You finished a campaign, the numbers are good, and a prospect has asked to see the work. The client will let one person look at it. They will not let it sit on the open web with a URL anyone can forward. So what you actually need is a page on your portfolio site that opens for someone holding a link and a password, and stays shut to everyone else. That single requirement decides which builder you should buy, and it is almost never the feature the pricing page leads with.
The moment this actually comes up
The generic version of this search is “best website builder for freelancers,” and it returns comparisons written for people who want a public site. Those pieces weigh templates, load speed, blogging and how the editor feels. They answer a different question, because most site owners want every page they build to be found. Password protection sits in the long tail of the feature list, or is left out entirely.
For a social media freelancer it is not a minority need. Results decks are the strongest thing in your portfolio and the most restricted: a brand will often let you say you worked with them and not let you publish what happened. What you want is narrow: a page reachable only by a direct link plus a password, hidden from your navigation and out of search indexes. An unlisted URL is not that. It is a page that happens to have no inbound links, which is a different posture from one that refuses to render without a shared secret.
Carrd and Squarespace come up constantly here, and they gate the feature in different places. Here is where each puts the wall, checked against their own pricing pages on 7 September 2026.
What Carrd’s four tiers actually unlock
Carrd groups its paid plans into three families, Pro Lite, Pro Standard and Pro Plus, each with variants that raise the site count and price. The base version of each is what matters for a freelancer with one portfolio.
| Plan | Price | Custom Domain URLs | Password Protection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free account | $0 | No | No |
| Pro Lite | $9/year | No, Premium URLs only | No |
| Pro Standard | $19/year | Yes | No |
| Pro Plus | $49/year | Yes | Yes |
The Pro Lite feature list runs to Premium URLs, No Branding, High Quality Images, Site Icons, Share Images and QR Codes. Custom Domain URLs is not in it, and neither is Password Protection. Pro Standard adds Custom Domain URLs along with Forms, Widgets, Embeds, Analytics, Meta Tags and Local Fonts. Password Protection is still absent. It appears for the first time on Pro Plus, inside a block of advanced settings that also includes Download Sites, Redirects, Variables, Site Files, Framing, Update Frequency and Canonical URL.
One caveat on the free row. Carrd’s page does not enumerate free account features in its comparison table, so that row reads from what it says about Pro: Custom Domains is a “Pro-exclusive feature,” and Password Protection appears on no plan below Pro Plus. Carrd also offers a 7 day Pro trial with no payment or card required.
Why the password gate sits above the domain gate
If your entire problem is sending one prospect a private link, you do not need a custom domain. The link goes in an email or a DM, and nobody types it from memory. A domain is branding, and branding is not what is blocking you. That makes Pro Standard at $19/year, whose headline addition is Custom Domain URLs, the wrong upgrade: ten dollars more than Pro Lite for a feature that does not touch the thing you came to solve, and the page still will not lock. Worth saying plainly, Carrd’s custom domain feature is not a domain. The page describes publishing to any custom domains you own, so registration is a separate annual cost on top of the $19.
The real decision is Pro Plus at $49/year, which is $30/year more than Pro Standard, and for this reader the reason to spend it is password protection. This is what a flat “Carrd starts at $9 a year” line leaves out. The starting price is real, and it is the price of a plan that cannot do the one thing that sent you looking.
Squarespace’s version of the same trade-off
Squarespace answers the free plan question directly. Its pricing page states that it does not offer a free plan, only a free trial with no credit card required, running 14 days. There is no permanent free tier the way there is with Carrd.
The cheapest paid plan is Basic, listed in US dollars at $228 per year billed annually or $25 per month billed monthly. The plan description on the same page says Basic includes a custom domain, free for one year on annual billing. That is a structural difference from Carrd, where a domain requires skipping past the cheapest paid tier.
Password protection is where the comparison stops cleanly. Squarespace’s help centre documents page passwords as a per page setting, notes that everyone uses the same password, that a session expires after four hours, and that a protected page stops being accessible to search engines. What the article does not say is which plan the feature requires, and the pricing page’s feature comparison does not list password protection at all. [EVIDENCE NEEDED: a Squarespace-owned page that names the minimum plan tier at which page passwords are available.] Until that exists, treat the Squarespace tier requirement as unknown rather than assuming it comes with Basic.
What it actually costs to get a gated page
Picture a freelancer with three finished projects. Two are fine to publish. The third is a paid social campaign for a client whose legal team will approve the case study only if it is not publicly reachable. The portfolio needs four pages: a home page, two open case studies, and one that opens on a password.
On Carrd, that build costs $49 per year. Pro Plus is the first plan that includes Password Protection, and the tiers below it will not do the job at any site count.
On Squarespace, the confirmed number is $228 per year for Basic on annual billing. Whether that also buys page passwords is the open question flagged above, so there is no honest total to set against Carrd’s $49 for password protection specifically.
Cheaper ways to gate one page
If the tier jump is not worth it for one page, there are two workable routes.
- Publish it unlisted on the cheapest Pro tier. Pro Lite at $9/year carries Premium URLs and No Branding, which is everything an unbranded unlisted link needs. Link to it from nowhere and send the URL only to the prospect. Be honest about what this is. An unlisted link is obscurity, not access control. Nothing stops the prospect forwarding it, a referrer header leaking it, or a crawler indexing it once a link exists anywhere. If the client’s condition is that the content is not public, an unlisted URL does not meet it.
- Keep it off the site entirely. Build the case study as a PDF or a slide deck and send it to the prospect directly, with the site carrying only a line saying detailed results are available on request. This sidesteps the builder’s paywall completely and gives you a record of who received it.
Before you pick
Work out first whether you need a locked page or a private file. If it is a locked page, price the tier that contains the lock. Two related pieces on this blog cover the rest of the freelance stack: invoicing tools for social media freelancers and e-signature tools for creator agreements, both hitting the same pattern of a cheap headline plan that stops short of the feature the work requires.
Prices and plan features verified 7 September 2026 against carrd.com/pro and squarespace.com/pricing. This is not Watchdog data and it is not on the re-verification schedule, so confirm current pricing on the vendor’s page before you buy. followedapp is published by the team behind RecurPost.
FAQ
Does Carrd’s free plan let you password protect a page?
No. Password Protection first appears on Pro Plus at $49 per year on carrd.com/pro, checked 7 September 2026. It is not listed on Pro Lite at $9 per year, on Pro Standard at $19 per year, or on a free account.
Which is the cheapest Carrd plan with a custom domain?
Pro Standard at $19 per year, which lists Custom Domain URLs. It does not include Password Protection, which requires the next tier up, Pro Plus at $49 per year. The domain itself is not part of that price, since Carrd publishes to domains you already own.
Does Squarespace have a free-forever plan like Carrd?
No. Squarespace’s pricing page states that it does not offer a free plan, only a 14 day free trial with no credit card required. After the trial every option is paid, starting with Basic at $228 per year billed annually or $25 per month billed monthly, checked 7 September 2026.
Is a custom domain included on Squarespace’s cheapest plan?
Yes. Squarespace’s pricing page states that the Basic plan includes a custom domain free for the first year when billed annually, a lower tier than the one where Carrd first offers Custom Domain URLs.
Sources
- Carrd, Go Pro plan comparison, fetched 7 September 2026.
- Squarespace, pricing plans and features, fetched 7 September 2026.
- Squarespace Help Center, Page passwords, fetched 7 September 2026.