A Persona (persona.co) alternative for a portfolio with publishing and commerce
Grigora is a Persona.co alternative for an existing portfolio that needs a CMS, newsletter or store from $12/month billed annually. Persona now directs new sites to Cargo, while its legacy help page lists account upgrades at $24/year or $4/month. Confirm legacy account access before planning changes; Grigora does not reproduce Persona’s licensed fonts or design system automatically.
Published by Grigora · Updated · Sources and method
Is Grigora the right Persona alternative?
Grigora is a Persona.co alternative for an existing portfolio that needs a CMS, newsletter or store from $12/month billed annually. Persona now directs new sites to Cargo, while its legacy help page lists account upgrades at $24/year or $4/month. Confirm legacy account access before planning changes; Grigora does not reproduce Persona’s licensed fonts or design system automatically.
Choose Grigora if you want…
- A free trial that visitors can actually load
- A store on the same page as the portfolio, not on Cargo
- A subscriber list instead of a contact form that emails you
- Posts, categories and authors rather than a page tree
- A platform that is still taking new sites
Stick with Persona if you…
- •Already have a Persona and only publish a profile, CV or flyer
- •Want licensed foundry faces bundled at $24 a year
- •Sell nothing and send nothing, and expect that to stay true
Persona or Grigora: the decision in one view
Persona (persona.co) alternatives at a glance
How Grigora and the other profile-page platforms compare once the page has a job to do.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column
| Platform | Best for | Free access | Starting price | Sales fees | Data and site portability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grigora | A profile page that grows into a business site | Free trial | From $12/mo billed annually | 0% platform fee; Stripe/Razorpay fees apply | Posts/content; rebuild design |
| Persona (persona.co) | Typographic personal pages | Private only | $24/yr or $4/mo | No store exists | No |
| Cargo | Portfolios, where Persona users are sent | Yes, on a cargo.site address | From $14/mo billed yearly | No per-transaction fee on Commerce | No |
| Carrd | One-page sites | Yes (3 sites) | Pro from $9/yr; custom domains $19/yr | No native store; embedded checkout | Client-side ZIP on Pro Plus |
| about.me | A single bio page | Yes | Reported around $8/mo | No native store | No |
| Linktree | A link list under a bio | Yes | Reported from around $5/mo | Fees apply on some selling features | No |
Grigora, Persona and Cargo figures read live on 11 September 2026 from grigora.com, support.persona.co and docs.cargo.site. The Carrd, about.me and Linktree rows are list pricing and were not re-verified for this page. Verify current pricing on each provider's site.
Sources for the overview table
- Grigora: official reference 1
- Carrd: official reference 1, official reference 2
Why people move from Persona (persona.co) to Grigora
Consider these trade-offs against your existing setup before planning a move.
The first time someone asks to buy something
Persona has no cart, no checkout and no product record anywhere in the product. The answer is a DM and a payment link, or a move to Cargo Commerce at $5.50 to $9/mo. Grigora puts the catalogue on the same page as the work.
The list that never existed
The vendor says Persona does not host email, and there is no newsletter or subscriber list either. Every follower you gather stays on somebody else's platform. Grigora holds the list, the signup form and the sends in one place.
The page tree hits its ceiling
A profile, a CV and a contact page fit Persona perfectly. Case studies with categories, a blog with authors, a directory of past projects and comments underneath do not, and there is no post type to grow into.
The vendor points new sites elsewhere
persona.co tells new users to go to cargo.site and says Persona has been folded into Cargo. No shutdown date is published, but the privacy policy is stamped 2019 and the SEO guide still recommends a Google tool retired in 2018.
