Why I switched from Squarespace to Cargo.site after so many years

There are several web services in the world that you can use for your portfolio.

First there is obviously Squarespace (with a paid extension called Squaremuse), Format.com and Cargo.site (and maybe some others I don't know about). Over time, Showit and Flothemes on Wordpress and many others joined.

Warning: Wordpress is primarily a text publishing blog, don't use it for a portfolio from which you want inquiries to come: a friend of mine ended up with dozens of inquiries totaling $100k in spam this way (but on the Wordpress side, not in his e-mail!).

I've got a few projects, and I'm going to break down what their journey was and why Cargo.site is so good solution for HelloPeter Photography.

Makrela44.com: our creative studio 

website: www.makrela44.com
platform: Cargo.site

For our makrela44.com studio, where my friends and I showcase our creative work for businesses and other commercial commissions, we made a website on Cargo.site from scratch. We knew that we wanted something unconventional and where we would use only the main homepage and some few other pages.

Wow. Until now, we only had an idea of what Cargo.site looks like, but it wasn't until we set up the whole site that we discovered all the possibilities. And it was really great (and crazy sometimes)! 

That was the moment when I started to think about completely cancelling Squarespace.

Perky Pug Films:
wedding films 

website: www.perkypugfilms.com
platform: Format.com

Perky Pug Films started out just like HelloPeter Photography on Squarespace. But I soon found that some categories, tags and other conveniences weren't needed here and switched to the much simpler Format.com.

Like Cargo.site, it favors content over form, has a simple blog (which can be used for single pages if you need to write something about yourself, for example), and is also much cheaper.

Gorillaexmachina.com: now merged with HelloPeter Photography

platform: Cargo.site

My personal project with more or less personal photos, which started on Tumblr and later moved to Cargo.site (at same time as Makrela44.com).

It was nice to have, but in 2023 I decided to merge my weddings, commercial, theatre and personal project under one roof – here.

noxphoto.cz aka HelloPeter Photography 

platform: Cargo.site – finally!

Historically, I used various free services for noxphoto.cz from 2013, when my photographic journey started. I found out very quickly that paid services are way to go: everything free was just garbage.

My first paid web platform was Format.com, but it had weaker blogging capabilities, so I switched to Squarespace (like in 2017) and also rebranded as HelloPeter Photography in 2022.

I used Squarespace for years, worked both with 7.0 and 7.1 version, later added mailing campaigns (with 2 newsletters in 3 years, lol). I even made some website for clients on Squarespace platform.

Later on, however, problems emerged:

• slow loading of the site and admin interface (a ton of javascript), 
• PageInsights score 50/100 even on a almost-empty website (eh), 
• and a constant feeling of bad design/typography (which I couldn't fix).
  

Margins/padding on different screens was a headache, blogging became terribly cumbersome... while there were so many things from my archive to show.

It just started to lack something and I didn't know what it could be.

HelloPeter Photography & Cargo.site – perfect match?

And here I am. HelloPeter Photography on Cargo.site.
Why did I choose this platform?

Cargo.site pros:

• focus on content as well as beautiful form
  
• typography & Dinamo fonts – omg it’s so good
  
• speed: it’s almost like clicking in MS Word, no loading of admin features and scripts
  
• spotlights: Cargo.site newsletter with the best showcases and inspiration, it’s just awesome and no other service do that
• mobile adjustments: as you can see, on desktop version there is a lot of not-so-mobile elements, which you can adjust and make almost totally different website for mobile
• price: like half of the Squarespace
• unlimited photos and pages unlike Format.com
• unlimited trial – you just create it all and pay/publish when you are ready, no 14-days trial
• it looks great on 4K, 2K, Macbook Pro (which is actually 2K in 13 inches display and sometimes that causes problems) and even on mobile – I had struggle with Squarespace to set it right
• free form for photos: yeah, photos wherever you want them, just drag them there!
• column system: you just take text and set number of columns you want (Squarespace 7.1 has something similar)
• HTML & CSS edits with no extra fees or plans

Cargo.site cons:

• poor blogging, you have to create new page for every blogpost and clone or start from scratch (but you can add pagination for them)
• so many options and tricky functions it can be overhelming in the beginning – but you can learn some tricks from trying various templates
• admin can be less intuitive, but there is lot of help