Carrd vs Framer: What’s the Best Builder in 2024?

Carrd vs Framer: Final verdict

Carrd and Framer both offer unique advantages, but they cater to different user needs and preferences.

• 
  Carrd (Overall Grade: 6.1/10)
  
  is ideal for users seeking a simple, affordable, and user-friendly platform for creating single-page websites. It excels in ease of use, making it perfect for beginners and small businesses looking to establish an online presence quickly. Carrd’s straightforward interface and variety of templates allow for quick customization, though it lacks advanced ecommerce and AI capabilities.
• 
  Framer (Overall Grade: 7.1/10)
  
  stands out for its robust design and prototyping features, making it a preferred choice for designers and developers. It offers extensive customization options, real-time collaboration, and AI-driven tools for content generation and localization. While Framer has a steeper learning curve and limited native ecommerce features, its comprehensive component library and advanced design functionalities make it a powerful tool for creating polished, user-centric websites.

Which one is the best for ecommerce: Carrd or Framer?

Verdict

: Carrd and Framer both have limited ecommerce capabilities, but Framer edges out Carrd with slightly better integration options and customization features.

• 
  Carrd
  
  : Carrd is designed for simplicity and ease of use, making it suitable for basic ecommerce needs through third-party integrations like PayPal and Stripe. It offers a selection of templates and basic product listing options, but its ecommerce capabilities are limited, making it less ideal for larger or more complex online stores.
• 
  Framer
  
  : Framer, while not offering native ecommerce features, provides better integration options through platforms like Ecwid. It offers more customizable templates and a broader range of ecommerce tools, making it a more flexible option for those willing to integrate additional services. However, it still lacks the depth of dedicated ecommerce platforms.

Which one is the best for informational and business websites?

Verdict

: Carrd and Framer both offer unique advantages for informational and business websites, but Carrd edges out slightly due to its simplicity and ease of use.

• 
  Carrd
  
  : Carrd is a straightforward platform designed for creating fully responsive, single-page websites. Its ease of use, variety of templates, and affordable pricing make it an excellent choice for individuals and small businesses looking to establish an online presence quickly and efficiently. With a score of 7.9, Carrd is particularly well-suited for those who prioritize simplicity and speed in their website creation process.
• 
  Framer
  
  : Framer, with a score of 7.5, offers a more robust set of design and prototyping features, making it ideal for users who need extensive customization and interactive design capabilities. While it has a steeper learning curve, Framer’s AI-driven design tools and comprehensive component library provide a powerful platform for creating detailed and dynamic websites. It is best suited for designers and teams looking for advanced design functionalities and real-time collaboration.

Carrd vs Framer: Detailed comparison

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Winner: Framer.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more creative control and a wide array of design features, Framer is the preferred choice.

Carrd is a versatile platform that offers a wide variety of templates and designs, catering to different needs and preferences. Users can choose from a broad selection of themes, ranging from simple and minimalist to complex and dynamic layouts, ensuring there’s something for everyone. The platform continuously updates its library with new designs, keeping up with the latest trends in web design. With its user-friendly interface, Carrd makes it easy for users to customize templates, allowing for a high degree of personalization and creativity in creating unique websites.

Carrd Themes

Compared to Carrd, Framer offers a diverse array of over 1,000 customizable website templates and designs, catering to various industries and project requirements. It stands out for its robust design and prototyping features, including responsive design capabilities, real-time collaboration, and extensive import options from other design tools. The platform facilitates a collaborative design process through features like multiplayer functionalities and real components for interactive design, making it an ideal choice for designers, developers, and teams.

Framer Themes

🏆 Winner: Carrd

. Scoring a solid 9.0, Carrd stands out for its simplicity and straightforward approach to website building, making it exceptionally easy for beginners to create and manage their websites. Framer, with a score of 7.1, offers a robust platform but with a steeper learning curve, especially for those new to web design. If ease of use is a priority, Carrd is the clear winner in this category.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Framer

. While both platforms offer solid learning resources, Framer goes a step further with its wide array of detailed courses and lessons on Framer Academy, making it easier for users to learn and adapt.

Carrd and Framer both have limited ecommerce capabilities. Carrd, primarily designed for one-page websites, offers basic ecommerce features through third-party integrations. Framer, on the other hand, does not offer native ecommerce features but can be paired with Ecwid’s free shopping cart extension.

