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Custom website vs Carrd: which should you choose?
Choose Carrd if you need a simple one-page site — a link-in-bio, a landing page, a personal profile — for almost nothing; it's the best value in the category at roughly $9–$49/year. Choose custom the moment you need more than one page's worth of business. At Nabee Studio a custom website starts at $4,500 one-time, or $499/mo × 24 with hosting and maintenance included.
Carrd is honest about what it is: a tool for beautiful, tiny, single-page sites. Comparing it to a full custom build is really a question of whether one page is enough.
What is Carrd genuinely good at?
Carrd is unbeatable on value and simplicity for its niche. It builds clean, responsive, fast one-page sites — landing pages, personal profiles, link hubs, event pages, simple portfolios — and Pro plans cost roughly $9–$49 per year, not per month. Setup takes minutes, it supports custom domains, forms, and basic embeds, and the results look genuinely good. For a solo creator, a side project, or anyone who needs a single sharp page and nothing more, Carrd is the right tool and almost impossible to beat on price.
Where does Carrd break down?
Carrd's specific limit is that it's deliberately one page. There's no multi-page site structure, no real CMS or blog, no e-commerce beyond simple payment links, and no room for complex functionality — it's designed to stay small. That's a feature until your needs grow: the moment you want proper navigation, multiple content sections, a blog, a store, or any integration beyond forms and embeds, you've outgrown Carrd entirely and need to rebuild elsewhere. It's not a platform you scale on; it's a platform you graduate from.
What about the manual work?
On a single page there's little to maintain, which is Carrd's charm. But because it does so little, any real business workflow — leads, bookings, content, selling — lives entirely in other tools you run by hand, with the page just pointing at them. That's fine for a link hub and a bottleneck for a business. A custom build makes the site the place the workflow happens; the hidden-costs guide covers the manual labor of stitched-together tools.
Choose Carrd if / choose custom if
Choose Carrd if you genuinely need one page — a landing page, link-in-bio, or personal profile — and want it cheap, fast, and clean.
Choose custom if your business needs multiple pages, a blog, commerce, or integrations, or you're already pointing your Carrd page at a pile of other tools you'd rather unify.
How does the cost compare?
Carrd is roughly $9–$49 per year — the cheapest option here by far, and worth it for a single page. A Nabee custom website starts at $4,500 one-time (standard from $7,500), or $499/mo × 24 with the Maintenance Plan and hosting included — a different product for a different job. Payment plans are 24 flat payments, no credit check, with ownership transferring after payment 24, and they total more than the one-time price. See pricing and the custom vs builder guide.
Outgrown one page? Start a project.
Common questions
- What is Carrd best for?
- Single-page sites — landing pages, link-in-bio hubs, personal profiles, simple portfolios. It's clean, fast, and cheap at roughly $9–$49 per year. It's not built for multi-page business sites.
- Can Carrd do multiple pages or a blog?
- No — it's deliberately one page, with no real CMS, blog, or multi-page structure. When you need those, you've outgrown Carrd and need to rebuild on something else.
- Can I sell products on Carrd?
- Only via simple payment links — there's no real store. For e-commerce, Shopify or a custom storefront is the right choice.
- Is Carrd cheaper than a custom site?
- By far — it's a few dollars a year for one page. A Nabee website starts at $4,500 one-time or $499/mo × 24 with hosting and maintenance included; they're different products for different jobs.
- When should I move off Carrd?
- When you need multiple pages, a blog, commerce, or integrations, or you're pointing your page at a stack of separate tools. That's the point to consider a real multi-page custom build.