About
Why this exists
Writing a CV in a word processor
Almost everyone starts here, and almost everyone loses an afternoon to it. The problems are always the same, and none of them are about writing:
- You add one line to a job from 2019 and everything below it shifts, silently pushing a single orphaned bullet onto page two.
- Invisible tables and text boxes hold the layout together. They look fine on your screen and parse into nonsense in an employer's software.
- The dates in one section are “Jan 2021” and in another “01/2021”, because consistency is manual work you are doing by eye at midnight.
- Tailoring for a specific role means duplicating the file, which means five files called CV-final-v3-real.docx and no idea which one you sent.
- Exporting to PDF changes the spacing just enough that you have to check the whole document again.
None of that is a writing problem. It is a layout engine problem, and software should be doing it.
The beautiful designer PDF
The other common answer is a template bought from a design marketplace, or a friend's InDesign file. It is genuinely better looking. It also tends to be:
- Frozen. Changing a job title means opening a design tool you do not own, or asking someone a favour every time you apply.
- Two columns with a coloured sidebar. Attractive on screen, regularly read out of order by parsers that flatten the page.
- Full of graphics that carry meaning. Five-dot skill ratings and circular language meters convey nothing to a machine and very little to a human — what does four dots out of five for “leadership” actually mean?
- Sometimes an image. A CV exported as a picture has no selectable text at all, which is the single worst thing you can send.
A CV has two readers, one of which is software. A good document has to satisfy both without pretending the second one does not exist.
So this is the third option
A structured document you can edit in a browser, rendered by 56 layouts that were each built to survive a parser as well as a person, exported as a PDF with real text. You keep the editability of a word processor and the typography of a designed template, and you can produce a version tailored to a specific posting in about five minutes rather than an evening.
Principles
What we are opinionated about
- 1
Single column by default
Two-column CVs look designed and read badly. Human eyes skip between the columns, and parsers frequently read the sidebar first, which is how "Skills: Excel" ends up as your job title. 23 of our 56 templates are single-column, and the default template for a new document is one of them. Two-column layouts exist here, and some of them are lovely, but you have to choose one on purpose.
- 2
Content and styling are separate
Your words live in one object and the design lives in another. That is why you can try six templates in a minute and lose nothing, and why a lapsed subscription can never damage what you wrote — the worst that happens is your document renders with the default styling until you upgrade again.
- 3
The preview is the document
The same React component renders the editor preview, the print view and the exported PDF. There is no second renderer to disagree with the first, which is the usual reason a downloaded CV looks nothing like the screen you approved.
- 4
Limits are enforced on the server
Hiding a button is a courtesy. Every quota and every paid feature is checked before the action runs, so what the pricing page promises is exactly what the software allows. It also means we cannot quietly advertise a limit we do not honour.
- 5
Honesty about ATS
We publish a per-template ATS score and describe what it measures — one column, no text inside graphics, structural headings, ordinary bullet characters. We do not sell "ATS-proof", "ATS-optimised" or a percentage match against a job description, because applicant tracking systems are dozens of products configured differently by every employer, and nobody can honestly guarantee an outcome across them.
- 6
A free plan you can finish a CV on
Free means the full editor, 16 templates, 2 saved CVs and 5 real PDF downloads a month, with no trial countdown and no card. The one thing we take is a small credit line at the foot of the exported page. If you never pay us, you still leave with a CV.
Commitments
What we will never do
Let you write a whole CV and then ask for a card to download it
The classic bait-and-switch of this category. The free plan downloads a real PDF from the first minute.
Put a watermark across your work in the editor
A diagonal “SAMPLE” over the preview is a hostage tactic. The only mark we add is one small credit line at the very bottom of a free-plan PDF.
Enrol you in a subscription that renews quietly
Paid access is a single payment covering 31 days. We store no card, create no recurring agreement, and send no "your plan renewed" e-mail, because there is nothing to renew.
Make cancelling harder than buying
There is no cancellation flow to survive, no retention offer and no phone call. When a paid period ends, the account returns to Free on its own.
Sell, rent or trade your data
Your CV contains your address, your employment history and often your date of birth. It is not inventory. We do not sell personal data and we do not run advertising against it.
Use fake urgency or invented social proof
No countdown timers on the pricing page, no "37 people are viewing this template", no review counts we cannot substantiate. If we quote a number anywhere on this site, it is computed from the product itself.
Claim compliance we have not verified
Our legal pages say plainly that they are a starting template pending review by a qualified lawyer. Pretending otherwise would be the exact dishonesty this page is about.
Business model
How this makes money
People pay us. That is the entire model, and it is deliberately the boring one.
The paid plans
Pro costs 9.00 USD and grants 31 days of access as a single payment. Lifetime is a one-off payment with no expiry. Both unlock all 56 templates, unlimited CVs and downloads, full typography control, custom sections and a share link. Payment is processed by PayPal; we never see a card number.
What the free plan costs us
Every free download runs a headless browser to render a real PDF, which costs money. We accept that because a builder that cannot produce a document is not a builder. The one thing a free export carries is a single small credit line at the foot of the last page — that line is the advertising budget.
What we do not do
- No advertising. There are no ad slots and no trackers sold to third parties.
- No selling data. Your CV is not a product we resell to recruiters, training datasets or anybody else.
- No affiliate spam. We do not push you toward paid CV-review services or “premium distribution” for a cut.
- No upsell theatre. One pricing page, three plans, all limits published on it.
The consequence is simple and worth stating plainly: the only way this product survives is by being good enough that some people choose to pay for it. That is a healthier incentive than the alternatives, and it is why the free plan is generous rather than crippled.
Who is behind it
CreateCVOnline is operated as a small independent software product. We are not going to invent an origin story, a headcount or a list of investors to make this page feel more substantial. If you need to reach a human, one address reaches all of us: support@createcvonline.com, answered within two working days.
Holding us to it
If you ever find something on this site that contradicts a principle above — a dark pattern, an unsubstantiated claim, a limit that is not published — tell us and we will fix it or remove the claim. That offer is not rhetorical; it is the only way a page like this stays true.
Related reading: what the builder does, how we handle your data and the refund policy.
Judge it by the product, not the page
Build a real CV on the free plan and download it as a PDF. If it is not better than what you would have written in a word processor, you have lost nothing but a quarter of an hour.
Questions go to support@createcvonline.com and are answered by a person.