Carrd ecommerce features:

• Paypal and Stripe Integration
• External Widgets integrations
• Basic Product Listing options

Framer ecommerce features:

• Ecwid integration

Ecommerce themes & templates

Carrd provides a selection of 14 e-commerce templates aimed at users looking to quickly launch online stores for products ranging from e-books to physical goods. These templates are crafted with a focus on simplicity and conversion optimization, featuring designs that vary from dark themes to minimalist aesthetics. They are priced starting at $19 or $25, depending on the template, and require a Pro Standard account or higher due to the use of advanced elements and widgets.

Framer offers 97 website templates specifically designed for eCommerce, providing a wide range of options for various business needs. These templates are highly customizable, allowing for easy adjustments to colors, fonts, layouts, and integration with essential eCommerce tools. Both free and paid options are available, catering to businesses of all sizes looking to enhance their online presence and sales capabilities.

Product page customization

Carrd offers a streamlined approach to ecommerce product page customization, primarily through integrations with third-party platforms such as Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, and Gumroad. Users can create product pages within Carrd by adding product details like name, description, image, and price, and then integrate a checkout button using Carrd’s Widget element for platforms like Stripe. Users can integrate third-party services for ecommerce functionalities, but the customization possibilities for product pages would then depend on the capabilities of those external platforms.

Framer primarily focuses on expanding design possibilities for eCommerce. However, it lacks inherent eCommerce functionalities and instead heavily depends on integrating with platforms such as Shopify and Ecwid. Additionally, while Framer allows for some customization of product pages, these modifications are generally limited to design and layout alterations.

Payment processing

Carrd allows for payment-enabled forms for Pro Plus users or higher, integrating with Stripe Checkout for payment processing. This setup enables creating forms for various transactions like order forms or paid email lists. The process requires setting up the payment through Stripe, either via a preconfigured price or a custom price, and entering Stripe API keys. There’s no direct mention of Carrd charging commissions or offering POS capabilities within this documentation. For payment gateways, it specifically supports Stripe and Paypal.

Framer supports Stripe for payment processing, enabling a wide range of payment options including one-time payments, subscriptions, and more, without requiring coding. While specific transaction fees were not mentioned, such fees typically depend on Stripe’s pricing. Framer’s focus is on online transactions and e-commerce integrations, and there’s no explicit mention of native POS functionality. For the most current details on fees and features, it’s recommended to consult directly with Framer or Stripe.

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Winner: Framer

. Framer, with a score of 7.6, is designed for high-fidelity prototyping and complex animations, catering to both designers and developers. It offers a robust set of tools for creating interactive and responsive designs, including a wide array of pre-built components, real-time collaboration features, and the ability to integrate with other design tools and workflows. Users can leverage Framer’s editor to craft detailed animations, fine-tune interactions, and test their designs across various screen sizes and devices. Additionally, its code export feature allows for seamless transition from design to development, making it a versatile choice for teams aiming to create polished, user-centric websites.

Carrd’s website builder editor, scoring 7.0, is designed for simplicity and efficiency, catering primarily to users looking to create single-page websites. It offers a user-friendly interface that allows for easy drag-and-drop functionality, enabling users to add, customize, and position elements such as text, images, buttons, and forms with minimal effort. The editor also provides a range of pre-designed templates and responsive design options, ensuring that websites look professional and work seamlessly across various devices. Additionally, Carrd includes basic SEO tools and integration capabilities with external services, making it a versatile choice for personal projects, portfolios, and small business landing pages.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Carrd

. Both Carrd and Framer lack a dedicated mobile editor app, but they allow for editing via a mobile browser. However, Carrd has a higher mobile editor score than Framer, which suggests that it provides a better mobile editing experience.

Carrd’s mobile browser editing capability allows users to make changes to their websites on the go, although it may not be as comprehensive or user-friendly as a dedicated mobile app.

On the other hand, Framer also allows for mobile browser editing, but it comes with certain restrictions and is noted to be inconvenient. Therefore, Carrd is the winner in this category due to its higher mobile editor score and better user experience.

Overall Result

:

Framer Wins

. Framer scores slightly higher than Carrd with a score of 6.2 compared to Carrd’s 6.0. Framer offers a free version and allows users to test some of its features. However, it does not offer a trial version. On the other hand, Carrd offers a 7-day free trial where users can test premium features, but it does not offer a free version or a money-back guarantee.

Carrd offers more affordable pricing plans, but Framer provides a wider range of options, including a free plan and discounts on annual billing.

Winner: Framer

. Framer offers cloud hosting with a 99.9% uptime and an uptime guarantee for enterprise plans. It also has 4 global data centers, providing more reliable and faster service. Carrd, on the other hand, offers shared hosting but does not provide specific information on uptime or data centers, which makes it less reliable compared to Framer.

🏆 Winner: Carrd

Both Carrd and Framer prioritize website performance and page speed, but Carrd’s simple, single-page design and use of Cloudflare CDN gives it an edge in speed optimization.

