UGC Portfolio in Canva: A Free Website, Not Slides.

Open Canva, choose Website as your design type, and only then start looking at templates. That one choice decides what a brand gets when it opens your link. A Website design publishes as a single page that scrolls, at a free my.canva.site address, with your videos playing right on it. Most other design types publish as a slideshow that a brand clicks through one page at a time.¹

Everything below works on Canva's free plan. To build a UGC portfolio in Canva, have three to five finished clips ready, plus a few photos and the email address you use for brand work. If the clips don't exist yet, start with the pieces worth shooting first. The steps assume Canva in a web browser on a computer, because arranging a page is far easier on a big screen.

Website, slideshow or PDF: what a brand receives

Search Canva for a UGC portfolio template and nearly every template with "UGC" in its name is a presentation. On the first screen of results when we checked on October 22, 2026, that was 24 of 27, and the other three were social posts.² Canva's own help pages explain what each format sends a brand:¹³⁴⁵

For a portfolio made mostly of video, that settles it: build your free portfolio site as a Website design. A PDF is a fallback for the brand that insists on an attachment, and the questions at the end cover how to make one that still points to your videos.

Already built one? Five things to check first

Starting from scratch? Skip to Step 1. If your Canva portfolio exists but isn't getting replies, look for these before you rebuild anything:

Step 1: Start a Website design on the free plan

For a blank page, go to Templates on Canva's home page, choose Website and select Create a blank Website. For a template, search "website" in Templates instead, open one to preview it, and select Customize this template.⁶ If you go the template route, check a few things first:

• Skip anything with a crown on its thumbnail. The crown marks Pro content, and premium elements show criss-cross watermarks in your design until they're bought.⁷⁸
• Skip mobile website and Link in Bio templates, which publish to a canva.link address only.³
• Look for tall image boxes and simple, separate blocks. Your clips are vertical, and overlapping shapes and text are the first thing Canva's mobile help tells you to fix.⁹

Don't wait for a website template with "UGC" in its name. Most website templates on that same results page are named for photography, modeling, design or freelance portfolios, and none mentions UGC.² Their bones are what you need anyway: a strong first screen, a gallery, a short about block and a contact block. Swap their images for your clips and their headings for your own.

If you already built a presentation, the free-plan way out is a new Website design. Your clips and photos stay in the Uploads tab, so rebuilding is mostly adding them again.¹⁰

Step 2: Plan six sections (the free plan publishes ten)

A Canva website page is a stack of sections, one under the next. Add one with Add section at the bottom of the editor. Add page starts a separate page, which a portfolio this size doesn't need.⁶ Keep count as you go: on the free plan you can design up to 20 sections on a page but publish only 10, and a longer page prompts you to remove sections or upgrade before it will publish.¹¹

Six sections cover a UGC portfolio. Lead with a clip, not a bio: brands look at your first sample before anything else and read the bio last.

1. First screen: your strongest clip, with your name and the kind of content you make, for which brands, beside it.
2. Videos: three to five clips, grouped by niche or by format (unboxing, demo, testimonial).
3. Photos: a few stills, if you offer them.
4. How you work: your country and the languages you film in, who appears in your content (you, your family, your pet) and how quickly you deliver. An agency owner who reviews UGC portfolios on r/UGCcreators asks creators for location, languages and work grouped by niche.¹²
5. Rates: starting prices, or "rates on request." It's a judgment call: the rate card guide lays out both sides, and the same agency owner adds that prices on the page can stop an agency from putting you forward to its clients.¹³
6. Contact: your email address and your social handles.

No paid work yet? Fill the video and photo sections with spec pieces (clips you made for products you already own) and label each one honestly, with a line like "Concept ad, not commissioned." Add what the clip was meant to do: the product, the hook, who it's for. That line does the job a client's name would.

Step 3: Add your videos so they play properly

Video is most of a UGC portfolio, and it's where Canva builds tend to go wrong. In October 2026 we inspected eight portfolios published on free Canva addresses and tested how two of them play video. Four habits keep yours working.

