Bye Bye Bento...

I heard about Bento about to go offline on February 13, 2025, just a day before Valentine’s. So definitely, no love from Linktree there. They’re getting bought out for good. Pretty sure, founders are getting paid with their millions.

Honestly, I would have prepared Bento over its new parent Linktree. The tile and grid system works really well for me. I don’t want a long scroll just to see some stack of links that I would like to click if I were visiting someone else’s link-in bio. That’s just me, and I’m pretty sure other people think the same way, too!

So just like Steph Curry, I’m now officially a portfolio page “free agent", and I can test and experiment with different Bento alternatives out there right now. I am looking to make my portfolio look like the home screen on my smartphone so I can properly curate my work and links in a more visually stimulating way.

I know, not all of us have the same aesthetic preferences here, so please bear with me. But there is a reason why grid-style format works well for some. Inspired by the Japanese bento boxes and not the ill-fated Windows 8 and Windows Phone layout style, this layout works well for me since it gives every link a fair chance of getting clicked on.

Moving on, I want to see more interactive tiles, something like having an animated background or any effect that shows up when I mouse over it. One thing that I will surely miss with Bento is their keen attention to detail (the little detail…). Their map widget is kind of amazing, as they even included a plane animation that goes up over your current pin location on the map. Go check out my profile, while it’s still there.

It’s really a wonderful touch, and I hope some of the other platforms would have this kind of approach. And now that we have AI, they should find ways to better integrate them and not just auto-write/caption or image-generate features. AI should play an important role in interpreting the analytics of the page (clicks, traffic, etc.). While they’re at it, I would love to see more visualization to make it easier for people to understand what works and what fails. For starters, a heatmap would be a good selling tool for premium users.

What did I find out?

I managed to build five mirror sites of my Bento page just to see how it works. Click the screenshot to visit the link.

Kasbu

It looks like Bento in some ways, but some added features like animated backgrounds, marquee text, and social media widgets (YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, etc.). It also allows you to change the layout. This is a promising platform that keeps on iterating new features every week, so keep an eye on it.

Avely

This is another Bento clone that functions the same way as the aforementioned platform. The good thing about this is that it supports GIF seamlessly, so you can have more animated-looking tiles.

HeyGrid

Although it doesn’t look like the Bento-style portfolio platform that you’re used to, it is a visually interesting site you could probably use if you like endless scrolling grids on your screen.

Portrait

It’s another grid-style portfolio platform that you could use, especially if you’re into crypto, decentralized Internet and Web3. The GIFs work well, too!

Social Folio

If you want a cleaner version, then this is the one for you. Think of it as your smartphone screen of your online portfolio on your desktop.

Which one do you think works well for you? If there’s anything that I missed, comment down below which platform should I try and explain why it’s a perfect Bento replacement.

And oh, please answer the poll below.