a quick way to launch a site promoting your SaaS product
you want to experiment with new landing pages and launch them quickly
you are pre-launch and want to build an audience in your product’s niche
you want be able to update your site without using the engineering team’s time
you’ll make changes often and need them live fast
you are pre-revenue and need to keep cost down
you want to integrate the site quickly with other tools like analytics and newsletter signup

Maybe look at other options if

you need to integrate with your exising product, for example want to show live data on your homepage
you already have a lot of content and want that on your new site as well
you are already using a CMS like WordPress and need even more options
you have multi-language content and a site structure with multiple pages

Can I use Carrd to build my agency website?

Yes if you

want to validate your idea and find first customers
have just started out
want to focus on lead generation, not spend much time building your site
plan to sell your agency directly, e.g. through Stripe payment links
have limited content to show

Check out other options if you want to

you want a blog in addition to the website (check out our article on how to blog in Carrd)
have a complete agency solution that provides customer login, invoices
publish complex case studies
build a complex website with a large number of sub pages
show off highly specialised web design skills – you’ll be limited by what Carrd allows you to do

Can I build and run my e-commerce site on Carrd?

Choose Carrd if

you want to launch quickly
you want a great unique design but don’t want to spend much time on it
you have small range of products or sell a few digital goods
maybe you just want to test a new product
you are just starting out and validating your e-commerce idea

Maybe look elsewhere if

you need a full featured store frontend and back office
you need advanced functionality like
you are migrating from a ecommerce system like Shopify or Woo Commerce and are looking for similar feature set
you want to sell internationally with content translated into multiple languages

As a content creator – should I run my website on Carrd?

Yes, Carrd will be a good fit if …

you are selling an individual info product
you have a content idea are just testing the waters
you are looking for a fast way to build an audience e.g. through email signups
you want to build satellite pages for individual products
you want to launch quickly and not spend too much time on your design
you already sell a few digital content products and are looking for a simple storefront
you sell on third party marketplaces like Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy and want to build a landing page where you link out to individual products

Check out other options if …

you want to run affiliate marketing for your content, this will be tough to setup for links to your Carrd website
you have a lot of content, many pages with complex layouts
you have multi-language content – this can get hard to manage in Carrd
you also run a blog – check out our article on blogging in Carrd

My SMB business needs a website, is Carrd a good choice?

Absolutely go with Carrd.co if

your business is pre-revenue and you are trying to validate the idea
you run an established business but want to get started on a budget
you want the site to look great without spending a lot of time or money on designing
you do not want to go through an agency for making and updating your site
you want to launch the site rather sooner than later
you want a simple site that presents your company and services and provides a way for people to contact you
you want to be able to update it quickly yourself

Look elsewhere if

you want a complex site where customers can log in and download files
you offer services in multiple languages. You’d need to setup multiple Carrd sites to achieve that.

As a photographer – can I use carrd to build my portfolio site?

Yes, use Carrd, if

you are building your first site
you want to launch quickly
you do not have a vast portfolio but want to display rather a few selected works
you want a professional looking website but don’t want to spend ages designing it
you are on a budget and want to keep cost down

Try other options if

you are an established artist or business and have many works, case studies and a large portfolio to show
you are looking for a website where customers could log in and download work you made for them
you want to publish to the website directly from third party tools like Lightroom

This was our list of startups and reasons to choose Carrd or look at other options.

You want to add reasons why a startup website in Carrd is a good or bad idea? Let us know.

Next Steps

Ok, I’ll go with Carrd. How Do I Start Building?

So you decided to go build your startup website in Carrd. Congrats. You won’t regret it. But where do you start now?

Signup. Of course, sign up for Carrd first. A free plan is available.

Dive right in. Open Carrd, start a site, play around. You’ll see how easy it is.

Learn to use Carrd editor. There are many great resources available. We have a Carrd video tutorial that teaches you everything we know about making Carrd websites. It comes packed with all the Carrd features we use to build our templates.

Take a short cut. A popular shortcut to designing and building a Carrd website yourself are Zite’s professional Carrd templates. For even more choice we have another article that compares online offers of paid and free Carrd templates.

Hire a helping hand. You want to go with Carrd for low maintenance cost and easy updating of your site. But you don’t want the hassle of setting it all up? Hire us at a low flat rate and we’ll take care of everything. Check our Carrd web design service

Should I Use Carrd for My Startup Website?