What is Carrd? Everything you need to know about the simple website-building platform

• Carrd is a site-building platform, like SquareSpace or WordPress, that's been getting increasingly popular within the past year.
• Carrd sets itself apart from other sites by specializing in building one-page websites.
• Nearly all of its features are free to use, and it has many possible uses.

Lately, you may have heard about a new platform called Carrd. Simply put, Carrd is a website-building platform, much like Squarespace or WordPress. The big difference between Carrd and other sites, though, is that Carrd is optimized to create simple, one-page websites, which makes it much easier to use.

People often use Carrd to display their portfolio, or promote a cause that's important to them.

What you need to know about Carrd

There are myriad uses for small websites. Carrd suggests a handful of website types, which are helpfully arranged in different layout templates. They include:

• Profile - Good for making a personal information page to tell others about yourself, likely to market yourself to employers or collaborators.
• Landing - For things like products, services, apps, and the like. Landing pages make it easy to explain what something is, how it works, and where to get it.
• Forms - Good for businesses interacting with current or potential customers. Forms can do things like collect emails, conduct surveys, etc.
• Portfolio - Sort of like a profile, but specifically for visual artists, as it's meant to show off art and graphics.
• Sectioned - These Carrds are different from the other categories. They're like a halfway point between a one-page website and a site with multiple pages. They're still one page, but they're sectioned off into different categories - perfect for people looking to disseminate information on a topic, especially a complex one.

On top of these uses, many people have been using Carrd for other things. For example, some writers use it to help outline their stories, using the Sectioned format to help them keep track of characters, world-building elements, plot points, and more.

One popular use of the Sectioned layout is for online activists to raise awareness and spread information about causes, such as the Carrd site for Black Lives Matter. These sites often include donation buttons or links to organizations that help these causes.

The best part is that most of the site's features are free to use. There are a few that you can only access by upgrading to a paid version, like the ability to use forms or third-party widgets, but these extras are mostly aimed at business using Carrd as a homebase - most users can get along without these.

The possible uses of Carrd are limited only by the imagination, and the site is very easy to use. If you're interested in creating a Carrd yourself, and want to find out more, check out our article on how to make a Carrd.

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• How to make a simple, one-page website using the Carrd site-building platform

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