Carrd or Webflow: What is the right builder for you

Are you looking to build a website with low-code technology that is tailored to your needs? Our favorite picks might be Carrd and Webflow: two top-notch website builders that don't require you to have any coding knowledge. These tools aim for easy-to-use interfaces, customizable templates, and a variety of advantages to help you make a website that looks professional quickly and easily. In this article, you’ll learn what the perfect fit is based on your specific needs. 

Are you a user trying to make an artsy portfolio webpage? Or are you a growing business owner who needs to make an e-commerce website? Whether you're aiming to boost productivity, increase efficiency, or transform your digital presence, our comprehensive analysis of these two platforms authorizes us to craft a solution perfectly aligned with your unique objectives. Our in-depth comparison of these platforms will guide you towards the ideal solution for you. With no further ado, let’s dive in!

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Overview of Carrd

Carrd stands out in the no-code website building landscape as a simple, yet powerful platform designed to create responsive one-page sites. It presents a wide selection of customizable templates and themes, enabling users to create professional-looking websites with remarkable speed and ease. Carrd's intuitive interface and streamlined functionality make it an ideal choice for those who prioritize simplicity and efficiency in their website creation process. Carrd stands out for those who are looking to build personal websites, portfolio websites, landing pages, and simple websites.

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Introducing Webflow

Webflow is a highly versatile website builder that encourages users to create intricate, fully customized websites without the need for coding. One of its key features is the responsive design capabilities it presents, ensuring your site looks stunning on any device. Additionally, Webflow offers an extensive library of pre-designed templates and components, smoothing the process for beginners while allowing for deep customization to meet unique requirements. Webflow is a perfect fit for designers, developers, agencies, and custom web applications.

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Ease of use and learning curve

Carrd

When it comes to simplicity and intuition of the user, Carrd is your go-to option. It presents a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to customize your website and design without any coding knowledge. You can start creating your website by choosing from a wide selection of templates or creating your own. If we talk about beginners or low-experienced users in the low-code website creation world, then Carrd is the best fit. 

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When considering the specificities, building a website with Carrd takes a few days, depending on your design and customizations needs.

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Webflow

Unlike Carrd, Webflow presents a steeper learning curve. If you have limited experience with website design and low-code technology, it may take some time to become proficient in using Webflow effectively, since it presents more advanced features and functionalities compared to Carrd. The good news is that Webflow offers the Webflow University to help new users have a rapid comprehension of how to use this tool. 

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If you are a beginner, and considering the steep learning curve Workflow presents, you can plan to create your website in a few weeks. Your best choice will be to work with our Webflow developers.

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Design customization and flexibility

Carrd

As we have already pointed out, Carrd provides two primary paths to initiate the journey of a website creation: you can either select a pre-existing template or start creating from scratch. If you choose the first option, then a wide array of designs will be waiting for you. Although the variety of templates is extensive, the level of customization is more limited compared to Webflow. While Carrd allows you to customize the layout, colors, and fonts of your website, it may not offer the same level of flexibility and design options as Webflow.

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Webflow

Webflow provides a high level of customization, allowing you to create unique and more visually complex websites. It provides an extensive collection of over 1,000 pre-designed templates, aimed at a wide range of industries and website types. When it comes to design customization, Webflow provides a user-friendly visual editor with drag-and-drop functionality, allowing for real-time modifications. It also offers the possibility to add custom code for further customization. But, one of its main advantages is that it is the perfect go-to platform for those designers with no experience in using code. The advanced features regarding design and customization that Webflow offers can be a little bit overwhelming for beginners. But, if you have experience with creating low-code websites, you’ll find Webflow to be more comprehensive.

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Webflow integrations

Spline:

To level it up and make your websites more appealing, Webflow partners with Spline to present the Spline Embed integration, which allows users to add interactive 3D content to their websites without the need to write code. This user-friendly tool enhances websites with interactive 3D designs effortlessly. Users can design on Spline and then export it into their Webflow website. 

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Spline is a user-friendly, browser-based 3D design tool. It doesn’t require users to have code knowledge. The Webflow-Spline integration will allow you to:

• Create interactive item exhibitions that allow users to explore your products from multiple angles.
• Create an animated guide character that walks users through your webpage.
• Add 3D art into your design to enhance it and make it more appealing.
• Integrate a scrolling animation to your logo that captures user attention as they navigate your website.

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To learn more about this innovative integration between Spline and Webflow, you can check Webflow’s university page to learn more about this 3D no-code feature.

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Stripe:

Stripe offers solutions for online payment processing, which is a required integration when creating e-commerce. Stripe allows the integration to Webflow without using code. More advanced options need some code, but its basic integration requires no to low-code knowledge. This is the plug-and-play approach, in which users connect Stripe to their Webflow account using the platform's user-friendly interface. 

