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Best Online Writing Portfolio Platforms for Freelance Writers in 2025

Written by Monica Shaw

Discover the best place to build your online writing portfolio so you can effectively market yourself as a freelance writer.

Every freelance writer needs a professional online presence, but the endless options for building a writing portfolio can feel overwhelming. Should you sign up for a specialized portfolio platform? Wrestle with WordPress? Or just throw your work on Medium and call it a day? (Please don’t do that.)

That’s where this guide comes in. Instead of wading through hours of research, I’ll walk you through the best online portfolio platforms for freelance writers, compare the pros and cons, and help you choose the one that fits your personality and workflow.

Table of Contents

If you don’t want to overwhelm yourself, just read this:

  • If you hate working with computers… → Skip straight to Writer’s Residence, where your portfolio can be live in minutes without tech headaches.
  • If you want something free… → Head to Clippings.me or Journo Portfolio, both have (albeit limited) free options — or take a chance with a 30-day free trial of Writer’s Residence to explore the difference a full-featured portfolio can make.
  • If you want more than a portfolio and don’t mind fiddling with websites… → Jump to Wordpress, Squarespace or Wix where design freedom can come with a learning curve, but you’ll get extensive theme options with blogging features, e-commerce capabilities, and more.
  • If you want instant visibility and networking… → Go to Medium, LinkedIn, or Substack for quick publishing and easy sharing. Warning: these aren’t really portfolios, but they are established places to see and be seen.

What Makes a Great Online Portfolio for Freelance Writers?

Unlike designers or photographers, writers don’t need flashy galleries—they need clean, text-friendly layouts that showcase samples professionally.

The essentials of a great writing portfolio:

  • Ease of setup so you can launch your portfolio quickly and start using it to network, pitch for work, and apply for gigs; most of us writers would rather be writing than fiddling with tech!
  • Professional templates that highlight your writing, not just visuals.
  • SEO-friendly to help clients and editors find you.
  • Flexibility for different niches (copywriting vs. journalism vs. fiction).
  • Ownership, where you control the content with no ads or unwanted logos that distract from YOU.

The wrong platform can waste your time or even turn clients away. The right one makes you look polished and trustworthy—without distracting from your writing.

Specialized Portfolio Platforms for Freelance Writers

Writer’s Residence (Best All-in-One Choice for Freelance Writers)

Writer's Residence has a super simple interface so you can create a portfolio and upload writing samples quickly and easily.

When I first started freelancing, I struggled with the same dilemma you’re facing now. WordPress felt clunky, Squarespace was overkill, and PDF resumes weren’t cutting it.

That’s why I built Writer’s Residence: a simple, elegant portfolio builder made for writers. I launched the site in 2008, which makes it one of the longest-standing online writing portfolio platforms out there. We’ve stuck to our core feature set:

  • User-friendly templates you can easily customise to match your branding.
  • Easily upload and categorise writing samples with no limits on how many you can add.
  • Outstanding customer support: reach out for a quick live demo or add on our writing portfolio clinic for hands-on help getting set up.
  • SEO features and tooltips with built-in guidance to help your portfolio rank.
  • Custom domains & privacy controls at no extra cost — your own domain name looks far more professional than something like janedoe.clippings.me, and unlike many services, Writer’s Residence doesn’t charge extra for this.
  • Generous 30-day free trial, then just $9.99/month after that — making it more economical than other writing portfolio offerings.

👉 If you want to skip the tech headaches and focus on landing clients, this is the easiest option. And if you need help, you’ll have direct support from me, the founder — because yes, we’re one of the only platforms where the creator still personally works with users!

View Justin Arnold’s Writer’s Residence portfolio

Journo Portfolio (Best for Writers Who Want Automation and a Block Editor)

What’s a block editor? It’s a design tool that uses individual “blocks” to build posts and pages, allowing you to add, arrange, and customize elements like text, images, and buttons—without touching any code. This drag-and-drop approach has become popular across platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, and yes, Journo Portfolio.

The advantage is greater control over your layout and design. Some writers love that flexibility. Personally, I find it a bit clunky—and often more than I need. By contrast, Writer’s Residence uses a simple, text-based editor so you can focus on content while we take care of the design.