What Persona does well
- Licensed Webtype and Type Network faces included in a $4 plan
- Art-directed Styles and motion backdrops with no code
- Very cheap for a public page with a custom domain: $24 a year
- Shift-A in-page editing, custom HTML and real DNS record control
Where Persona falls short
- No store, cart, checkout or payments of any kind
- No newsletter or subscriber list, and no hosted email
- The free tier is private, so visitors see nothing until you pay
- Effectively closed to new sites, with documentation frozen since 2019
Grigora vs Persona (persona.co) at a glance
Where a profile page ends and a business site begins.
| Feature | Persona | Grigora |
|---|---|---|
| Starting paid price | $24/yr ($4/mo) | $12/mo billed yearly |
| Free plan visitors can see | No | Free trial |
| Online store | No | Included |
| Email marketing | No | Included |
| Blog CMS | Pages plus an auto /rss feed | Posts, categories, authors |
| AI first-draft site | No | Yes |
| Licensed foundry webfonts | Included | Google Fonts, licence your own |
| Open to new sites | Directed to Cargo | Yes |
| Administer from a phone | No | Yes |
Grigora vs Persona: feature by feature
A category-by-category breakdown, pricing, AI, design, e-commerce, email, SEO, performance, and support.
Licensed foundry type inside a $4 plan
Fit: PersonaTake the honest one first. Persona ships premium webfonts from Webtype and Type Network next to Google Fonts, picked from a dropdown in the Design tab and mapped to four defined roles: main text, h1, h2 and small. The showcase lists the real faces per site, among them Sabon, Freight Text, Dolly Pro, Marat Sans, Aktiv Grotesk and Neue Haas Unica. Grigora gives you Google Fonts and leaves commercial licensing to you.
| Feature | Grigora | Persona |
|---|---|---|
| Licensed Webtype and Type Network faces | No | Included in the upgrade |
| Google Fonts | Yes | Yes |
| Named type roles across the whole site | Styled per block | Main text, h1, h2, small |
| Font licensing handled for you | No | Yes |
| Direct CSS on the type | Custom code injection | Built into the Design tab |
Takeaway: If your page is judged on its typesetting, Persona hands you faces that Grigora expects you to go and buy.
The Private Persona paywall
Fit: GrigoraEvery Persona account starts on a Private Persona: free, fully featured for you, and invisible to everyone else. Visit one that has not been upgraded and you get the string "This is a Private Persona" and no content. That is a permanent private draft rather than a trial, so the practical entry price for a page anybody can read is $24 a year, not nothing.
| Feature | Grigora | Persona |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Free trial | Yes, but private only |
| What a visitor sees before you pay | Your site | "This is a Private Persona" |
| Cost to be visible at all | $0 | $24/yr or $4/mo |
| One payment covers | 1 to 5 sites by plan | Every Persona on the account |
| Free tier compared with the successor product | Public | Weaker than Cargo's free public subdomain |
Takeaway: Persona's free tier is a private draft, and its own successor gives away more than it does.
Shift-A editing, and only at a desk
Depends on your needsPersona's admin is the page itself. You press Shift-A on your own live site and edit in place, with no dashboard to navigate and no onboarding wizard in the way. It is genuinely quicker than most builders for a small edit. The catch is where you can do it: the homepage serves a mobile-only message asking you to use a desktop browser, and the browser article limits Persona to recent desktop browsers.
| Feature | Grigora | Persona |
|---|---|---|
| Edit in place on the live page | Block editor | Press Shift-A |
| Separate dashboard to learn | Yes | No |
| Change a page from a phone | Yes | No |
| Signing up on mobile | Yes | "Please use a desktop browser to sign up" |
| Published pages are responsive | Yes | Yes |
Takeaway: Persona’s legacy editor is documented for desktop use; verify the browsers and devices your existing account supports.
Selling from a profile page
Fit: GrigoraPersona has no store, no products, no cart, no checkout, no inventory and no payments. That is not a gap found by testing edge cases: the entire knowledge base has four sections, Personal Domains, Typography, Google Integration and Managing Your Account, and not one article mentions selling. An illustrator who wants to sell prints has to leave the product and pick up Cargo's Commerce add-on instead.
| Feature | Grigora | Persona |
|---|---|---|
| Products, cart and checkout | Yes | No |
| Digital downloads | Yes | No |
| Stock and variants | Yes | No |
| Platform commission | 0% on Stripe or Razorpay | No store to take a cut of |
| Route to selling anything | Included on every paid plan | Migrate to Cargo Commerce, $5.50 to $9/mo |
Takeaway: There is no support article about orders or payments because there is no store to document.
