Websites and hosting decision
Carbonmade
A minimal Carbonmade-like portfolio builder is feasible for a competent developer to build and run using hosted storage/CDN and OSS components; you give up Carbonmade's polish, hosting scale, and existing user marketplace.
Visit website↗Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need — the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship.
What a replacement has to do
- Create a simple portfolio site where a user uploads media, arranges blocks into pages, publishes to a custom domain, and views basic visitor analytics.
What it still won’t have
- Polish and product UX (Carbonmade's drag/drop polish and many premade blocks)
- Built-in hosting scale and unlimited-media guarantees
- Brand, marketplace/talent-pool exposure and existing user base
- Priority support and convenience of a managed service
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 3 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a single-tenant portfolio website builder (Node.js + Next.js, Postgres, S3-compatible storage, Redis) that lets a single user sign up, upload images/videos via drag-and-drop, create pages by assembling premade block components, publish to a custom domain with automated HTTPS, and view basic analytics. In scope: user auth, uploads with background thumbnail/transcode jobs, a small set of reusable blocks (hero, gallery, project page), domain mapping UI, serving via CDN, and an admin UI to manage projects. Out of scope: multi-tenant billing/teams marketplace/talent pool, full WYSIWYG editor parity, advanced media editors. Include robust error handling, retries for background jobs, and automated tests for upload, publish, and domain mapping flows.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 4 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score67
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time — so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 4
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productCarbonmade - Your Online Portfolio
- official pricingCarbonmade - Pricing
- official docsCarbonmade - Features
- open sourcewebstudio-is/webstudio
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