Export at 1080p. Canva accepts video files of up to 1 GB and stores 4K uploads at 1080p anyway,¹⁴ so a higher export gains nothing; the editing guide has the settings. Then keep the page lean: stick to the three to five clips from Step 2, because it doesn't need every video you've made. On five of those eight sites, every clip loads as a full file, and one page with 21 clips came to 681 MB. Canva's help pages name a heavy load of videos and embeds as one reason a website runs slowly, and the free plan holds 5 GB in total.¹⁵¹⁶

Upload files instead of embedding links. A YouTube embed brings YouTube's own player along with it, and one r/canva thread describes embeds that played in the editor and then wouldn't load on the published site.¹⁷ All eight portfolios used uploaded files. Open the Uploads tab, upload your clips, and select one to add it to the page.¹⁸

Skip the phone mockups and keep the boxes big. Several tutorials put clips inside a drawing of a phone. It looks neat and shrinks your video, and replies on r/UGCcreators mention clips that look too small inside mockups, with no way to enlarge them, and captions cut off by frames.¹⁹²⁰ Let each clip keep its own tall shape, sized so two or three sit across a row. If you drop one into a template's image box, make sure the box has the same tall shape, or the edges get cropped, captions included.

Box size matters for sound, too. Canva draws its play and sound buttons inside the video box itself, so on small thumbnails those controls can disappear. Sound can go missing in other ways, too. In one r/UGCcreators thread, a commenter reviewing a creator's Canva portfolio found clips with no sound and no sound button, though the same videos had audio on TikTok; the creator suspected the upload.²¹ That's why Step 7 has you play every clip with the sound on.

Plan for silent autoplay. On the two sites we tested, a clip that started on its own played muted, sometimes alongside several others, while a clip that waited for someone to press play started with sound. In most Canva designs, a clip's playback settings (select it, choose Edit, then look under Playback) include a Play automatically switch.²² Leave it off for clips where your voice carries the piece, like testimonials and reviews. For anything that does play on its own, make the opening work with the sound off: the product in your hands from the first frame, and captions added in your editing app so they're part of the file.

Step 4: Add photos, captions and your contact details

Photos go in their own section, after the videos. Export them as JPEGs at full resolution; the lighting guide covers the settings that keep your colors right.

Under each clip and photo, add one short caption: the product type and what the piece shows, such as "Serum demo, morning routine, 20 seconds." Then group each piece with its caption: drag across both, or hold Shift and select them, and choose Group on the floating toolbar. On a phone, Canva rearranges the page, and elements that aren't grouped can drift apart, which is how a caption ends up under the wrong video.⁹

In the contact section, write your email address out in full so it can be copied. Then make it tappable: select it, choose Link, and enter mailto: followed by your address. Three of the eight portfolios link their email this way. Link each social handle to its profile the same way.²³

Step 5: Set it up for phones

Some of the brands you send this to will open it on a phone, so set the phone version up before you publish:

• Check that every clip and its caption are grouped (Step 4), group your name with its one-line description too, and lock the groups.⁹
• Pull apart anything that overlaps. On phones, Canva stacks your elements in a column, and wide, full-screen elements may not resize cleanly.⁹
• Keep the first section short, so your strongest clip shows on the first screen of a phone, not three swipes down.
• Open the preview (the eye icon) and select Mobile.⁹ Canva calls this view an approximation, so the live check comes in Step 7.

Step 6: Publish to your free my.canva.site address

Before you press Publish, open the settings: select the arrow next to Publish, then Settings.¹ Five fields deserve a minute each:³²⁴

Two notes on the address. A name someone else has already used for a free Canva domain can't be reused, even if their site is gone.³ And you can rename your free domain later from your account settings (select your profile on the home page, then Settings, then Web domains), but your site may go offline for a few minutes while Canva moves it.²⁵

Then select Publish. Canva shows a success message once the site is live.¹

The link to send is the one with my.canva.site in it. If what you copied doesn't have that, it isn't your published Website design: a public view link from Canva's Share menu shares the design itself,²⁶ and mobile website and Link in Bio pages publish to canva.link instead.³

Step 7: Clear out the template and test every clip

Open the live link on your phone, then on a laptop, and scroll the whole page. Press play on every clip with your sound on, and tap every link, your email included.

Then hunt for whatever the template left behind. In one long r/UGCcreators thread where portfolios, most of them built in Canva, were reviewed one by one, the reviewer kept finding template leftovers:²⁷ a placeholder logo, empty video frames, file names showing where photos should be, and the template's name in the browser tab. Replace or delete each one.

