Your Free Website on Carrd: 11 Things to Set Up

What the free plan gives you

Your service page for $0: eleven setups on Carrd, simplest first. Let's dive right in. Number eleven: you can build three free Carrd sites, with all the core features. It's a free service for building one-page sites for pretty much anything.

Each site looks great on phones, tablets and desktops, right out of the box. Sites live at a Carrd address, like your name dot carrd dot co. A small 'Made with Carrd' line sits in the footer until you go Pro. No account is needed to start trying the builder.

By our count, three free sites cover your service page and leave two spare, at $0. The builder is designed to be straightforward and simple. Next, picking your starting template.

Pick a template or a blank page

Number ten: you start from one of dozens of templates, or a blank page. Templates for a service explain what it is, what it does and how to get it. Another tells people a little about you, what you do and where else to find you. On a phone, the builder works in a pinch, though it's still a bit beta-ish.

A computer gives the best experience for building. Publishing takes a free account with a name, an email and a password, verified soon after. By our count, the live list held 328 templates when we read it, plus the blank page. You need to be eighteen or older to register.

If step-by-step guides like this help you, subscribe. Every official page is linked below. Next, writing your service on the page.

Write your service with text elements

Number nine: a Text element holds your service, added from the element list. Each new element lands at the end of the page, with its properties panel open. Clicking an element opens that panel again whenever you want to edit it. Its Main tab holds the element's words, and the Appearance tab holds its look.

You drag an element before or after another to move it, guided by a green bar. Clone drops a copy right before the original. Asterisks turn words bold or italic, in a light formatting style called Markdown. Tildes strike words through.

The free plan allows fifty elements per site. By our count, three free sites at fifty elements each come to 150. Next, links that send people anywhere.

Links to sites, email, calls and texts

Number eight: any button, icon or other linkable element can open another site. So a button can send visitors to a page you already use. A blank flag on the link opens it in a new tab. An email link opens the visitor's email app with a new message to you.

A phone link places a call through their phone app. And a text link starts a new message in their messaging app. In text, a link is a label in brackets with its address after it. That works in text, list items, table rows and gallery captions too.

By our count, four kinds of links cover a visit, an email, a call and a text. Next, sections that turn one page into several.

Sections, columns and scroll points

Number seven: one page can act like several, because sections give each part its own name. A section's name uses only lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, like work. A button links to it with a hash sign and that name. Each section can also be opened straight from the site's address plus that hash.

Columns come from a Container element with its type set to Columns. Columns run from two to five, each at least 20% wide. By our count, five columns at 20% each fill the row exactly. Scroll points send the visitor to a spot on the page, like a form after a button.

Say Maya gives her prices their own section. Next, checking the page on a phone.

Check it on phone screens

Number six: Carrd tunes every element for phone screens by default, and that's usually enough. A Mobile switch set to Manual gives you more control. Settings left on Auto stay automatic, so you can fine-tune just the margins. Setting the switch back to Auto returns to full automatic tuning.

In the menu, Switch to Mobile View previews the site on a phone-size screen. Everything still works there, so you can keep building in that view. Changes made there also reach the desktop view, unless they're phone-only settings. Switch to Desktop View brings the normal view back.

Columns adapt to phone screens on their own. For more control, their Appearance tab has the same Mobile switch. The page's background can be a solid color, a gradient, an image or even a video. Background Friendly mode stacks the page below the background on phone screens.

Box, Wide Box and Tall Box page styles support it. By our count, three of the four page styles can do it. Say Maya puts her prices in two columns, and they stack neatly on a phone. Next, publishing the page.

Publish it and the content rules

Number five: Publish, in the builder's menu, opens the site's publishing panel. A site's title and description are usually set the first time it's published. The panel also holds the site's address. Auto-fill can turn those fields yellow and get in the way in some browsers.

Typing them by hand avoids that. The title and the description can be changed later, too. By our count, that's three fields to fill: title, description and address. Sites are hosted at a subdomain on a Carrd domain ending.

Its terms name six endings, starting with carrd dot co. Another menu action views the published site in a new tab. In our example, Maya titles her page with her name and the lessons she teaches. She publishes it and shares the link that same evening.

