4.7/5 on Capterra
An architecture portfolio website you can actually change
Portfolio website and private client galleries. One platform to run an architecture practice.
15 days free trial · No card required
Portfolio website and private client galleries. One platform to run an architecture practice.
15 days free trial · No card required
The basics
An architecture portfolio website is a site on your own domain where completed and unbuilt projects live at the resolution you exported them, sequenced the way you want them read, with a way to commission you attached. It is not a PDF you email and it is not a profile on Issuu or Behance.
The distinction matters more in architecture than in most fields, because the PDF portfolio still exists and still gets sent. An online architecture portfolio does what the PDF cannot. An architecture portfolio site stays current between applications, ranks for your own name, and holds the confidential work behind a password instead of leaving it out.
What matters
Control over the drawing.
A section read at thumbnail size is a gray rectangle. Full-image and vertical-scroll layouts let one drawing hold a screen.
Somewhere to put the work you cannot publish.
Competition entries and client-confidential schemes need a page that opens for a specific person and nobody else.
A delivery channel that is not email.
Project photography and render packages go to clients and consultants as a link, not a 400MB zip.
Design control that survives contact with an architect.
Custom CSS and HTML on every plan, because the people building this site have opinions about type.
Each one is covered below.
“The user-friendly interface, customisable templates and secure hosting let me create a professional online presence without complex coding. I host my architectural portfolio on Pixpa.”
Choosing a platform
Search for an architect site builder and four kinds of platform come back, solving different problems.
Archifolio
Archifolio is architecture-only and built around the PDF: import one, publish it as a site, export it back out. Good fit if the destination is a job application. It ships font and color presets rather than a code layer, and has no client delivery or sales side.
Duda, Weblium and Boxmode
Duda, Weblium and Boxmode run general-purpose builders with an architect landing page attached. The page is profession-specific. The product underneath is not.
Squarespace and Webflow
Squarespace and Webflow give you real design control and no delivery layer, so project handover goes back to Dropbox.
Pixpa
Pixpa is the fourth: portfolio, private client galleries and a zero-commission store on one subscription, custom CSS on every plan. It does not export your site to PDF. If that is the deciding feature, Archifolio does it and Pixpa does not.
Confidential work
Most of what an architect wants to show is not publishable yet. Competition entries under embargo, schemes in planning, work for clients who have not announced anything.
Password protection on Pixpa works at two levels: the whole site, or a single page. Both are available on every plan. So the public portfolio stays public, and the three unbuilt schemes sit on a page you send to one recruiter or one prospective client with a password, and take down when the conversation ends.
That page is still part of your site. Same template, same type, same domain. It is not a separate service with a separate login.
File size
A PDF architectural portfolio has a hard limit. Nobody opens a 40MB attachment, so the drawings get compressed until the linework goes soft. That constraint disappears the moment the portfolio is a website.
Upload at the resolution you exported. Pixpa serves a device-appropriate size to each visitor, so the render that fills a 27-inch display does not ship whole to a phone on site. Gallery layouts include full-image, vertical scroll and horizontal scroll, which is the difference between a plan you can read and one you can only identify.
Client delivery
When the building is finished and the photographer sends 300 frames, those images have to reach the client, the contractor, and sometimes the press. Client galleries handle that on the same subscription as the portfolio.
Set a password and an expiry date, send one link. The client marks favorites and comments on individual frames when you need a shortlist for the press release rather than sign-off on all 300. More than one person can favorite in the same gallery, which is what makes it work when the client is a committee.
Activity monitoring tells you whether the link was opened.
Design
Templates are filtered by discipline rather than by color, because an architecture template and a wedding template solve different layout problems. Every one is responsive and tested against real image loads.
The starting point is not the ceiling. Move any block, change the type scale, write custom CSS or edit the HTML. You can switch templates after the site is live without losing content, which matters when a practice rebrands and the work stays.
The honest answer
Some people do. It is the most common complaint architects and designers leave about Pixpa, more common than price, which nobody in this group mentions at all. If you work entirely inside the drag-and-drop editor, you will eventually want a layout the template does not offer. The escape hatch is custom CSS and HTML, available on every plan including the entry one. Architects who write a little CSS do not report the ceiling. Architects who do not, sometimes do.
