I almost reached for a Next.js template
Last time I needed a single page online, a launch page, a signup box, three links, done, my first instinct was to go grab one of those nextjs landing page templates everyone keeps bookmarked. Clone the repo. Run the dev server. Wire up a deploy. That's the reflex, right?
Then I stopped and looked at what the page actually was. A headline. An image. A form. A couple of links. Was I really about to stand up a whole framework for that?
I build a one-page site tool for a living, so yeah, I'm biased. But the question felt honest enough to sit with for a minute.
What are Next.js landing page templates actually good at?
Plenty, to be clear. If your landing page is the front door to an app, sign-ins, a dashboard, content pulled live from a database, then a Next.js template hands you a real running start. Routing's already there. Components you can pull apart and reshape. A codebase that grows as the product grows. When the page is chapter one of something bigger, that scaffolding earns its keep.
So I'm not here to talk anyone out of them. I'm here to ask a narrower question: what happens when the page isn't chapter one of anything?
But what does one page actually need?
This is where I talked myself back down. A profile. A link-in-bio. A launch page with a MailChimp form. Strip these down and most of them are the same short thing: a bit of text, an image or two, a button, maybe a form. No routing. No server logic. Nothing to query.
Which means most of what a framework gives you just sits there unused. Not broken, just unused, and still yours to maintain.
The case for a plain stack of elements
The whole idea behind Carrd is a single "stack" of elements. You drop one thing on top of the next, top to bottom, and that pile is your page. It sounds limiting, and it is, on purpose. Lock the layout to a fixed stack and yeah, you give up some freedom. But you keep enough room to tune the details so each site still feels like yours, not like everyone else's.
There's a quiet payoff to that constraint, too. Because the output is a JSON config plus an assets folder turned into 100% static HTML and CSS, no server-side code anywhere, the finished sites stay lean and portable. Nothing sitting in the background waiting to fall over at 2am. You're not tied to any one host, either.
How does responsiveness hold up on a stack?
This was the part I fretted over. My honest worry going in: does a rigid stack look right on a phone, or does it fall apart the second someone rotates their screen?
Turns out the fixed stack makes responsiveness close to trivial. When your page is one column of elements flowing straight down, "make it work on mobile" stops being a fight and starts being the default. It wasn't 2006. People were going to open this thing on their phones first, and it just had to look right. And the builder itself is mobile-friendly, not only the sites it spits out. You can actually put a page together from your phone.
Do you give up customization?
That was my open question. It all looked great on paper, but how would it play out in practice?
Better than I expected. You start from dozens of templates or a blank page, and the details you can tweak go deeper than the simple surface suggests. The biggest jump was the Columns element, the most significant upgrade since launch, which loosened the strict single-column feel without throwing the simplicity out with it. If you outgrow the free tier, Pro adds premium starting templates, higher-quality images, custom favicons, and room for bigger sites. But the point stands: the narrow focus is the feature, not a shortcoming. A simple "stack" has a natural limit to its complexity, and that limit is exactly why it stays easy to use.
So — templates or one simple page?
Here's my plain answer, no hedging. Reach for nextjs landing page templates when the page is the tip of a real application and you want the code and the room to grow. For a standalone one-pager, a simple builder wins on the two things that actually matter day to day: speed to launch and how little you have to babysit afterward. Three sites free to start. Responsive by default. Capable of cranking out a gorgeous site in under 5 minutes.
When we built Carrd's own site, logo, landing page, contact page, a few legal pages, the thing was up within a few hours after some Photoshop mockups. No framework. Just the stack, doing the one job it's built for.
Could a Next.js template do all that? Sure it could. The question is whether you want to, for one page. Short of me royally screwing up the pitch here, my bet is: usually, you don't.