The mailing list a profile page cannot keep
Fit: GrigoraThis one comes from the vendor, not from inference. The support article on domain email says outright that Persona does not host email, then points you at Fastmail, Google, Pobox or Zoho with MX records. There is no newsletter, no broadcast, no automation and no subscriber list. The only capture mechanism is a contact form that lands in your inbox, which is a way to receive messages, not a way to keep an audience.
| Feature | Grigora | Persona |
|---|---|---|
| Subscriber list | 2,500 to 25,000 by plan | No |
| Campaign builder | Yes | No |
| Automations and segmentation | Yes | No |
| Signup form that feeds a list | Yes | Contact form to your inbox |
| Mailbox on your own domain | From $5/mailbox | MX records to another provider |
Takeaway: Mailbox hosting and newsletter sending are different services. Persona documents no comparable built-in campaign platform in the reviewed feature set.
A page tree with /rss, not a publication
Fit: GrigoraPersona sites are properly multi-page. Live examples run real navigation, and every site auto-generates a feed at /rss listing its pages. That is a page tree with a feed attached rather than a blog engine. There is no post type, no categories or tags, no author fields, no scheduled publishing and no archive, and nothing in the knowledge base describes blogging at all.
| Feature | Grigora | Persona |
|---|---|---|
| Posts kept separate from pages | Yes | No |
| Categories, tags and author profiles | Yes | No |
| RSS feed | Yes | Auto at /rss, lists pages |
| Scheduled publishing | Yes | Not documented |
| Moderated comments with admin replies | Yes | No |
| Directories and collections | Yes | No |
Takeaway: Persona has pages and an RSS feed; compare editorial structure, categories and collaboration if you run an ongoing publication.
Styles, backdrops and being art directed by default
Fit: PersonaThe second concession, and it is a real one. Persona pairs a Style with a backdrop treatment, and the showcase documents Wallpaper, Video, Ripple, Gradient, Pixelation, Bad TV and Solid Color across live sites. You get something distinctive and motion-capable without writing a line. Most builders' defaults announce themselves as defaults, which matters when the page is a creative person's shop window.
| Feature | Grigora | Persona |
|---|---|---|
| Motion backdrops with no code | No | Wallpaper, Video, Ripple, Pixelation, Bad TV |
| Looks like a template at first glance | AI art directions push against it | Rarely |
| Starting points | website templates | A short, curated set of Styles |
| Custom HTML and CSS | Yes | Yes |
Takeaway: Persona's defaults read as design decisions, which is exactly what its audience is judged on.
Ranking for your own name, and nothing wider
Fit: GrigoraPersona's technical basics hold up. HTTPS is enforced, /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml are generated and valid, a site-level meta description is emitted, Open Graph and Twitter cards are produced with a site image, and images run through a resizing CDN. Above that line it thins out fast. No per-page meta editor is documented, and the descriptions and OG tags sampled on live sites were site-wide, with the site name as the OG title on every page.
| Feature | Grigora | Persona |
|---|---|---|
| HTTPS, robots.txt and sitemap.xml | Yes | Automatic |
| Per-page title and description editor | Yes | Not documented |
| Open Graph per page | Yes | Site-wide on the pages sampled |
| Canonicals, redirects and schema controls | Yes | No |
| IndexNow submission | Yes | No |
| SEO tooling and guidance | free tools | A guide still recommending a tool Google retired in 2018 |
Takeaway: Compare SEO controls and content structure against your goals; a portfolio’s ranking potential cannot be inferred from the editor alone.
A product that stopped taking new sites
Fit: GrigoraThe persona.co homepage tells you this itself: existing pages can log in, and new sites should go to cargo.site, because Persona has been folded into Cargo. The signup path is closed in two independent ways, with the create anchor commented out of the live HTML and the style picker it pointed at now returning a private page. Existing sites still resolve and serve over HTTPS, and no shutdown date has been published, but this is a product in maintenance rather than development.
| Feature | Grigora | Persona |
|---|---|---|
| Open to new sites | Yes | Effectively closed, new users sent to Cargo |
| Documentation kept current | Yes | Privacy policy stamped July 2019 |
| Vendor's own advice to new users | Start free | "To make a new site, visit cargo.site" |
| Announced shutdown date | None | None published either way |
| Support | Email, priority on higher plans | Hours advertised, staffing unclear |
Takeaway: Your Persona still loads today, but the manual has not been touched in years and the vendor points new pages somewhere else.
