The Beacons alternative for freelancers
Beacons is a storefront for creators. If your income comes from clients, not digital products, Folio is the simpler free page that shows your work and gets you paid.
By Julian Fella, co-founder of Folio · Updated July 12, 2026
The short answer.
If you sell digital products to an audience, stay on Beacons, it's genuinely good at that. If you're a freelancer who wins client work through a link, Folio is the better fit: a free designed grid for your portfolio, no storefront you'll never stock, no cut of anything and a private password-gated way for one client to pay you directly.
What Beacons actually is.
Beacons is an ambitious all-in-one for creators. On top of the link page you get a storefront for digital products, email marketing, invoicing and AI tools that write media kits for brand deals. The pitch is a business-in-a-box for someone monetizing an audience, and for that person the pitch holds up. The free plan takes a cut when your store sells something, the paid plans remove it for a monthly price, which is a fair trade if the store is your income.
Where Beacons is genuinely better.
Credit where it's due. If you sell presets, templates, ebooks or courses, Beacons gives you checkout, delivery and email follow-up in one place, and Folio has none of that. If brand deals are part of your income, the AI media kit is a real time-saver. A photographer selling Lightroom presets to twenty thousand followers should read this page and stay put.
The freelancer mismatch.
Here's the problem when a client-work freelancer lands in a creator tool. Everything in Beacons is shaped like selling to a crowd: products, funnels, subscriber lists, conversion widgets. Your job is the opposite, convincing one specific client you're worth hiring, then getting paid by that one client. A storefront can't hold a booking deposit for a shoot. An email funnel doesn't invoice a retainer. You end up maintaining a shop with nothing in it, stapled to the page a client sees before deciding whether you look hireable.
There's also a taste cost. A page built to sell reads like a page built to sell, and clients notice. When someone is about to trust you with a five-figure project, "buy my stuff" energy works against you.
What Folio does differently.
Folio does one job: turn a curious client into a paying one. Your page is a bento grid where portfolio images and video lead, with your links, socials and contact around them. There's no store bolted on and no ads, and it's free with no paywall. It's live in about ten minutes and looks designed out of the box.
For the money part there's Pay-Me. Your payment details, bank, PayPal or Wise, sit behind a password on your page. When a client says yes, you share the password and they pay you directly. Folio never touches the money and takes no cut, you keep 100%. That's the difference in one line: Beacons processes sales to a crowd, Folio hands your details privately to the one client who owes you.
Switching takes a few minutes.
- 1
Claim your handle
Grab folio.link/yourname on the homepage. Free, no credit card.
- 2
Bring your links over
Paste your URLs and they pull their own titles and icons. Skip the store blocks, you won't miss them.
- 3
Put your work first
Upload portfolio images or video and arrange the grid so a client sees your best project before anything else.
- 4
Add Pay-Me and swap your bio link
Payment details behind a password, then update Instagram, X and LinkedIn. Your Beacons stays live until you delete it.
The honest take.
Beacons and Folio aren't really competitors, they're built for two different incomes. If your money comes from products sold to followers, Beacons earns its complexity. If your money comes from clients hiring you, that complexity is dead weight, and a free designed page with a private payment path does the whole job.
Questions
Is Beacons really free?
There's a real free plan, but it takes a cut when your store sells something and holds the advanced features for paid tiers. If you never sell products, you're not paying, you're just carrying features you don't use.
Is Beacons good for freelancers?
For client-work freelancers it's more machine than the job needs. The storefront, funnels and email tools assume you're selling to an audience. For creators selling digital products it's a genuinely strong pick.
Can Folio sell digital products?
No, and that's deliberate. Folio has no storefront and no checkout. If products are your income, use Beacons. If clients are your income, Folio covers the showing-work and getting-paid parts without the store.
How do clients pay me through Folio?
Pay-Me stores your payment details behind a password. Share the password with a client and they pay you directly through your bank, PayPal or Wise. No processing, no fee, you keep 100%.
Does Folio take a cut of anything?
No. Folio never touches money, so there's nothing to take a cut of. That's structural, not a promo.
Can I move from Beacons without breaking my link?
Yes. Build your Folio first, then swap the URL in your bios. Your Beacons page stays live until you delete it, so there's no downtime.
Do I need email marketing as a freelancer?
Most client-work freelancers don't. Your pipeline is referrals, DMs and the five people a month who open your link. If you run a newsletter, link it on your Folio and keep the tool you write it in.
What about my media kit?
If brand deals are a real part of your income, keep Beacons for that or export the kit as a PDF and link it from your Folio. For pure client work, your portfolio is the media kit.
One link away from your next client.
Claim your handle and give clients one link with everything they need to hire you.