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This basic integration allows for standard payment functionalities, such as processing one-time payments and managing basic recurring payments. It is a perfect fit for individual users, small businesses, and startups. It contemplates products like simple e-commerce sites, personal or small business websites with basic selling features, or a limited number of products in stock.

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Stripe offers more complex integration plans that you can check at their website. Or you can check Webflow’s university page to learn more about this integration feature.

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Zapier:

Zapier is an integration tool that connects Webflow and various other applications. This leads to automating workflows and improves overall efficiency, since through Zapier you will avoid repeating the same task over and over. The great thing about this integration tool is that it requires no code previous experience to use it. 

This tool works on the concept of triggers and actions: when a trigger event occurs in one app, an action is automatically performed in another app. These triggers and actions are called "Zaps." Zaps are created with no coding knowledge.

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Once your Webflow account is connected to Zapier, you’ll be able to join over 1,000 apps with Webflow. This action will lead to automating your workflow both in CMS and e-commerce.

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The Webflow-Zapier integration will allow you to:

• Generate automated workflows between Webflow and other apps.
• Eliminate repetitive tasks, which will save you a lot of time.
• Efficiently transfer data between Webflow and other applications.
• Automate e-commerce tasks, like order processing and managing inventory.

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Zapier offers a wide range of integration features that you can check at their website. You can also read our extended Zapier article to learn more about this tool.

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Uploadcare

Uploadcare is a cloud platform designed to simplify the management and customization of media files for websites and applications. It includes several features like file uploading, secure storage, advanced image processing, and efficient content delivery. 

Uploadcare focuses on simplifying media workflows by optimizing the entire media management process, which enhances the user experiences and supports businesses in delivering high-quality content at speed.

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The Webflow-Uploadcare integration will allow you to:

• Simplify media file management on your Webflow website or app with seamless uploading, storage, and optimization processes of images and videos.
• Uploadcare will take care of automatically optimizing your media, without losing the fast page loading times.
• Streamline file organization through an intuitive interface, which makes the management and location process of your media assets a lot easier. 

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Uploadcare will allow you to upload and manage media within Webflow in an easy way. Visit Uploadcare’s article about Webflow-Uploadcare integration to learn more.

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Features and Functionality

Carrd

• E-commerce: If you want to add this functionality to your website, you can, but it presents some limitations since you would need to integrate third-party services or use external links to platforms like Etsy or Shopify. Carrd handles straightforward transactions via PayPal or Stripe, but if you aim to create a fully developed e-commerce store, Webflow is your main option.
• Blogging: It is possible to design a blog using Carrd, but it is not a dynamic process, since this tool is mainly created for one-page websites and lacks automated blogging capabilities. This means that you will need to manually add new sections for each post.
• Forms: With its user-friendly interface, Carrd allows you to add, customize, and position elements such as forms with its easy drag-and-drop functionality.

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Webflow

• E-commerce: Webflow offers extensive e-commerce capabilities, including customizable product fields, dynamic checkout, and automated email notifications. It’s the perfect fit if you are going for a well-developed online store. Webflow offers a wide variety of e-commerce templates, and each presents a built-in ecommerce functionality, allowing you to rapidly create your store.
• Blogging: Webflow's CMS is a powerful feature when it comes to blogging. This is, it allows for customized blog post designs and dynamic content. However, features like commenting and sharing in social media require additional third-party integrations.
• Forms: While it has a steeper learning curve than Carrd, users appreciate Webflow’s seamless integration of essential features like forms.

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Pricing and Plans

Carrd

Carrd offers more affordable pricing plans, making it a great choice for individuals and small businesses. Let’s check the different plans the platform offers:

• Pro lite plan: This plan is $0.75/month. It offers basic features suitable for simple, personal websites. This plan includes up to 3 1-page websites.
• Pro standard plan: It costs $1.58/month and it offers more features and flexibility, which makes it ideal for professional users and small projects. It includes up to 10 1-page websites.
• Pro plus plan: The cost is $4.08/month, presenting advanced features for more complex sites, including additional customization options. It provides up to 25 1-page websites.

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Webflow

Webflow’s costs are higher, but it provides more comprehensive features, design, and customization flexibility, especially for expert users, larger businesses, and enterprises. Let’s review the pricing plans this low-code tool software has to offers:

• Starter plan: This package is free, and it is aimed at new users. It includes limited features for new sites, which include 2 static pages and 50 form submissions lifetime.
• Basic plan: The next plan costs $18/month, and it is aimed at building simple sites with a custom domain- This package includes 100 pages, basic SEO controls, and 500 monthly form submissions. 
• CMS plan: It costs $29/month. Target for content-driven sites with 150 website pages, 2,000 CMS items, 1,000 monthly form submissions, and full API access. 
• Standard plan: The cost is $42/month. It’s tailor-made for new businesses with up to 500 e-commerce items. It provides basic e-commerce features and a 2% transaction fee.
• Business plan: It costs $49/month, and it offers elevated traffic, up to 10 content editors, and a site search feature.
• Plus plan: Its cost is $84/month, aimed for businesses with higher volume, with 0% transaction fees, up to 5,000 e-commerce items, and advanced features.
• Advanced plan: Lastly, this plan costs $235/month. It was designed to create a scalable solution for large online stores with up to 15,000 e-commerce items, the highest caps, and 0% transaction fees.

