Beacons is a creator storefront that happens to include a link in bio page. That framing explains both the good and the annoying: the tooling around selling is real, and the free plan takes 9% of every sale, which is the highest seller fee in this comparison.
If you are selling, that number is the whole decision. If you are not, you are paying in complexity for a store you never open.
Where Beacons users go
1. Hostus, if you want the page to be a file you own
You describe the page, an assistant writes one HTML file, you drop it in and you get a link. No seller fee, because nothing goes through us: your payment link is your payment link. The free plan is 20 documents and 2 MB, with no card and no expiry, and a contact form on the page works without any setup. If we vanished, you would download the file and host it in ten minutes.
2. Carrd, if you want a visual builder
Three sites free, custom domain at US$ 19 a year, and Download Sites on Pro Plus at US$ 49 a year. It is the only builder in this category that hands you the page back, which makes it the safest place to stay inside an editor.
3. Linktree, if you want it handled in five minutes
Fastest to a working link and the free plan does not expire. Know what you are accepting: no custom domain on any plan, no export of your links, and 12% on a sale on the free tier.
4. Staying on Beacons, if you sell through it
If the store is what you use, moving costs you the store. The custom domain is on Creator at US$ 10 a month, or US$ 100 a year, which is genuinely the cheapest monthly custom domain in this group.
Side by side
| Tool | Free plan | Custom domain | Your page as a file |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostus | 20 docs, 2 MB, no clock | Yes, on the paid plan | Yes, it is an HTML file you download |
| Beacons | Yes, with 9% on a sale | Creator, US$ 10 a month | Contacts export, not the page |
| Carrd | 3 sites | US$ 19 a year | Yes, Download Sites on Pro Plus, US$ 49 a year |
| Linktree | Unlimited links, 12% on a sale | No, on any plan | No export of links or page |
| Campsite.bio | Unlimited links, 14 days of analytics | Pro and up | CSV of analytics, not the page |
| Lnk.Bio | Unlimited links | Paid add-on | Spreadsheet export of stats |
Every number in that table was read on the vendor's own pricing page in September 2026. Where a vendor prices by region and we could not resolve a dollar figure, the cell says what is included rather than inventing one.
What a page made this way looks like
- A wedding photographer, with a contact form that works and sections that report back.
- A coffee roaster, where the page is the shelf list, not a row of buttons.
- A restaurant, one service a night, in the order a guest asks about it.
- A tattoo studio, a flash sheet and a waiting list.
Each is one file of about 12 KB, made from that prompt, sitting on the free plan.
The prompt
Make me a link in bio page for [what you do], as one HTML file.
Mobile first, max 430px, my own look and not a template: [two words of style].
Sections with real content, not a stack of buttons: what I do,
the thing people want (menu, prices, dates, work), and five links.
A contact form with method="post" and named fields. No action URL,
no key: Hostus stores the replies.
An id on every section, so I can see which one people read.
Then publish it to Hostus and give me the link.Two minutes, and the page is yours in a way a template never is.
Good to know before you switch
Hostus is not a builder with draggable rows. You describe the page to Claude or ChatGPT, you get one HTML file, you drop it in and you get a link. Reordering links later means editing the page in the inline editor or asking the assistant again. If changing a link in ten seconds from a bus is the job, a builder does that better and we would rather say so here than have you find out on a Tuesday.
The free plan is 20 documents and 2 MB of HTML, which is a lot of pages of this size, plus 100 form replies a month. No card, no trial clock. Paid is US$ 9.99 a month or US$ 49.99 a year, and that is where the custom domain lives.