Having a freelance writing portfolio makes you look professional and experienced to potential clients.

You don’t necessarily need much if you’re just starting out — a landing page with your photo, a short blurb about what you you do, and links to a few samples are all that you really need.

Your ultimate goal should be to eventually have a self-hosted website with your own domain name, but it’s not as essential in the early days when you’re just trying to find work and get the ball rolling.

If you’re just starting out and don’t have any experience with self-hosted websites, I’d recommend forgetting about a self-hosted website the short-term to avoid overwhelming yourself or slowing down your momentum.

As a freelance writing beginner, your top two priorities should be to get your first few gigs and to grow your portfolio.

The following freelance writing portfolio sites are super easy to use so you can have your new portfolio set up in a matter of minutes — plus they look fantastic (like a real website).

Note that this isn’t a list from best to worst — all  of them are great options and the one you end up choosing will simply depend on personal preference.

You have nothing to lose by trying one out since they’re all free!

1. JournoPortfolio

JournoPortfolio is a super slick and simple freelance writing portfolio building platform that can help you build a professional looking portfolio in hardly any time at all.

I recommend this one to any freelancer who wants to spend as little time as possible setting up their portfolio.

With a free account, you get a landing page (home page) and the ability to add up to 10 articles.

Just upload a photo of yourself, add a professional description, select a layout and JournoPortfolio will walk you through the rest.

Your samples can be added via website links and JournoPortfolio will do the work of pulling all the necessary data from it to display it nicely on your home page — including the title, date, featured image, and first paragraph or so of text.

You can also add articles by uploading them as PDF files and images (JPG and PNG) or type/paste text into JournoPortfolio itself as a native post.

And if you have additional media you want to showcase, you can embed YouTube videos, Vimeo videos, and SoundCloud audio tracks.

JournoPortfolio Summed Up:

• Free account offers a home page, 10 articles, no backups.
• Eight theme layouts with customizable colours, fonts, and article settings.
• Can add articles via URL, PDF upload, image upload, or text input.
• Can embed media from YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud.
• Can be integrated with email provider MailChimp to collect subscribers.
• Premium pricing starts at $6 per month for unlimited articles and pages.

2. Clippings.me

Clippings.me is another great freelance writing portfolio platform that actually gives you the opportunity to connect to your Twitter account so it can quickly import your avatar, bio, and cover photo.

(If you’d rather just do it manually, you can do that too.)

Just fill in your details and Clippings.me will automatically create a simple landing page portfolio for you.

There aren’t any theme layouts to choose from and you can’t really customize anything except your cover photo, so if you want something a little more personalized, you might want to stick with JournoPortfolio or one of the other options in this list.

Like JournoPortfolio, Clippings.me allows you to add up to 10 articles with a free account via URL or PDF upload.

You can also embed media from YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud.

Clippings.me Summed Up:

• Free account offers a home page and 10 articles.
• Can import profile information from Twitter.
• Can upload your own cover photo, but no theme layouts.
• Can add articles via URL, PDF upload, image upload, or text input.
• Can organize articles into categories.
• Can embed media from YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud.
• Premium pricing starts at $9.99 per month for unlimited articles and more premium features.

3. Wix

Wix is a popular website building platform not just for writers, but for everybody.

You might really want to consider Wix if you like the idea of a highly customizable portfolio or future writer site.

Wix offers a wide range of theme layouts to choose from, which can all be customized.

The theme featured in the image above is the content marketing writer website theme, which you can select to start with and the customize the way you like.

The neat thing about Wix is that it has all sorts of modules you can use to make your portfolio or site more functional.

You can add images, lists, grids, galleries, forms, blogs, buttons, strips, and all sorts of other things.

The basic editor uses artificial intelligence (Wix ADI) to build your portfolio quickly and allows you to do a few customizations, however if you want full control over everything, you’ll have to switch to Wix’s full editor.

You also get a media library with up to 500 MB of storage for all your images and files.

Wix Summed Up:

• Complete website building platform with basic editor (Wix ADI) and full editor.
• Lots of different theme layouts (templates) to choose from.
• Wix ADI makes it fast and easy to set something up with the opportunity to make some customizations.
• Wix editor allows for full customization.
• Tons of modules to add to make portfolio/site more functional and impressive.
• A bit of a learning curve to using Wix since there are so many possibilities.
• Unlimited pages and 500 MB of storage with a free account.
• Wix ads appear on sites with a free account.
• Premium accounts start at $5 a month to connect your own domain, $10 a month to remove Wix ads.

4. Contently

Contently was one of the first portfolio platforms I tried out years ago, as you can see from my outdated profile above!

