Adobe Portfolio or WordPress or Authory? It's a solid question and poses quite a conundrum when you're picking the ideal tool to build your portfolio website. I know because I spent two months trying to find a tool that meets all my requirements, and doesn't burn a hole in my pocket — which isn't as simple a feat as you think.
Thankfully, I did find a tool that works for you, and I decided to lay out my observations on the journey of research and trial-and-error that led me to said tool. This time, I'll be taking on the difference between Adobe Portfolio vs WordPress vs Authory.
📖 What you’ll get out of this article:
• A list of features I wanted in my ideal portfolio builder
• A detailed exploration of Adobe Portfolio, WordPress and Authory
• A glance at Authory, and why I chose it to create my writer’s portfolio
Features of my perfect portfolio website builder
- A user-friendly UI that lets me create a professional website in minutes.
- No requirement for coding skills.
- Analytics support so I can keep up with the performance of my published content.
- Simple, unproblematic customizability that didn't overwhelm me with options.
- Affordable. Ideally, less than $10 a month.
Now, let's look at the tools in some detail before I justify my final choice to create a portfolio site.
Adobe Portfolio
Adobe Portfolio
If you're a photographer and need to create a photography portfolio, choose Adobe Portfolio. Get the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription it comes with, and start using it today. It comes with not just a set of visually arresting layouts but also numerous features considered essential for photographers — such as integration with Behance and Adobe Lightroom.
Using this tool, you can create a stunning, professionally-valued portfolio without requiring expert-level technical or design skills.
Primary features of Adobe Portfolio
- Responsively designed themes that make your portfolio website look great on mobile device screens.
- Build single-page or multi-page portfolios.
- Solid options for customizing, along with pre-set elements that look good, no matter what.
- Seamless image importing from Adobe Lightroom.
- Flawless Behance integration.
- Allows use of Adobe Fonts.
- Dynamic galleries that let you create photo grids and incorporate photos from Lightroom.
- Enables password protection of single or multiple pages of your portfolio.
- Offers a custom domain, but requires you to register and host it manually. You can choose to get a domain through Adobe Portfolio, and it will host your site on Namecheap. All setup is manual.
Adobe Portfolio's price
Adobe Portfolio comes bundled with Adobe Creative Cloud, priced at:
Creative Cloud — Photography: $9.99/month
Creative Cloud — All Apps: $54.99/month
Portfolios created with Adobe Portfolio
ilustramincje's illustration portfolio
ilustraminacje (Kamila Romaniak) is a freelance illustrator from Poland.
am.studio's architecture portfolio
am studio de arquitetura ltda is an architectural studio based in Sao Paulo.
WordPress
WordPress
As one of the most popular website builders in the world, WordPress is a great option for building your online portfolio. It comes with almost every feature you need to create a rich, layered portfolio website within a few minutes unless, of course, you want to dive into the back-end code.
If you're just starting out with website creation for a portfolio, I'd recommend that you watch WordPress tutorials to make the process easier and less confusing.
🖱️ Authory is, amongst other things, a portfolio builder & content backup service, used by thousands of top professionals worldwide.
Primary Features of WordPress
- Thousands of aesthetically attractive templates and layouts, many of which are perfectly tailored for creating portfolios.
- Ability to add everything from photo carousels, maps, and tiled image galleries to forms with a single click.
- Supports most design elements — text, photos, forms, Yelp reviews, testimonials, maps, etc. All the elements are moveable; you can shift them around as you see fit.
- Thousands of add-ons that are easy to install and help expand your site's functions — capture leads, insert contact forms, institute subscriptions, automatically backup your site, use business management software, online marketing tools, etc.
- Sell directly from your portfolio using the tool's eCommerce capabilities.
- In-built SEO optimization options.
- Offers custom domain names.
- Leverage industry leading customer support.
WordPress’ Price
Personal Plan : $4/month
Premium Plan : $8/month
Business Plan : $25/month
eCommerce Plan : $45/month
Portfolios created with WordPress
Atlantis's web design portfolio
Atlantis is a web designer with a background in graphic design.