Explore Grigora before switching from Persona
Current public product pages and plans, so you can inspect what you would be moving to. Open any image at full size.
Grigora vs Persona (persona.co) pricing
Persona is cheap because it is a page. Price the store and the list and the comparison changes shape.
Profile page, CMS, newsletter and store in one plan
Grigora Starter, Pro and Business rates are $12, $20 and $45 per month billed annually ($144, $240 and $540 per year), or $15, $25 and $59 month to month. Plan limits apply to sites, storage, bandwidth, AI credits and newsletter subscribers. Payment-provider fees and optional paid services are additional.
A page, then a different product for everything else
Persona figures read live on 11 September 2026 from support.persona.co, the only pricing page that exists; persona.co publishes none. Cargo figures from docs.cargo.site the same day. The Persona upgrade is bought behind login under Account Settings, so the checkout could not be tested. No price is published for domains bought through Persona.
Persona at $24 a year is the cheapest way here to publish a page with your name on it. Grigora Starter at $12/mo billed yearly is a different purchase: the same page, plus the catalogue, the checkout, the subscriber list and the blog that Persona sends you to another product for.
The real cost: Grigora vs Persona (persona.co)
Take an illustrator with a Persona profile page who starts selling prints and writing to readers once a month. Count the year both ways.
| What you pay for | Persona | Grigora |
|---|---|---|
| A public page with your own domain, one year | $24/yr upgrade | $144/yr on Starter |
| Licensed foundry webfonts | Included in the upgrade | Google Fonts, or licence your own |
| Selling prints | Not possible: move to Cargo Commerce at $5.50 to $9/mo | Included, 0% platform commission |
| A monthly note to readers | A separate email platform | Included, 2,500 to 25,000 subscribers |
| Posts with categories and comments | Pages plus an /rss feed | Included |
| First draft of the site | Pick a Style and fill it in | Generated from a description, 15K to 250K credits |
| Editing between trains | Desktop browser only | Included |
Payment-processor fees apply wherever a store exists. Persona and Cargo figures were read on 11 September 2026 from support.persona.co and docs.cargo.site; Persona's checkout sits behind login and was not tested, so treat the upgrade as published rather than confirmed purchasable.
Is Grigora the right Persona (persona.co) alternative for you?
Where a profile page stops being enough, and where Persona still does the job.
Persona alternative for creators who sell their work
Prints, zines, presets, sample packs and commissions all need a catalogue and a checkout on the same domain as the portfolio. Grigora includes both, with 0% platform commission on your own Stripe or Razorpay account.
… for anyone building a readership
A contact form collects messages. A list collects readers. Grigora keeps the subscriber list, the campaign builder and the automations beside the pages, so the audience belongs to the site rather than to a second subscription.
… for a page that has to grow into a site
Persona's page tree tops out at a handful of pages with an /rss feed. If the profile has to become services, case studies, a blog with categories and a shop, Grigora is the version of that idea that keeps going.
Persona is the right call if…
You already own a Persona, you publish a profile, a CV or a release page, and the licensed type in the $24-a-year upgrade is the thing you care about most. Nothing on this page beats that for the money.
Which one is right for you?
Choose Grigora if…
- The page needs a checkout as well as a portfolio
- You want the mailing list on the same subscription as the site
- You want posts, categories, authors and comments, not a page tree
- You need to edit or publish from a phone
- You would rather not build on a product that is closed to new sites
Choose Persona if…
- •You have an existing Persona and only publish a profile or CV
- •Licensed foundry faces at $24 a year are the deciding factor
- •You sell nothing, send nothing, and are sure that will not change
How to move from Persona (persona.co) to Grigora
Persona publishes no export tool, so plan on copying content across by hand. That is less painful than it sounds, because most Personas are a handful of pages, and your own /rss feed is a useful checklist of what exists.