This is another very simple platform that gives you the ability to create a landing page portfolio with minimal customization options.

You can add unlimited articles to your portfolio and import them via URL (main website or single link), PDF file, or an existing Behance portfolio.

Your profile can include basic details as well as your primary skill, contact information, location, languages, and links to social networks.

The real benefit of using Contently is that it’s a freelancer network.

As you can see, there’s a button at the top of my profile that can be turned on so I’m “Available for work,” meaning that I’m discoverable across the platform by people looking to hire based off of my portfolio information.

Contentely even lists job postings on its own Gigs page for freelancers looking for work.

And be sure to check out the resources section to read articles by fellow freelancers.

Contently Summed Up:

• A clean and basic portfolio platform with limited customization.
• Operates as a freelancer network where freelancers can be discovered by publishers looking to hire.
• Profile summary is displayed above portfolio clips.
• Unlimited articles can be added by URL, PDF, or Behance portfolio import.
• Automatically pulls title, name of website, feature image, and first couple of sentences to display each article.
• No premium option.

5. WordPress.com

Like Wix, WordPress.com is another free website building platform for a variety of websites.

But unlike Wix, the range of customizations is a lot more limited.

The nice thing about WordPress.com is that it actually strikes a really nice balance between prebuilt theme templates and minimal customization.

There are several portfolio templates available that you can use to easily and quickly set up a nice looking portfolio for yourself.

WordPress.com has premium plans that start at $5 a month, but almost everyone you talk to who has experience with WordPress will advise you not to upgrade to it.

Instead, your most useful reason for starting with a free WordPress.com site would be to eventually move it to a self-hosted WordPress.org site. (Future blog post coming on that soon!)

There’s no limit to how many posts or pages that you create on a free WordPress.com site, however you’re limited to 3 GB of storage for media and file uploads.

WordPress.com Summed Up:

• Website building platform with lots of great theme templates to choose from.
• Limited customzation, but theme templates make up for it.
• Unlimited posts and pages.
• 3 GB of storage with free account.
• Ads sometimes displayed on free sites.
• Premium plans start at $5, but typically aren’t worth it.
• Most ideal to use if you want to eventually transfer posts and pages to self-hosted WordPress.org site.

6. Weebly

Weebly is yet another website building platform that’s very popular and useful for creating all sorts of websites — including freelance writing portfolios.

You can choose from seven portfolio theme templates or seven personal theme templates to get your portfolio going.

The Weebly editor is pretty intuitive to use and you can add a number of different sections in the form of functional modules like contact forms, galleries, buttons, and more.

It’s also fairly customizable and similar to Wix, it includes on-page editing so you can easily change fonts, edit images, or even drag pieces of content around.

It appears that you can create an unlimited number of pages with a free account, however you’re limited to just 100 MB of storage for any files you decide to upload.

Weebly Summed Up:

• Website building platform with decent theme templates.
• Great customization options for free accounts, including modules for creating different sections.
• Unlimited pages, but very little storage at just 100 MB for free accounts.
• Ads are displayed on free sites.
• Premium options available starting at $4 just to connect a domain name, $8 a month to remove ads.

7. Site123

Site123 is comparable to Weebly in that it’s another website building platform that offers a nice range of templates and a similar editor with on-page editing functions.

There aren’t quite as many modules to add sections that you want, but there’s enough there to create a nice looking, simple portfolio site.

In addition to being able to click on any existing section on your site to edit it within the editor, you can also customize your background as well as add buttons, images, forms, videos, audio, and social network integration.

Site123 also has a huge variety of different page templates to use so you don’t have to build each page from scratch.

It doesn’t look like there’s an limit to the number of pages you can create on Site123.

With a free account, you get 500 MB of storage for all your files and 1 GB of bandwidth.

Site123 Summed Up:

• A website builder with a few theme templates and an intuitive on-page editor.
• Great range of customizable options to make it your own.
• Unlimited pages plus access to an awesome page template library.
• 500 GB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth.
• Ads are displayed on free sites.
• Premium plans start at about $13 a month to get 10 GB of storage and to remove ads.

Which Freelance Writing Portfolio Platform Are You Going to Try?

Remember, there’s no best option here.

It all depends on how much time you want to spend putting your freelance writing portfolio together and how much customization you want.

You definitely don’t want to spend too much time on it since you should eventually plan to move it to a self-hosted writer website when you’re ready to purchase your own domain name and hosting package.

But you’ll do just fine with a free portfolio for a few months up to about a year.

If you used any of the above portfolio platforms mentioned above, feel free to share the link in the comment section and tell us what you like about it!