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Performance and SEO

Website speed and loading times

Carrd

As a single-page website builder, Carrd aims for mobile-friendly design, efficient caching, and the utilization of Cloudflare's Content Delivery Network (CDN) to enhance speed performance. These simplicity and ease of use are translated into users searching for minimal load times, and page speed scores are expected to be high. 

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Webflow

As a responsive website builder and hosting platform, it focuses on custom cache settings, custom element loading, automatic minification, responsive templates, and CDN for speed optimization. By prioritizing clean, semantic code, this platform ensures that websites are free from unnecessary elements that can slow down loading times. 

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SEO capabilities and optimization tools

Carrd

When it comes to marketing features, Carrd provides comprehensive analytics and SEO tools to help you track and optimize your website's performance. This includes monitoring who visits your webpage, tracking conversion rates, and making data-driven decisions to make your online presence stand out. 

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Webflow

Webflow also features SEO as an integrated function to help improve your website's visibility and ranking on search engines. The platform offers a wide range of built-in SEO tools and options to help optimize your website for search engines. It allows the customization of meta tags, alt tags, and URLs, and provides options for adding structured data and generating XML sitemaps. These elements allow you to optimize your website's structure and content, which makes it easier for search engines to understand and index your site.

As we have already mentioned, Webflow excels in the creation of blogs providing CMS features that make it the most convenient choice. In that sense, its integrated SEO tools will help you improve your website's visibility. As it is an integrated feature, you won’t need to appeal to external plugins or third party tools, such as WordPress. 

When editing your SEO setting within your Webflow website, you should remember to publish your site to allow your changes to perform. SEO changes take some weeks to update, so don’t panic! Every change you perform, either to the title tag or meta description, will take a few days to get indexed and be shown in search engine results pages (SERPs).  

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• ‍Related: Webflow vs Wordpress

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Target audience and use cases

In selecting between Webflow and Carrd, it is essential to evaluate your particular needs and objectives. Carrd may be more suitable if you are looking for an uncomplicated and user-friendly platform that facilitates the rapid development of basic websites. Conversely, Webflow presents as an excellent option for those seeking a highly customizable platform with extensive features, allowing for the creation of sophisticated websites. 

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Ideal projects for Carrd

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Landing pages

Carrd will be your go-to platform if you are an individual or a small business looking to create a landing page quickly and smoothly. It will excel at being fully responsive, with a smooth interface and a variety of templates to choose from.

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Portfolio websites

With a wide variety of pre-designed templates, Carrd stands out as your perfect fit for creating portfolios to showcase your creative work, whether you're a designer, artist, or freelancer.

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Small e-commerce:

While it can be used to create small e-commerce, it is not recommended for large businesses, since it offers basic functionalities through third-party integrations, like Stripe and PayPal. Ultimately, it lacks the comprehensive e-commerce tools needed for larger online stores.

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Carrd excels in ease of use and affordability, making it a great choice for those who need a quick online presence without extensive features.

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Ideal projects for Webflow

Complex websites:

Webflow offers advanced design features and customization tools. If you are aiming to design a comprehensive website that stands out for responding to a wide range of business needs, Webflow is the right fit for you. It offers design functionalities and flexible CMS to create highly customized websites.

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In Low-code Agency, we have created several websites using Webflow. Let’s take a look at some of them:

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SecondShare: 

SecondShare approached LowCode Agency because they needed to create a strong online presence within the real estate market, and showcase their unique property listings to potential buyers. The goal was to develop a visually appealing and user-friendly website that would effectively represent their brand image and create engagement.

The solution we provided was to use Webflow to design and develop a custom website that captured the essence of SecondShare. The website features an intuitive user interface, stunning property galleries, and seamless navigation, providing visitors with a memorable and engaging browsing experience. We also integrated an easy-to-use content management system, empowering SecondShare to update their property listings and content effortlessly.

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Webflow allowed us to develop excellent results! 

• Since its launch, SecondShare has seen significant improvements in their online presence. 
• Webflow allowed us to create a sleek and user-friendly design, which led to decrease the bounce rate by 50%, indicating improved user engagement and a higher level of interest in SecondShare's offerings. 
• The company has experienced a significant boost in inquiries and sales, with a notable 20% increase in the conversion rate.