Studio Signorello's graphic design portfolio
Studio Signorella features unique silkscreen prints, custom-made, including the material and colors.
Authory
Authory
The first thing you should know about Authory is that it builds your portfolio for you. You enter the digital source (the URL of websites where your pieces are published), and a copy of every bylined article on that site is automatically drawn into Authory's database. Once that is complete, you organize them into Collections, add them to your portfolio, and you're done — all with just a few clicks.
All imported content is permanently backed up. It doesn't matter if the original page goes down for any reason; a copy of your content is forever saved with Authory.
You can import and add content in text, audio, and video formats. It's quite common for Authory users to create broadcast quality videos, and use the tool to import and back them up, as well as showcase them on their portfolio.
Primary features of Authory
- All bylined content pieces are automatically imported from any website you specify. Authory doesn't just import your existing work, but anything you might publish (with your byline) on those sites in the future. You never have to copy-paste an article, podcast, or video link to your portfolio ever again.
- All imported content is permanently backed up by Authory. Irrespective of the source link's status, you'll always have a copy of any content imported by Authory.
- All backups are in the original content format, be it text or media. No screenshots.
- All content can be downloaded as high-quality PDFs or exported as HTML files anytime. No lock-in period.
- Enough customization options to make your portfolio look good without much effort. You can upload your own banner image, choose how your content will appear (tiles, list, etc.), and add relevant contact and social media links.
- You get email notifications anytime a new piece of content is imported.
- Your portfolio is automatically optimized for SEO, and responsively calibrated to look great on mobile screens
- You get analytics data (readership & engagement numbers) on your content every 30 days.
- A newsletter tool that lets you automatically send all new content to your subscribers.
- Availability of widgets that you can use to display your Authory portfolio on your personal website or social media accounts.
Authory's price
$8/month
🖱️ Authory is, amongst other things, a portfolio builder & content backup service, used by thousands of top professionals worldwide.
Portfolios created with Authory
David Pogue's thought leadership portfolio
David Pogue is a six-time Emmy winner, a New York Times bestselling author, and a five-time TED speaker.
Ali M Latifi's journalism portfolio
Ali M Latifi is a Kabul-based journalist.
Why I chose Authory over Adobe Portfolio and WordPress
Simple. Because Authory is cheaper and gives me exactly what I want.
Both Adobe Portfolio and WordPress are excellent portfolio makers, but they don't give me the primary features I need — automatically importing all the content I have even published, and backing them up permanently.
I've been writing since 2017, and to manually locate every article of mine was an impossible task. Authory made it possible, and imported pieces I had forgotten about. This database gave me a deeper understanding of my 6 year-long writing career and allowed me to represent a wider subsection of my work for prospective clients.
Adobe Portfolio doesn't work for me because I'm not a photographer, and I do not need most of its offerings. What do I care about Behance integrations or image imports from Adobe Lightroom? Additionally, to use this tool, I'd have to buy an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, which is completely outside my price range. Not using this tool was a no-brainer.
Then there's WordPress, which is great for building your portfolio website from scratch, but that is too much work for me. I don't need a million add-ons and incredibly designed templates. I need a tool to find all my content for me, save it, and let me sleep in longer every day.
Of course, I could watch WordPress tutorials to make the process easier and set up all features I need. But why would I, given that Authory comes out of the box with everything I need? It's also MUCH cheaper.
Obviously, if I wasn't a writer, but worked with visual media and/or needed to sell my work (paintings, graphic art, digital and print graphics, books, etc.) from my portfolio, I would choose WordPress. If I wanted to showcase high-res images without compressing them or risking any quality reduction, I would choose Adobe Portfolio.
But for me and countless other stalwarts in industries like writing, journalism, content marketing, and the like, Authory is the obvious option. AnEditor at Large at Wired, a 6x Emmy Award winner, a technology reporter at CNN, and apersonal tech columnist for the Houston Chronicle have all chosen Authory for the reasons I've mentioned above.
If you're curious (aren't you? just a little?), get started with Authory for free! You have nothing to lose, and a fabulous portfolio to gain.
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