Carrd is fairly permissive about content, beyond the usual categories its terms ban. Thin affiliate sites aren't permitted either. Pages also can't carry sensitive personal information. A Carrd address doesn't make you its owner.

Next, updating a page that's already live.

Update a live page

Number four: on your Dashboard, clicking the site's preview image opens it in the builder. Then Publish, a new title or description if needed, and Publish Changes. For Maya, that's how new lesson times go live. If the old version still shows, it's likely a cached copy in your browser.

A hard refresh or clearing your browser cache brings up the changes. A site that isn't ready can be saved as an offline draft. Each plan grants a number of site slots, and the free plan has three. Published sites, drafts, templates and archived sites all take up slots.

Images you add are best kept on your device until the site is published. Text pasted from another app can carry hidden characters that Carrd won't process. Say Maya keeps her live page and a draft of a second one. By our count, that's two of her three free slots, with one to spare.

The Elements panel, under More Actions, shows how many elements a site uses. The builder's controls can also move to the left or right side of the screen. Questions go through Carrd's contact page, and it usually replies within twenty-four hours. Next, the paid plans and what each adds.

What the paid plans add

Number three: the free plan stays free, and the paid plans run nine, nineteen and $49 a year. The free plan is 100% free, with most of Carrd's services. Pro Lite offers some nice improvements over the free plan. Pro sites can publish without the Made with Carrd footer.

They can also use unbranded addresses, like crd dot co. Pro Standard is the mid-tier plan. It publishes to any custom domain you own. It adds working contact forms and signup forms.

And it builds more than three sites, from ten on Standard up to twenty-five on Plus. Pro Plus is built for power users. It adds custom forms and the advanced settings tab, plus payments through Stripe Checkout. Pro sites have no limit on the number of elements.

By our count, those three prices come to about seventy-five cents, a dollar fifty-eight and $4 eight a month. They can also make a scannable QR code for each site. They take images and GIFs up to sixteen megabytes, and videos up to sixty-four. A seven-day trial tests Pro's top features, with no payment or credit card required.

Upgrading is instant, with PayPal or any major credit or debit card. Auto-renewal is optional, and you can turn it on or off anytime. In our example, Maya starts on Pro Standard for her own domain. By our count, that's $19 a year, $10 more than Pro Lite.

Next, a contact form for requests.

Add a contact form

Number two: a contact form sends visitors' messages straight to your inbox. It needs Pro Standard or higher. You add a Form element and set its type to Contact. Its messages can go to up to five other addresses instead, separated by commas.

A Filter messages box screens out common spam content. Every form also gets basic spam and bot protection by default. The Button tab changes the label on the submit button, like Book a lesson. And that's it: the site has a working contact form.

Its emails come from mail dot carrd dot site. Signup forms for a mailing list come with Pro Standard too. Say Maya's students write in with the times that suit them. She sends those requests to her own email and a second inbox.

By our count, that's two of the five allowed addresses, with three to spare. If they land in spam, allowlisting that domain with your email provider helps. A working recipient address keeps those messages arriving. For Maya, the contact form comes with the Pro Standard plan she already has.

Then she replies by email and books the lesson. Next, number one: getting paid through your page.

Take payments through your page

Number one: on the free plan, a button can link to a payment page you already have. That's our suggestion, built on Carrd's own link options. Linking a button to another site isn't on Carrd's list of Pro-only features. With the blank flag, that page opens in a new tab.

Outside sites and services you link to are run by others, not by Carrd. On Pro Plus, a payment form puts a Stripe Checkout screen between sending the form and processing it. That covers anything from order forms to paid email lists. On the form's Button tab, On Click is set to require payment.

The price can be one already set up at Stripe. Or it's a custom price, with a name, a description and an amount. Your own Stripe API keys connect it, using Stripe's instructions. Form-based templates can even sell things, on Pro Plus or higher.

Pro also embeds widgets from services like Stripe and PayPal. In our invented example, Maya moves up to Pro Plus for a payment form. Her student pays $30 a lesson on the checkout screen. By our count, Pro Plus costs her $30 a year more than Pro Standard, $2 fifty a month.

Your page is live, so what else can you do with just a phone? Click the video on screen now.