If the phone version goes wrong, with a big blank gap, photos out of order or only the top of the page showing, you're not the first.²⁸²⁹ Go to the section with the problem and look for overlapping shapes or hidden layers, like an extra color layer tucked under one section.³⁰ If the problem stays, republish with Resize on mobile switched off and compare on your phone. Advice on Reddit points both ways: one reply asks whether the setting is switched on, and another suggests a creator switch it off so the page scrolls better.²⁸³¹

Every change after this point needs a republish, because Canva doesn't update the live site until you publish again.³ One thing not to chase: on the free plan, the "Designed with Canva" footer stays at the bottom of every site.¹

Visitors can't save your clips with a right-click; all eight portfolios blocked it. That only stops casual saving, since the video files still load from public web addresses, so don't put anything on the page you'd mind someone keeping. Brands that want your files can ask: add "Video files available on request" beside your email, or do what the agency owner from Step 2 suggests and put a Google Drive link under each video.¹²

UGC portfolio in Canva: common questions

Is Canva's free plan enough for a UGC portfolio?

For a first portfolio, yes. The free plan publishes up to five websites on the free my.canva.site domain, with up to ten sections per page, 5 GB of storage and video files of up to 1 GB each.¹¹¹⁶¹⁴ Two things come with staying free: the "Designed with Canva" footer, which only paid plans can remove, and no visitor stats, because Canva's website insights are for Pro, Teams and Education accounts and Google Analytics doesn't work on free addresses.¹³²³³

Does a my.canva.site address look unprofessional?

Opinions split. In one r/UGCcreators thread, a brand owner argued that a portfolio without a custom domain looks less credible.³⁴ In another, creators answered that the free address keeps their costs down and that a brand put off by a Canva link probably isn't a good fit.³⁵ Start on the free address, and spend the effort on the clips.

Can I make my UGC portfolio in Canva as a PDF?

You can, but your videos won't come with it: Canva's PDFs don't support video or animation.⁵ If a brand's form only takes an attachment, make a separate design with a still frame from each clip and your my.canva.site link near the top. To download it, choose Share, then Download, and pick PDF as the file type.³⁶ Links stay clickable in Canva's PDFs unless you flatten the file, an option that merges everything into one layer for printing.²³³⁶ And if a brand asks for a document, check whether it's a media kit they want; this guide covers the difference.

How do I make my Canva portfolio scroll instead of flipping like slides?

Rebuild it as a Website design. Anything built as a presentation publishes as a slideshow, and converting it with Magic Resize needs a paid plan.¹⁴ A new Website design is free, and your clips are already waiting in Uploads.¹⁰

Is Canva UGC legit?

If you searched "Canva UGC," you may be looking for canvas UGC: brands paying creators to post videos on an account set up just for the brand. It's a legitimate kind of job, though deals vary a lot, and our canvas UGC explainer shows how to judge one. It has nothing to do with Canva the design app, which is what this guide is about.

What should a UGC portfolio include, and where can I see examples in Canva?

Your three to five strongest clips first, then photos if you offer them, where you're based, your rates or "on request," and a way to reach you. For a live Canva portfolio taken apart section by section, see UGC portfolio examples.

Put the link to work

A portfolio earns its keep when it gets opened, so send the link with your social handle beside it. One person who hires creators said on r/UGCcreators that they skip website links in unsolicited emails and look for a handle that shows the work.³⁷ In pitch emails, these templates show where the link goes, and it belongs first among your Instagram bio links, where the UGC Instagram account guide covers the rest of that profile. Or let brands come looking: a profile on Modliflex shows your past work next to the rates you set, and brands browse profiles and order from them.

Footnotes

1. Canva Help Centre, "Publish Canva websites" (viewed October 22, 2026): select Publish to publish, or the arrow next to it for Settings; designs other than websites and video designs open in presenter view, like a slideshow; mobile website and Link in Bio templates publish to a canva.link address only; on the free plan a "Designed with Canva" footer appears and can't be removed. https://www.canva.com/help/publishing-canva-websites/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. Canva, "Ugc Portfolio templates" (first screen of results, viewed October 22, 2026): of 27 templates with "UGC" in the name, 24 were presentations, 2 Instagram posts and 1 a Pinterest pin; the 16 website templates included 13 named as portfolios (photography, modeling, design, freelance, personal brand) plus a services site, a student site and a film tie-in; none had "UGC" in the name. https://www.canva.com/templates/s/ugc-portfolio/ ↩ ↩²

