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Micropage vs Carrd, for people who write code

Carrd is good. It has been the default answer to “I need one page up by tonight” for years, it is cheap, and the sites it produces look fine. If you want a landing page and you do not want to think about files, stop reading and go use it.

This post is for the narrower case: you write code, you already have a git repo and an editor you like, and you have an opinion about where your source lives.

Where Carrd wins

Start with the part that is not close.

It is cheaper. Carrd’s Pro plan is $19/year. Micropage Pro is $49/year, or $6/mo. For a single page on a custom domain, Carrd costs less than half.

The free tier is more generous on volume. Carrd gives you up to 3 sites free. Micropage gives you 1 project free.

It has a visual editor. You drag, you click, you see the result. Micropage has a live preview beside the markup, which is not the same thing and is not trying to be. If you do not want to learn a syntax — even a small one — that is a real cost and Carrd does not charge it.

So: if the job is one page, one time, and nobody needs to edit it again, Carrd is the better buy. I would not pretend otherwise.

The thing Carrd cannot give you

Your site is not a file.

That is the whole difference, and every other difference follows from it. A Carrd site lives in Carrd’s editor. A Micropage site is a .page file that lives wherever you put it.

Here is a complete one:

[site]
title: Harbor
description: Nightly backups for your Notion workspace

[Home -> /]

/// hero align:center
h1: Your Notion workspace, backed up nightly
p: Set it once. Restore any page, any day.
button: Start free -> /signup

/// section
form: Waitlist
  input: Email*
  submit: Join

Things that are true because that is a text file:

  • It diffs. A copy change is a one-line diff in a pull request, reviewable like any other change.
  • It versions. git log on your landing page. Revert a bad headline the way you revert a bad commit.
  • An agent can write it. The grammar is closed and line-oriented, which is why Claude or GPT produces valid markup on the first try instead of plausible-looking garbage. Every project ships a PROJECT_AGENT.md so your assistant already knows the rules. You cannot point an agent at a drag-and-drop canvas.
  • It greps. Every page that says “beta”, found in one command.
  • You can generate it. Prompt the AI tab, get markup, edit the markup. The output is the same file you would have typed.

None of that is a feature I built. It is what you get for free when the artifact is text, and what you give up when it is not.

Multi-page

Carrd builds one-page sites. That is the product, stated plainly on their homepage, and it is a reasonable scope.

Micropage pages are blocks in the same file:

[Home -> /]
[Pricing -> /pricing]
[FAQ -> /faq]

Add a [nav] block and they link up. The sitemap is generated. If the thing you are building grows a second page — and landing pages do — you do not migrate to a different tool.

Forms

Both charge for forms. Carrd’s are Pro-only; so are Micropage’s beyond the free tier’s 100 submissions.

The difference is where submissions go. Micropage stores them per project, with CSV export and an email digest on Pro, and webhook delivery on Pro+. No Formspree, no Netlify Forms, no Lambda holding a Google Sheet together. The form block above is the entire integration.

What you can take with you

Micropage Pro downloads any build as a static .zip — HTML, CSS, assets — and the .page source is yours regardless of plan. Host the output on Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, S3, or a box you own. If you stop paying, you keep a working site.

Check what your current tool gives you on the way out before you need it. That question is worth asking of any hosted builder, this one included.

So which

Honest version:

Use Carrd if you want one page, you want it visually, and $19/year is the point. It is a better product for that job and it is cheaper.

Use Micropage if the page is going to change, if you want the source in your repo, if an AI agent is part of how you edit, or if you would rather not learn another dashboard to find out where your form submissions went.

Free publishes a real site on a micropage.sh subdomain, with an AI credit that refills every month. That is enough to decide without a card.

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