“Working in structural sections! Different to design but starting from the same method.”
Inspiration
Live sites from architects, architectural designers and interior designers running their practices on Pixpa. Open any of them and see how the same platform handles a drawing-led student portfolio and a photography-led practice site.
Step by step
Six steps. Roughly an afternoon if your exports are ready.
Choose six to ten projects.
Not everything you have drawn. Each one should show a different capability: a technical detail set, a competition scheme, a completed build, a piece of the process. Reviewers stop reading before project twelve.
Export properly before you upload.
Full resolution, RGB, one image per drawing rather than a contact sheet. If a drawing needs a caption to be legible, it needs to be re-cropped instead.
Pick an architecture template.
Filter by discipline first, then by whether it leads with a full-bleed image or a grid. Color is the easiest thing to change later.
Build four pages.
Work, About, Contact, and one page for what you actually want commissioned. A services page removes the question that stops most people writing to you.
Put the unpublishable work behind a password.
Set page-level protection on the unbuilt and confidential projects so you can send them selectively rather than leaving them off the site.
Connect your domain, then write the SEO.
Bring a domain you own or take the free custom domain included for the first year on annual billing, then use the SEO tools to write page titles before you share the link.
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Standards
Six things separate a portfolio website that gets an architect commissioned from one that just exists. None of them are about taste.
Lead with the drawing, not the render.
Renders are the most produced and least distinguishing images in the discipline, because everyone’s are good now. A section, a detail, a sketch that shows how you think about a joint tells a reviewer something a render cannot. Put one on the first screen.
Show your role honestly on every project.
Architecture is collaborative and the reader knows it. A project credited without a role reads as a claim on the whole building. One line naming what you did earns more trust than the project being bigger.
Make one project deep instead of ten shallow.
A single scheme carried from sketch through detail through built photography demonstrates process. Ten projects at three images each demonstrate access to a rendering package.
Keep the drawings readable on a phone.
Half the people opening your link are doing it from a signature or an email on a site visit. A drawing that only resolves on a 27-inch display is a drawing most of your audience never actually sees.
Say what you take on and how to start.
Practice, competition work, visualization, consultancy. A reader who cannot tell what you want commissioned for will not guess.
Give the confidential work a home rather than leaving it out.
The unbuilt schemes are often the strongest thing an architect has. A password-protected page means they exist on the site and open for the people who should see them.
The last one is where most architecture portfolios lose their best material. On Pixpa that page is part of the same site, so nothing has to sit in a Dropbox folder waiting to be sendable.
Answers
It depends on what the site is for. If the destination is a job application and you already have a PDF portfolio, Archifolio is built specifically for that import-and-export path. If you are running a practice with clients, you need the delivery and design layers too: private galleries for project photography, password protection for unbuilt work, and custom CSS. Pixpa includes all three on every plan and is rated 4.7 out of 5 across 600+ Capterra reviews.
Free hosts exist and each one costs you something else. Issuu and Behance put your work inside their layout and their audience, on their domain, alongside everyone else's. Free website plans typically place ads on the page, cap image resolution, or keep you on a subdomain. Pixpa has a 15-day free trial with no credit card required and a 30-day money-back guarantee after that, but no permanent free plan.
Yes, and they do different jobs. The PDF is what you attach to a specific application, sized down to get through an inbox. The website is what someone finds when they search your name, and it holds the drawings at the resolution you exported them rather than at whatever survived compression. Most architects keep both. Note that Pixpa does not export your site back out as a PDF.
Yes. Password protection is available on every Pixpa plan and works on a whole site or on individual pages. The usual setup is a public portfolio with one protected page holding competition entries, schemes in planning, and work for clients who have not announced. You send the password to a specific person and change it when the conversation ends.
Yes, if you want the search results for your name to point at your work rather than at a platform. A custom domain is also what lets you change platforms later without losing your links. Pixpa includes a free custom domain for the first year on annual billing, and you can connect a domain you already own instead.
Yes. The architecture templates are built around image-led and drawing-led layouts, which is the same problem interior design and landscape work have. Interior designers are one of the larger groups on these templates, and the client gallery side handles finished-project photography the same way whether the project is a building or a room.
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“The ready-made templates are modern and customizable, allowing me to showcase my portfolio in a very stylish way.”
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