
Ask HN: What is the cheapest way to make a website? - protabot
Must haves: Be able to display a message on the landing page
Nice to haves: A Folder to keep articles<p>I know Strikingly has a cheap ($12?) website building tool, but. It just seems wrong that I can&#x27;t just buy a domain and get some random content on it without having Go Daddy charge me $5&#x2F;month to host it? I apologize in advance for the noobness, but this is a serious question ;).
Hope everyone is well.
======
orisho
GitHub pages / GitLab pages. I prefer the latter since the CI for pages is
less magical and more flexible as a result - you aren't limited to what they
support, and they don't claim a 100GB* traffic limit (just fair use). Couple
with a cheap .com and free Cloudflare for DNS and caching.

* Corrected mistake, was 10GB

~~~
orisho
This is my entire CI yaml, which copies static HTML and other files (I don't
use any static site generator, just plain HTML & CSS) and flushes the
Cloudflare cache:

    
    
      stages:
        - deploy
        - clear-cache
      pages:
        stage: deploy
        script:
          - mkdir .public
          - cp -r * .public
          - mv .public public
        artifacts:
          paths:
            - public
        only:
          - master
    
      clear-cache:
        stage: clear-cache
        script:
         - curl -X DELETE "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/$CF_ZONE_ID/purge_cache" -H "X-Auth-Key:$CF_AUTH_KEY" -H "X-Auth-Email:$CF_AUTH_EMAIL" -H "Content-Type:application/json" --data '{"purge_everything":true}'
        only:
         - master

------
icey
GitHub + Netlify makes a really nice combo as well, since Netlify helps with
simple form handling (and a bunch of other niceties)

~~~
randtrain34
Netlify is awesome.

~~~
hckr_news
Seconded.

------
adnanh
Try [https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/) :)

------
vorpalhex
In addition to the Gitlab/Github options, AWS S3 by itself is fairly decent
and a few pennies. You can front it by cloudfront for more money if you need a
global CDN.

There's also NearlyFreeSpeech[^1] which is very cheap and very free speech
oriented.

[^1]: [https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/](https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/)

~~~
dexterdog
But with s3/cf if you get hugged by something like hn you're going to be in
for a hefty bandwidth bill.

~~~
vorpalhex
HTML and CSS are real tiny. Don't include the kitchen sink if you can't afford
sending it across the wire.

------
abdullahkhalids
I use nearlyfreespeech to host my personal static website. Annual cost is less
than 10 dollars. I use namecheap for my domain which is 10-15 dollars/year.

They have a nice estimator
[https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/estimate](https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/estimate)

------
jussij
> It just seems wrong that I can't just buy a domain and get some random
> content on it without having Go Daddy charge me $5/month to host it?

In order to host any web page requires a machine to serve up the web content
and that machine needs to be running 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

So at a minimum, running that machine requires a safe place to house it,
electricity to run it and people to keep an eye on it just to make sure it is
still running.

All of those tasks cost money.

~~~
richardw
Serving from S3 with Cloudflare adds tiny marginal cost to both of those
companies. I moved a few static sites to that setup. Cost is in compute,
storage, etc. not hosting static pages.

~~~
dmortin
For static sites Firebase is quite good. You get a global CDN by default and
the free plan is enough for most personal purposes.

------
mattcdrake
I registered my domain via Google Domains for $12. I write content in markdown
and use a static site generator called Hugo to turn it into html. I host it on
Netlify for free.

My process is:

\- blog in markdown

\- add a commit

\- push repo // This builds on Netlify

The new content is live within minutes. I have also used Netlify to host a
static html landing page that I wrote and styled by hand. I would highly
recommend their service. Again, my only (monetary) cost is $12 per year via
Google Domains.

~~~
juangacovas
You can get cheaper domains, i.e. Porkbun.com is running a 3 per user $4.15
for .com (just looked, I'm happy with them)

~~~
shrutipathak
I had no idea about Porkbun.com. Thanks for that.

Some domains I have been looking for seems cheaper than usual.

~~~
sivers
I moved all (30+) of my domains to Porkbun a couple years ago, and have
referred all of my friends there since. Everyone has been really happy with
their service.

They're just a small team of good people in Portland Oregon running an
efficient smart operation. This is their parent company:
[https://toplevel.design/](https://toplevel.design/)

Whenever I've had a customer service question, they reply immediately and
helpfully.