Carrd, a platform for building fully responsive, single-page websites, prioritizes speed optimization through mobile responsive design, caching, and the use of Cloudflare CDN. Given the simplicity of websites built with Carrd, load times are expected to be minimal, and page speed scores are expected to be high. However, Carrd does not disclose any information related to Core Web Vitals improvements.

Framer, on the other hand, blends AI-driven design with an intuitive user interface. It focuses on speed optimization through code minification, pre-rendering, caching, and image optimization. Load times and PageSpeed scores vary depending on optimization and website complexity. Framer places emphasis on improving Core Web Vitals, specifically LCP, FID, and CLS.

🏆 Winner: Framer.

Framer scores 7.6, offering a variety of plugins that cater to different needs such as forms, video & animation, social media integration, audio, and utility functions. These plugins include integrations with platforms like Vimeo, MP4, Lottie, GIPHY, Instagram, Twitter, Google Maps, Trustpilot, Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Music, and more. Carrd, with a score of 5.8, offers a range of plugins and extensions, including both free options and paid plugins. However, Framer’s extensive range of plugins and seamless integrations give it the upper hand.

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Overall Winner: Framer

. Framer offers a more comprehensive suite of marketing features, including advanced SEO tools, email marketing through Mailchimp integration, built-in blogging features, rich social media integrations, and robust analytics and reporting. Carrd, while offering a simple and easy-to-use platform, relies heavily on third-party integrations for its marketing features.

🏆 Winner: Carrd

. In the Carrd vs Framer comparison, Carrd takes the lead with a customer support score of 6.2. Carrd offers 24/7 email support, typically responding within 24 hours, which provides users with a reliable way to get assistance when needed. This round-the-clock availability is a significant advantage for users who may encounter issues at any time.

Framer, on the other hand, has a customer support score of 5.6. It primarily relies on self-help options through its community forum and knowledge base. While users can email Framer’s support team, the lack of detailed information about their working hours and availability can be a drawback for those needing timely assistance. Despite this, Framer’s community resources can be quite helpful for users who prefer finding solutions independently.

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Winner: Framer

. Framer takes a comprehensive approach to security, utilizing Amazon Web Services for hosting and data encryption, classifying data into categories for better management, and implementing strict access controls. They also emphasize product security through secure development practices, external security testing, and a bug bounty program.

On the other hand, Carrd ensures website security by automatically enabling SSL for all sites and extends this to custom domains and subdomains. They also implement measures to protect personal information online and offline. However, compared to Framer, Carrd’s security measures are less comprehensive, hence the lower security score.

🏆 Winner: Framer

. Framer, with a score of 7.6, offers a variety of AI capabilities, including an AI website builder, content generation, translation services, and additional features like style and photo editing tools. These features make Framer a powerful tool for creating and managing websites.

On the other hand, Carrd does not have any AI capabilities, making it less versatile compared to Framer in terms of automated features and tools.

🏆 Winner: Framer

. Both Carrd and Framer offer different approaches to user management.

• Carrd is primarily designed for individual use or small teams, with each account managing its own sites. The platform introduced a Team feature to allow multiple users to collaborate, but traditionally, Carrd sites are managed by a single account holder with full control. The specifics of access levels and permissions for collaborators, if available, are less detailed but generally include editing capabilities.
• Framer supports team collaboration with different plans allowing a varying number of editors; the Team Basic plan allows up to 5 editors, while the Team Pro plan supports up to 10 editors. These plans come with additional features like live collaboration, comments, file storage, and extended version history. This setup provides flexibility and granular access control over who can edit the website, ensuring team members have the appropriate access based on their roles.

Framer User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

Carrd vs Framer: User Feedback

Users overwhelmingly praise Carrd for its user-friendly interface, excellent customer support, and attractive templates, making website creation effortless and enjoyable. The drag-and-drop builder, affordability, and mobile-friendly designs are highlighted as significant benefits. However, some users express limitations, such as the inability to create multi-page websites or a desire for more design options. Overall, Carrd is praised for its affordability, ease of use, and suitability for creating quick, simple webpages.

Framer receives high marks for its user-friendly, no-code approach to web and prototype design, offering extensive tutorials, templates, and drag-and-drop functionalities that expedite the design process. Users appreciate its integration with tools like Figma, AI-generated responsive designs, and real-time collaboration features. Critiques focus on a steep learning curve for newcomers and limitations in customer support and features without premium access. Despite these drawbacks, Framer is lauded as a powerful design tool that enhances creativity and efficiency in web development.

Carrd vs Framer: FAQ