3. Canva Help Centre, "Publish websites to a free domain" (viewed October 22, 2026): choose the site address and an optional subpath; a free domain someone else used before can't be reused; free users can have up to five live websites on the free domain; republish to show edits; mobile website and Link in Bio templates publish to canva.link only. https://www.canva.com/help/publishing-websites-for-free/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. Canva Help Centre, "Resize designs and size limits" (viewed October 22, 2026): Magic Resize is available on Pro, Business, Enterprise, Education, Higher education, Nonprofits and Teams plans, not Free. https://www.canva.com/help/resize/ ↩ ↩²

5. Canva Help Centre, "Fix missing elements in your downloaded design" (viewed October 22, 2026): PDF files don't support animations or videos. https://www.canva.com/help/missing-elements-download/ ↩ ↩²

6. Canva Help Centre, "Design websites in Canva using templates or from scratch" (viewed October 22, 2026): search "website" in Templates and customize a template, or choose Website and create a blank one; Add section adds a block to the same page, Add page adds a separate page. https://www.canva.com/help/designing-websites/ ↩ ↩²

7. Canva, "Licensing explained" (viewed October 22, 2026): Pro content shows a small crown icon on its thumbnail. https://www.canva.com/licensing-explained/ ↩

8. Canva Help Centre, "Premium elements" (viewed October 22, 2026): premium elements carry criss-cross watermarks until they're purchased. https://www.canva.com/help/premium-elements/ ↩

9. Canva Help Centre, "My website looks different on mobile" (viewed October 22, 2026): on phones, reflow stacks elements vertically and wide full-screen elements may not resize cleanly; group and lock related elements; keep elements from overlapping; check the Mobile view in the preview panel, treating it as an approximation. https://www.canva.com/help/responsive-website-issues/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

10. Canva Help Centre, "Upload media from your device" (viewed October 22, 2026): uploads sit in the editor's Uploads tab and in the Uploads folder under Projects. https://www.canva.com/help/upload-media/ ↩ ↩²

11. Canva Help Centre, "Canva Websites overview and getting started guide" (viewed October 22, 2026): free users can publish five websites on my.canva.site; they can design up to 20 sections per page but publish up to 10, and a longer page prompts them to remove sections or upgrade. https://www.canva.com/help/canva-websites/ ↩ ↩²

12. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "Winning UGC Portfolio Examples: Things I Look For When Reviewing Portfolios" (December 2025): an agency owner who sources UGC for clients asks creators to list their location and languages, group work by niche, and add a file link under each video because Canva portfolios block downloads. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1puudbv/ ↩ ↩²

13. Reddit r/UGCcreators, same thread (December 2025): the agency owner's reply that prices shown on a portfolio can stop an agency from forwarding a creator to its clients. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1puudbv/ ↩

14. Canva Help Centre, "Check file upload formats and requirements" (viewed October 22, 2026): MOV, GIF, MP4, MPEG, MKV or WEBM, up to 1 GB per file; uploaded 4K video is stored at 1080p. https://www.canva.com/help/upload-formats-requirements/ ↩ ↩²

15. Canva Help Centre, "My Canva website is slow" (viewed October 22, 2026): a large file size, for example from many embeds and videos, can slow a website down. https://www.canva.com/help/canva-website-is-slow/ ↩

16. Canva, pricing page (viewed October 22, 2026): Canva Free includes 5GB of cloud storage. https://www.canva.com/pricing/ ↩ ↩²

17. Reddit r/canva, "Embedded YouTube Links won't work on published website" (January 2026): YouTube embeds that played in the editor but kept buffering on the published site. https://www.reddit.com/r/canva/comments/1qqdr37/ ↩

18. Canva Help Centre, "Add and replace videos on designs" (viewed October 22, 2026): upload videos in the Uploads tab, then select one to add it to your design. https://www.canva.com/help/add-videos/ ↩

19. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "Finally decided to build my portfolio and I have no idea what I'm doing" (May 2026 thread, July 2026 reply): a reply noting that the videos inside phone mockups look small and can't be enlarged. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1tshjz2/ ↩

20. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "Winning UGC Portfolio Examples: Things I Look For When Reviewing Portfolios" (December 2025): a reply on subtitles cut off by the frames around clips. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1puudbv/ ↩

21. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "I've pitched to over 2500 brands and still haven't landed a paid deal" (August 2026): a commenter reviewing the poster's Canva portfolio found several clips with no sound and no sound button, though they had audio on TikTok; the creator suspected the upload. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1vrah45/ ↩

22. Canva Help Centre, "Adjust video playback: autoplay, loop, or speed" (viewed October 22, 2026): select the video, choose Edit, and find Play automatically under Playback; the page lists these settings for presentations, whiteboards, social posts, videos and custom designs. https://www.canva.com/help/adjust-video-playback/ ↩

23. Canva Help Centre, "Add hyperlinks" (viewed October 22, 2026): select an element or text, choose Link and enter the address; links work on text, elements, images and videos, and stay clickable in PDF downloads except flattened PDFs. https://www.canva.com/help/hyperlinks/ ↩ ↩²

24. Canva Help Centre, "Website settings and page customisation" (viewed October 22, 2026): the website title appears in browser tabs and search results; settings include search engine visibility, password protection, Resize on mobile and the social media link preview; each page can have its own title and description. https://www.canva.com/help/website-settings/ ↩

25. Canva Help Centre, "Change the name of free Canva domains" (viewed October 22, 2026): from the home page, open your account menu, then Settings, then Web domains, and select Edit; published designs move to the new domain and the site may go offline for a few minutes. https://www.canva.com/help/changing-free-canva-domains/ ↩

26. Canva Help Centre, "Share your design as a public view link" (viewed October 22, 2026): Share creates a public view link that shares the design with anyone, landing them in the viewing experience suited to the design. https://www.canva.com/help/sharing-your-design-as-a-public-view-link/ ↩

27. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "Share your portfolio and i'll tell you what's costing you replies" (July 2026): portfolio reviews that found a placeholder logo, empty video slots, file names instead of photos and a template's default browser-tab title. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1v1dad9/ ↩

28. Reddit r/canva, "How to fix Canva Website Mobile View?" (October 2026): on phones the desktop layout sits at the top with a large blank area below it; one reply points to the resize-for-mobile setting. https://www.reddit.com/r/canva/comments/1wvr9rl/ ↩ ↩²

29. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "Help!! Im VERY new to UGC" (September 2026): with the mobile version chosen, the published site showed only the first part, didn't scroll and rearranged photos and text. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1wjph8j/ ↩

30. Reddit r/canva, "I need help getting the mobile version to look normal!!" (July 2026): a reply on removing hidden color layers and using invisible spacer shapes to fix the mobile layout. https://www.reddit.com/r/canva/comments/1v11k80/ ↩

31. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "Finally decided to build my portfolio and I have no idea what I'm doing" (July 2026 reply): a commenter suggests a creator turn the resize-for-mobile setting off to make the page more scroll-friendly. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1tshjz2/ ↩

32. Canva Help Centre, "Canva Website Insights" (viewed October 22, 2026): available to Canva Pro, Teams and Education users. https://www.canva.com/help/canva-website-insights/ ↩

33. Canva Help Centre, "Set up Google Analytics for your Canva website" (viewed October 22, 2026): Google Analytics is for Pro and Teams plans and is blocked on free Canva subdomains. https://www.canva.com/help/google-analytics-canva-website/ ↩

34. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "Get A Custom Domain for Your Canva Portfolios" (March 2026): a brand owner argues that a portfolio without a custom domain looks less credible. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1s8r9am/ ↩

35. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "Those of you using Canva for your portfolio, has it ever cost you a gig?" (July 2026): creators reply that cost keeps them on Canva and that a brand put off by a Canva link isn't a fit. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1v3mjav/ ↩

36. Canva Help Centre, "Download designs as flattened PDF" (viewed October 22, 2026): download from Share, then Download, choosing PDF as the file type; flattening merges a design's layers into one so everything prints. https://www.canva.com/help/download-flattened-pdf/ ↩ ↩²

37. Reddit r/UGCcreators, "Get A Custom Domain for Your Canva Portfolios" (April 2026 reply): someone who hires creators skips website links in unsolicited emails and looks for a social handle that shows the work. https://www.reddit.com/r/UGCcreators/comments/1s8r9am/ ↩