I try to support businesses like this whenever possible.

~~~
Kye
I don't like the idea of companies being able to own the TLD for a concept
they had no part in creating, particularly .gay, but at least it seems to be
in good hands.

------
mendelmaleh
Another free alternative, like github pages, is
[https://render.com](https://render.com)

Pretty much the same deal, I used it for a while and it worked well. You can
connected to a github repo too, so it deploys when you push.

------
basch
This will probably be an unpopular answer, but if you are in a situation where
you need to turn over management of the site to a team of non programmers
(which this post doesnt sound like); Managed Wordpress + static site plugin
and cdn caching.

Managed Wordpress hosting is $4-$6/m from a reputable place[1], and then
everything wordpress and below needs no maintenance. Youll have access control
for which team members can control what, and there's probably more wordpress
expertise out there than any other platform. The amount of good plugins out
there minimize reinventing wheels.

[1] [https://www.siteground.com/wordpress-
hosting.htm](https://www.siteground.com/wordpress-hosting.htm)

------
jklein11
Github pages is pretty much free. You can buy a domain name for ~$10 a year

~~~
chrisma0
Big up for GitHub pages! See the documentation here:
[https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/) You can also use
`Jekyll`, a static site generator, directly with it, if you want fancier
features: [https://help.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-
pages/...](https://help.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-
pages/setting-up-a-github-pages-site-with-jekyll)

~~~
alexchantavy
Is Jekyll the only static site generator that works directly with Github
pages?

------
imagetic
+1 for a static site generator with GitHub + Netlify.

Even manual deployment to Netlify is enough for most needs. Just drag the
public folder in and you're done. It's an automagical experience.

I am actually in process of moving to Hugo/Netlify, and if I come close to
bandwidth or storage caps I hope B2/Cloudfare has implemented official
solutions by then. I'd personally love to avoid s3.

~~~
MathCodeLove
Why the adversity to S3?

~~~
volkandkaya
Get 100gb for free and can deploy a site in minutes compared to the hard work
required to get s3 working.

------
ASVVVAD
For hosting: Many options. HelioHost[0] is worth mentioning, free 501(c)(3)
nonprofit organization; Vercel,Git(Lab/Hub) Pages ect

For domains: Take a couple hours to find the cheapest ones available but you
can get a free sub-domain as-well which is the cheapest available. I do NOT
recommend Freenom ones users always had issues with them. However I do
recommend eu.org[1]. You can get a sub domain like (4-letters and more).eu.org
or anything.(on of their subdomains).eu.org. For example I have two:
asvvvad.eu.org and vvv.int.eu.org.

For DNS forwarding (A/AAAA/CNAME/TXT records ect): I started with Namecheaps
FreeDNS but switched recently to 1984hosting.com's free DNS service I used the
former for quite a while and didn't have many problems with it just set it up
and forgot about it but using 1984hosting's feels better and easier specially
the interface

1984hosting also have a hosting plan that include free .com domain. It only
have yearly payments which is $109 for a year and $129 for renewal which is
less than $10 a month. That's pretty cheap for an unlimited hosting with a
.com domain included I guess

[0]: [https://www.heliohost.org/](https://www.heliohost.org/) [1]:
[https://nic.eu.org/](https://nic.eu.org/) [2]:
[https://1984hosting.com/buy/hosting/](https://1984hosting.com/buy/hosting/)

------
imsd
Notion can be used to create simple websites. You can then find an online
tutorial to use Notion with a custom domain. Other than the cost of the
domain, this method is entirely free.

~~~
volkandkaya
The notion websites I have used have been very slow loading.

If I didn't know they was notion I would have exited and went else where.

------
aabbcc1241
Using github page is free and easy for static web pages. Surge[0] is also an
awesome CDN with cli support. You can update the content as well, so not
really static in the way IPFS do.

If you need non-manual dynamic content, 000webhost[1] has free mysql & php
server for you.

If you prefer to program the server in node.js, webtask[2] has free severless
node.js env for you.

If you're considering non-free solution or more control/freedom, linode[3] is
my first choice. The cheapest plan is $5/mo for 1GB RAM, 25GB SSD and 1TB
traffic.

