Sublead vs Carrd: an alternative to building a landing page for your lead magnet
Carrd is a one-page site builder, free for up to three sites and from $9 a year on Pro. It can be the landing page for a lead magnet, but the signup form needs the Pro Standard plan ($19 a year) and an email service behind it, and the lead magnet itself is made and delivered with other tools. Sublead covers all of it: you write the lead magnet, press Publish, and the opt-in page is created from it, with the content shown right after sign-up. Sublead does not build websites.
Carrd builds one-page sites and prices them low: a single page and a few elements to arrange, for a personal site, a product teaser, a page of links or a quick landing page. Custom domains and forms come at $19 a year.
For a lead magnet, the page is one part out of three. There is also the content you give away, and the step where a new subscriber receives it. Carrd handles neither: its form passes the email address to the service you connect. Sublead makes the content, the page and the delivery, and leaves you much less say over how the page looks.
Choose Sublead if
- You want one tool for the lead magnet, the opt-in page and the delivery.
- You have no emailing tool yet and do not want to set one up to hand over a free guide.
- You publish lead magnets regularly and want each to have its page without building it.
- You want views, sign-ups and conversion rate counted for each lead magnet.
Choose Carrd if
- You need a website or a landing page for something other than a lead magnet.
- You want to design the page yourself: layout, sections, fonts, your own structure.
- You want your own domain for $19 a year.
- Your email service is Mailchimp, Kit, Brevo or beehiiv, and the form must feed it directly.
Sublead vs Carrd, point by point
Carrd's column comes from its own website, read on November 13, 2026. If something has changed since, write to info@sublead.io and we will correct it.
Sublead and Carrd: the prices
Sublead
- Free · $0Unlimited lead magnets and contacts, opt-in pages, statistics, integrations. No card, no time limit.
- Pro · $29/month, or $24/month billed yearlyOptional: your own domain, pages without the Sublead badge, email sequences.
Carrd
- Free · $0Up to 3 sites with Carrd's core features. No forms, no custom domain, Carrd branding in the footer.
- Pro Lite · $9/year3 sites, Carrd branding removed. No custom domain and no forms.
- Pro Standard · $19/year10 sites, custom domains, forms (contact, signup, payment), widgets and embeds.
- Pro Plus · $49/year25 sites, advanced forms, password protection, redirects, site download.
Carrd is priced by the year. A free account builds up to three sites with the core features and carries Carrd branding. Pro Lite, $9 a year, removes the branding but has no custom domain and no forms. Pro Standard, $19 a year, is the plan a lead magnet page needs: it adds custom domains, forms (contact, signup and payment-enabled), widgets and embeds, on up to 10 sites. Pro Plus, $49 a year, adds advanced forms, password protection and redirects. Pro can be tried for 7 days without a card.
Sublead's free plan includes unlimited lead magnets, opt-in pages and contacts. Its Pro plan is $29 a month, or $24 a month billed yearly, for a custom domain, pages without the Sublead badge and email sequences. For a custom domain alone, Carrd is far cheaper. For the whole setup, the comparison is Carrd at $19 a year plus the email service that stores contacts and sends the freebie, against Sublead free on a shared domain.
The same lead magnet, made in each
With Sublead
- 1Write the lead magnet as a document.
- 2Press Publish. The opt-in page is generated from the document, form included.
- 3Share the link. Sign-ups read the lead magnet on the page and are saved as contacts.
With Carrd
- 1Start a site from a template and lay out the page: headline, image, a few lines about the freebie.
- 2On Pro Standard, add a signup form and connect it to your email service.
- 3Make the freebie in another tool and host the file or page where a link can reach it.
- 4In the email service, write the automatic email that sends that link to each new subscriber.
- 5Publish the Carrd site and share its address.