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Read the full SeconShare case study here.

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Unofficial Fun:

Brent Doud, the creator of Unofficial Fun, is a sports enthusiast who wanted to keep track of the schedules of his favorite sports teams. He partnered with us to develop a platform that brings the joy of custom schedules right to users' fingertips.

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The goal was to provide sports enthusiasts with an effortless way to stay informed about their team's games, ensuring the schedules were easily accessible on their devices. Our task and objective was to help create a user-friendly platform that presented a hassle-free experience, keeping fans in the loop with all the latest updates. This is when Webflow enters the game.

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Webflow was our ally to deliver a comprehensive solution for Unofficial Fun:

• We implemented a mail newsletter system that delivers monthly updated schedules to users, ensuring they always have the latest information on the sports they are interested in.
• Additionally, we developed a free schedule maker tool for users to create personalized schedules with up to 7 games per schedule. 
• The schedules are downloadable as lock screen images, making it convenient for users to access their team's schedule at a glance. 
• Lastly, we designed a sales landing page that showcased pricing options and streamlined the subscription payment process for unlimited schedule creation.

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Read the full Unofficial Fun case study here.

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Large e-commerce:

For larger e-commerce stores, Webflow is the winning option. Presenting extensive features, including built-in payment processing, advanced product page customization, and a variation of e-commerce templates. Its design tools and CMS make it a top-notch choice for professional designers seeking to create customized, responsive, and smooth online stores.

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Some really interesting e-commerce websites were created using Webflow. Let’s analyze one of them:

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Impact Dog Crates:

Impact Dog Crates is a direct-to-consumer brand that specializes in providing premium, heavy-duty aluminum dog crates and accessories. This innovative business has developed top-notch crates for a variety of uses, from airline travel to home care. A standout product is their High Anxiety Crate, specifically designed for dogs with separation anxiety, which has become a defining feature of their business.

As a growing business, most of their employees are tasked with several roles and responsibilities. This is especially true for McKinley Hancock, Impact Dog Crates’ Web Developer, who in addition to designing and coding the brand’s site, also leads conversion rate optimization (CRO) at the company. With extensive experience, McKinley was motivated to find a no-code solution so future operators could make changes to the site without needing extensive coding skills. That’s when Webflow enters the scene. 

Webflow acquired Intellimize, which is known for its AI-driven optimization solutions. That’s why he instantly knew that Webflow would be a great fit for Impact Dog Crates’ needs. After signing on with Intellimize, the first area of focus was improving conversion rates on its homepage.

The solution was to create an easy experience when users navigated the home page, so they launched a digital ad campaign featuring the winning image and messaging, and tracked those who clicked on ads with UTM parameters. Intellimize’s targeting functionality allowed Impact Dog Crates to show the same version of the homepage to those who clicked on the ad for continuity.

They have already seen an 80% increase in conversions since last year, there’s no doubt that Impact Dog Crates will use Intellimize to execute their new experiments.

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Read more about Impact Dog Crates here.

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Webflow is ideal for those users who need more control and customization options for their websites.

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Conclusion

Key differences: Carrd VS Webflow

As we have seen through this article, both Carrd and Webflow offer unique strengths and singularities. Your choice will depend on your specific needs.

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Carrd

Targeted audience: 

This platform is ideal for individuals and small businesses, whose main goal is to create simple, single-page websites quickly and affordably. 

Design and customization: 

It offers a wide variety of templates and designs to choose from. With its user-friendly interface, Carrd makes it super simple to customize templates and let your creativity flow.

Ease of use: 

Carrd is perfect for beginners! If you are starting on the low-code revolutionary technology path, its user-friendly interface and helpful design will bring you no further complexities. 

Ideal projects: 

Carrd excels in ease of use and affordability, which makes it the perfect fit for users who need a quick online presence without extensive features. That’s why if you’re aiming to create a portfolio or a landing page, Carrd will be your best ally. 

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Webflow

Targeted audience:

This comprehensive platform is a great fit for designers and larger businesses since it provides users with advanced design tools, wide CMS, and SEO tools.

Design and customization:

With +1000 pre-built templates, Webflow ensures a growing library for each specific need. The design customization features include a visual drag-and-drop editor for real-time adjustments, full control over its design, and the ability to insert custom code to make additional customizations for advanced users.

Ease of use: 

Webflow offers a comprehensive platform but with a steep learning curve, especially for those new to web design. You can learn more about how to use the platform in depth at their Webflow University.

Ideal projects:

Webflow excels in the creation of blogs, for its CMS features. Also, Its extensive and complex features make it great for those who seek more control and customization for specific websites, such as large e-commerce sites.

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Ready to fully dive into the potential of Carrd and Webflow? Bring your project to life with the expert support of our dedicated team, here in Low-Code Agency.