So here’s the scenario. You’re a creative little genius looking to test out that fire new idea you’ve been mulling over for the last few months. Yeah, you could spend the next few months building out your product in stealth mode. I mean, you’re pretty damn confident in your idea to begin with. Like who doesn’t want [insert fool-proof idea right here]?

But just in case the world isn’t quite ready for your brilliance, you decide to validate your idea with minimal effort. And that’s when you realise: girl gotta get yo-self a website 💁‍♀️

Here’s what you’re thinking - throw up a simple landing page explaining your idea and have some clever way of enabling potential users to show intent (e.g. give their email address, try to sign-up etc.).

So, who you gonna call? In this battle, we check out two no code tools that focus solely on helping users build one-page websites.

Dorik

My initial thoughts were: “It’s soooo nice”.

Dorik makes it very easy for the user by offering sharp templates that the user can adapt to fit their needs. The templates themselves are tailored towards websites for businesses.

What’s good:

✔️ Gorgeous templates with useful sections (e.g. pricing)
✔️ Good documentation (e.g. integrating with Mailchimp)
✔️ Easy to see what it looks like on different screens (desktop, tablet, phone)

Where comrades may fall:
❌ A little buggy at times*
❌ Forms is a pro feature

*The first day I was evaluating Dorik, I was only able to use the editor to change text on the templates. I couldn’t change any images as the editor was broken. It was basically unusable.

Fortunately by the next morning, the team had fixed this issue. However, if I were a genuine potential customer trying out the service, I probably would have churned straight away.

Carrd

In comparison, Carrd seems to lend itself much more to the creative type. Many of the templates seem tailored for personal websites for bloggers and people looking to showcase their social media profiles.

Carrd’s templates all feature actual photos. This is very different to the illustration-heavy websites we see out there today for most products.

What’s good:
✔️ Very impressive builder
✔️ Easy to see what it looks like on mobile vs desktop

Where comrades may fall:
❌ Many templates seem overly simplistic and minimal
❌ Have to start a free trial to use some templates
❌ Forms is a pro feature

As winner of the intergalactic tire-kicking Olympics, I’m a bit put-off by the fact that I’m asked to start a seven day trial before even really seeing what the builder can do. However, you don’t actually have to provide any details or sign-up to try out the advanced features.

Conclusion

Ultimately this comes down to taste and what you’re trying to do. If I wanted an Instagram-like website for my personal profile, I’d go with Carrd.

If I were Carrd, I’d add a few more templates geared towards landing pages for products. It’s a little bit hard to visualise building such a website using Carrd as you can’t really run with any of their templates without considerable editing.

With Dorik, there’s far less up-front work to create a landing page for your new product. I’d personally be happy to keep many of the illustrations there. They already have useful sections for things like testimonials and pricing.