What Carrd is for
Carrd is for getting a single page online for very little money. You choose a template or start blank, place text, images, buttons and sections, and publish. The free account allows three sites. Pro Standard brings custom domains, forms and the option to embed third-party widgets and code, and its signup forms connect to about 20 email platforms, among them Mailchimp, Kit, Brevo, ActiveCampaign and beehiiv.
Sublead does none of that. It does not build a site, does not let you design the opt-in page section by section, and connects to two emailing tools only, Systeme.io and ClickFunnels. A freelancer who needs a homepage, a waitlist page for an app and a contact form will get all three from Carrd and none from Sublead.
What a Carrd landing page still needs for a lead magnet
A Carrd landing page needs a form plan, an email service and the freebie before it works as a lead magnet. The signup form is a Pro Standard feature, so the free account and Pro Lite cannot collect an address. The form hands each address to the email service you linked, and that service is where the contact is kept and where the delivery email is sent from. The freebie is a file or page you produce elsewhere.
That makes three tools to keep in step: the page, the mailing tool, the document. A form mapped to the wrong list or an automation left off is enough to break the delivery. The guide to the opt-in page explains what the page must say, whichever tool makes it, and the one on building an email list helps choose what sits behind the form.
| Carrd | Sublead | |
|---|---|---|
| What it builds | Any one-page site | A lead magnet and its opt-in page |
| The opt-in form | Pro Standard, $19/year | Included, free |
| Where contacts are kept | In the email service you connect | In Sublead |
| The freebie | Made and hosted elsewhere | Written in the editor |
| Delivery | By your email service | On the page, after sign-up |
| Custom domain | $19/year | Pro, $29/month |
What Sublead does instead
Sublead starts from the freebie and derives the page from it. You write the lead magnet like a Notion page: headings, lists, images, a banner, callouts, columns, tables, video from YouTube, Vimeo or Loom. Publishing gives you a link to an opt-in page with a first name field, an email field and a required consent checkbox. The person who signs up reads the document on that page. No email service is involved unless you want one.
You give up layout control in exchange. The opt-in page follows the document; it is not a canvas. If the arrangement of the page is where you want to spend your time, Carrd is the better fit. If you would rather spend it on the content, the guide on how to create a lead magnet walks through the writing.
Using a Carrd site and a Sublead lead magnet together
The two combine well, and the combination does not need a Carrd form. Keep Carrd for your site or your page of links, and add a button that points to the Sublead link. The visitor taps it, lands on the opt-in page, signs up and reads. Sublead collects the address, so the Carrd side needs no signup form and no connected email service.
This suits a Carrd page used as a link in bio: one button for the free guide, the others for your videos, shop or booking page. The guide on growing an email list from a link in bio describes that arrangement, and our Linktree comparison covers the tools built only for it.
Questions and answers
- Is Carrd free?
- Yes. A free Carrd account builds up to three sites with the core features. Forms and custom domains require Pro Standard at $19 a year, as its Pro page stated on 13 November 2026.
- Can you build a landing page with Carrd?
- Yes. Carrd is a one-page site builder and a landing page is one of the things it builds. To collect emails on it you need a signup form, which is part of the Pro Standard plan, connected to an email service.
- Is Sublead a Carrd alternative?
- For a lead magnet, yes: Sublead creates the opt-in page from the document and delivers the content, free. For a personal site, a portfolio or any other landing page, no. Sublead does not build websites.
- Does Carrd send the lead magnet to new subscribers?
- Carrd's signup form passes the address to the email service you connect, such as Mailchimp, Kit or Brevo. Sending the lead magnet is set up in that service.
- Can I link to a Sublead lead magnet from a Carrd site?
- Yes. A published Sublead lead magnet is a link, so any button or text link on a Carrd page can point to it. The sign-up happens on Sublead's opt-in page.
- Can Carrd be used as a link in bio?
- Yes. A one-page Carrd site with a few buttons works as a link-in-bio page. One of those buttons can lead to a lead magnet.
Sources
What this page says about Carrd was read on its own website on November 13, 2026:
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