- 1
List what is actually on the Persona
Open your site's /rss feed and the page nav together. Most Personas run to a profile, a CV or works page, a few project pages and a contact. Write the list down before you start.
- 2
Generate the Grigora draft
Describe yourself and the work in a sentence and Grigora produces a first draft with pages, layout and copy. Start from that rather than a blank canvas, then reshape it to match the page order you just wrote down.
- 3
Bring the images and the words across
Copy text and download images from the live Persona. Keep the type hierarchy you had: if a licensed face mattered, pick the closest Google Font or add your own licensed webfont through custom code.
- 4
Add the parts Persona never had
Turn the works page into a catalogue if you sell, put a signup form on the profile and point it at the subscriber list, and move any blog-like pages into posts with categories and authors.
- 5
Test before changing DNS
Copy original images and text while the legacy account is accessible. Check font licenses before reusing a webfont, and preserve portfolio URLs and image descriptions in the new design. Check page titles, descriptions, canonical URLs, internal links, image alt text, forms and checkout on the new site. Keep an old-to-new URL map, add relevant 301 redirects and monitor indexing after launch; redirects cannot guarantee unchanged rankings.
- 6
Point the domain and keep the old URLs
Connect your domain, mirror the old page paths or redirect them so existing links and search results still land, then decide whether to keep the Persona upgrade running for a month as a fallback before you cancel.
Why people look for a Persona (persona.co) alternative in 2026
Persona was launched by Cargo around 2015 to 2016 as a way to make personal webpages with device-agnostic layouts, and for a decade it has quietly done exactly that. The live showcase is full of the audience it was built for: an MIT political theorist, product designers, photographers, a magazine, musicians with a release page. Each site is a personal domain with a few pages behind it, set in licensed type, sitting on a backdrop that moves. Almost nobody leaves Persona because the pages look wrong. They leave because the page is the whole product.
The vendor now sends new sites to Cargo
Read persona.co today and it tells you itself: existing pages can log in, new sites should go to cargo.site, and Persona has been folded into Cargo. The create-your-own link is commented out of the live HTML, and the style picker that link pointed at now returns a private page with no content. Nothing has been announced beyond that. There is no shutdown date, no migration deadline and no notice, and existing customer domains still resolve and serve over HTTPS. What there is instead is a product in maintenance: a privacy policy stamped July 2019, a GDPR article still citing the Privacy Shield Framework that was invalidated in 2020, and an SEO guide that recommends submitting your URL to a Google form retired in 2018. None of that breaks your page. All of it tells you where the product is going.
A free Persona is a private Persona
This is the detail most people meet first. Every account begins on a Private Persona, which the knowledge base describes as fully featured and free to use for its owner, but invisible to anyone who visits. Load an un-upgraded Persona and you get the words "This is a Private Persona" and nothing else. It is a permanent private draft rather than a trial, so publishing anything at all costs $24 a year or $4 a month. One upgrade does cover every Persona on the account, which is generous, and $24 a year is genuinely cheap. It is still not a free website, and Cargo, the product Persona users are now pointed at, hands out unlimited public sites on its own subdomains.
The page cannot take money or keep a list
The gap that actually forces the move is commercial. Persona has no store, no products, no cart, no checkout, no inventory and no payments feature, and the support knowledge base has four sections that never mention selling. Email is the same story, except the vendor states it in plain words: Persona does not host email, and you are handed to Fastmail, Google, Pobox or Zoho through MX records. There is no newsletter, no automation and no subscriber list, only a contact form that emails you. So the illustrator who sells a print takes it through DMs. The writer who wants readers sends people to a third-party list. The consultant who wants a blog with categories discovers a page tree and an /rss feed. Each of those is a second subscription bolted to a $24-a-year page.
How Grigora compares
Grigora starts from the same premise as Persona, that one person should be able to publish something good-looking without hiring anybody, and then refuses to stop at the profile page. You describe yourself and the work in a sentence, the AI produces a first draft with pages, layout and copy, and the things Persona sends you elsewhere for are already in the plan.