Journo Portfolio offers compelling features for freelance writers. For beginners, there’s a free plan (limited to 10 writing samples and no custom domain). For more experienced writers, it includes automation features—if you regularly publish with a specific outlet, you can use an RSS feed to automatically add new pieces to your portfolio. It even has e-commerce features to sell services or products directly through your site.

Pricing Tiers:

  • Free: 10 portfolio items, no custom domain.
  • Plus: $5/month (billed annually) or $8/month billed monthly.
  • Pro: $8/month (billed annually) or $12/month billed monthly.
  • Unlimited: $14/month (billed annually) or $18/month billed monthly.

Overall, Journo Portfolio is a solid choice if you want flexibility and automation. But if you prefer a simpler, content-first experience where design is handled for you, Writer’s Residence might be the smoother path.

Clippings.me (Best for New Freelance Writers on a Mega Budget)

Clippings.me is one of the oldest and most basic portfolio platforms for writers, especially freelance writers and journalists. It lets you upload or link to your articles, which are displayed in a clean, grid-based layout. It’s straightforward and quick to set up, which is part of its charm.

Clippings.me supports a limited set of design and layout options, so your site will tend to look like every other person who uses Clippings.

For new or emerging writers, the free plan is a great way to start gathering clips in one place. However, the free version only allows up to 10 links and doesn’t support a custom domain name. The Premium plan removes those limits and allows unlimited clippings, a custom domain, and analytics.

Pricing Tiers:

  • Free: Up to 10 clippings, basic site hosted on clippings.me.
  • Premium: $9.99/month or $99/year — unlimited clippings, custom domain, no branding, and Google Analytics.

Clippings.me shines in its simplicity—you can create a professional-looking page in minutes. Where it falls short is in customization and SEO. Every portfolio looks almost the same, and you won’t get much organic search traffic.

If you’re a student, intern, or new journalist who just needs a quick, credible portfolio, Clippings.me works. But if you’re building a long-term freelance writing career, Writer’s Residence offers far more control over your professional brand.

Authory (Best for Writers Who Publish Regularly Online)

Authory is built around one key idea: a self-updating writing portfolio. Once you connect your publications or RSS feeds, Authory automatically imports new articles and adds them to your site. For writers who publish regularly—especially journalists, columnists, or content creators—it’s an incredibly efficient way to keep your portfolio current without any manual updates.

You can also upload pieces manually, create collections, and even make parts of your portfolio private or secure—ideal for ghostwriters or anyone sharing client work that isn’t publicly available. Authory also allows you to back up your writing (so you’ll never lose an article if a publication disappears) and lets readers subscribe to your updates.

That said, Authory is primarily geared toward writers who have publicly published work online. If you’re self-published, just getting started, or your best work exists in print or client files, you might find it less useful. It’s more of a dynamic archive and showcase than a blank canvas for creative customization.

Pricing:

  • Free Plan: Up to 10 portfolio items, manual uploads only (no auto-import).
  • Paid Plans: Starting around $18/month — includes automatic imports, backups, and advanced features.

Authory’s biggest selling point is its automation. If your bylines appear regularly across multiple outlets, this “set it and forget it” approach is brilliant—it ensures your portfolio stays current without any maintenance. But if you’re earlier in your writing career or want more design control, Writer’s Residence provides that flexibility in a simpler, text-focused format.

Copyfolio (Best for Copywriters and Marketing Professionals)

Copyfolio is marketed as a portfolio builder specifically for writers, particularly copywriters and content marketers, but. more recently they've expanded their core audience to include more design-led creators like digital marketers and UGC creators. Its templates emphasize sleek presentation and often include sections for case studies, project summaries, and testimonials—ideal for writers who want to show their work in a marketing context.

The copywriting portfolio homepage of Alyssa Birchfield, copywriter and content strategist

The platform’s visual polish can make your portfolio look high-end and creative, but there’s a trade-off. Because Copyfolio offers more sophisticated design options—custom blocks, layout tweaks, and brand elements—it’s easy to get bogged down in the minutiae. Much like WordPress, you might sit down to “just get your site live” and realize an hour later you’re still adjusting spacing, colors, or images. On my recent visit to Copyfolio, I even found their own website a bit over-stylized with more focus on form over function (too many colours, fonts and moving parts made me overwhelmed before I even got started!).