The same one-page start, with a business behind it
Starter is $12 a month billed annually. That includes the site, a CMS with posts, categories, author profiles, directories and moderated comments, a newsletter with 2,500 subscribers and a campaign builder, and a store with catalogue, variants, stock and digital downloads at 0% platform commission on your own Stripe or Razorpay account. It also includes the small things that matter to a personal page: schema controls, sitemaps, IndexNow submission, and free SEO tools on the marketing site. A free trial lets you evaluate the editor; check the current publishing and subscription terms before launching. Pro at $20 and Business at $45 add sites, credits and subscribers rather than unlocking features that were withheld.
Where Persona still wins: the type and the backdrop
Two things on this page belong to Persona and no amount of feature counting changes them. The first is type. Licensed Webtype and Type Network faces come with the $24-a-year upgrade, mapped to four roles across the whole site, and the showcase is set in faces like Sabon, Freight Text, Dolly Pro and Aktiv Grotesk. Grigora gives you Google Fonts and expects you to licence anything else yourself. The second is art direction: a Style plus a backdrop treatment such as Wallpaper, Ripple, Gradient, Pixelation or Bad TV produces a page that reads as a design object rather than a template, which is precisely what a creative person is judged on. If your site is a profile page and it will stay a profile page, that combination at that price is hard to argue with. Choose Grigora when the page has to do a job that a link list cannot: take an order, keep a reader, or grow into something with more than a dozen pages in it.
Frequently asked questions
Grigora is a Persona.co alternative for an existing portfolio that needs a CMS, newsletter or store from $12/month billed annually. Persona now directs new sites to Cargo, while its legacy help page lists account upgrades at $24/year or $4/month. Confirm legacy account access before planning changes; Grigora does not reproduce Persona’s licensed fonts or design system automatically.
As published on support.persona.co on 11 September 2026, the upgrade that makes your Personas public costs $24 per year or $4 per month, and a single upgrade covers every Persona on the account. Accounts start on a free Private Persona that visitors cannot see. The checkout sits behind login, so we could not confirm that the purchase still completes.
Effectively no. The persona.co homepage directs new sites to cargo.site and says Persona has been folded into Cargo. The create link is commented out of the live HTML and the style picker it pointed at now returns a private page. Existing accounts can still log in, and no shutdown date has been published either way.
No to both, and both are stated by the vendor rather than inferred. There is no store, cart, checkout or payments feature anywhere in Persona, and the support article on domain email says Persona does not host email, pointing you to Fastmail, Google, Pobox or Zoho. Selling means moving to Cargo's Commerce add-on at $5.50 to $9 a month. Grigora includes a store and a newsletter on every paid plan.
Not in the sense most people mean. Persona sites are multi-page and every site auto-generates an RSS feed at /rss listing its pages, but there is no post type, no categories or tags, no author fields and no scheduled publishing, and the knowledge base does not describe blogging at all. Grigora ships posts, categories, author profiles, directories and moderated comments with admin replies.
Persona publishes no export tool, so content is copied across by hand, which is manageable because most Personas are a handful of pages. Use your own /rss feed as the checklist, generate a Grigora draft from a description, paste the text and re-upload the images, then connect your domain and keep the old URL paths or redirect them so existing links still land.
Sources and comparison method
Published by Grigora, one of the products compared here. This is a comparison of public product documentation and published plans. Recommendations reflect the use cases described; they are not independent performance benchmarks. Homepage screenshots show how each product presents itself and do not establish feature availability.
Check the billing term, currency, regional availability, usage limits and add-ons before purchasing. A content export does not necessarily include the design, integrations or a working store. Migration steps need testing on your own site.
- Persona homepage and transition notice
Official notice that Persona is folded into Cargo and new sites should use Cargo.
- Persona legacy pricing
Documented private account and public upgrade prices; checkout availability remains unverified.
- Grigora pricing and included features
Annual and monthly billing, plan allowances, included features and trial terms.
Grigora references: plans and limits, commerce, MCP access, and help documentation.
Compare Grigora with other platforms
Outgrow the profile page
Keep the page with your name on it, add the store, the list and the blog, from $12/mo. Try Grigora free, no credit card required.
14-day free trial • No credit card required • Cancel anytime