[0] [https://surge.sh/](https://surge.sh/)

[1] [https://www.000webhost.com/free-php-
hosting](https://www.000webhost.com/free-php-hosting)

[2] [https://webtask.io](https://webtask.io)

[3] [https://www.linode.com/pricing/](https://www.linode.com/pricing/)

------
wojciechka1
What I have done is set up my application with Google Cloud Run.

In my case I used that for two websites - one is a blog and another one is a
website for auto-generating comments.

In the case of first one, I use middleman to render static HTML files and then
create a container that ships nginx and the application.

For the second app, the backend that generates comments is a Node.js
application. The frontend is an app created using React, compiled into static
website and Node.js serves the files.

Both apps cost me less than $0.1 per month and they have some traffic, but not
a lot of it.

For the first app, I've also set up a CI/CD system using Google CLoud Build.
So, every time I commit a new blog article, things get updated automatically.
I did not have time to migrate the second app to same approach, but it should
not be hard to do.

Google Cloud Build + Google Cloud Run can help you run a large variety of
technologies almost for free, but in my case I only did it for stateless apps.
You could use Google Cloud Run with a database, but I have not tried it.

------
terrycody
Actually you can get all your want by simply Google it but for your
convenience:

1) free options: you can choose wordpress.com, blogspot, github, etc to host
your website, but the drawback is you have to use their sub-domain system
which is ugly, like yourwebsite.wordpress.com, another con is the backend of
website lack many customization features, all in all, you host your content on
other's house, what more can u ask!

Sure you can buy a domain and attach your domain to those services, its up to
you.

2) A much cheaper and regular way to host a website is choose a hosting
company like Namecheap, Godaddy (not recommend though), you can lower your
cost to less than $20 first year, with a domain + shared hosting.

3) you can still choose static site generator like Hugo, Jekeyll, netilify,
etc, but the concept is same, you either host your content for free on their
domains, or buy yourself a lovely domain to start with.

~~~
DoreenMichele
You can use a custom domain name with BlogSpot.

The hosting is still free. All you pay for is the domain name.

I have set this up for other people for a few bucks because doing the CNAME
stuff is a bit of a pain. But once it is set up, you're set. It's a one time
thing.

------
a-saleh
I use netlify. Server static pages, has good integration with lets-encrypt and
even supports the 'point me to a github repo and I will rebuild for you'
workflow. I am in the free tier, and there is no hchance my blog would ever
get out of it (unless the free tier gets nixed)

For static sites you can emulate this workflow fairly cheaply, from github-
pages, to serving with aws s3, or simmilar (I have an abandoned blog on s3 and
pay ~cents a month, but I never fully grokked aws pricing)

If you need people that wouldn't edit text/markdown/html directly, there are
even git-based cms, that can abstract away the dev-friendly 'edit text,
commit, push to repo' to more user friendly 'login somewhere and click a
button to change content'.

------
IanCal
I'd recommend Hugo or similar plus netlify. It's incredibly easy to get a
static (or mostly static) page up and available. Use someone else's template,
then you can deal with everything with drag & drop if you want.

It's all also free unless you want more features, and you can easily take it
and host elsewhere (like S3).

------
young_hopper
I've been using GitLab pages along with its CI, and it has been really great
for static sites.

For less static websites, I'd recommend signing up for free tier GCP. They
give you a (very small) VM for free. I've had no problem running several
docker containers backing my personal sites. To be fair, they don't really
have much traffic, but for the < 10 people that use my stuff, it has worked
out great.

The GitLab CI is really nice, and I'd recommend it even if you don't go for
Pages or GCP. It's pretty simple to set it up to automatically build images
(using its personal container registry) and deploy them for you.

With this setup, the only things I pay for are domain names which I use to add
SSL via let's encrypt and HAProxy (which also does some routing for me).

Hope this helps give someone some ideas.

------
StavrosK
Funny you should ask, I made just the thing for you the other day:

[https://quicksite.stavros.io/](https://quicksite.stavros.io/)

It's just a git repo you can clone, so you own your site (it's not a service
or a static site generator). It uses Lektor to generate pages (just because
that's what I use, though I'm eyeing Zola as a good alternative), and it
supports deploying to Gitlab Pages and Neocities with its CI config. You can
also push the site to IPFS with one command (ipfs add -r pages/).

It's also trivial to host on Netlify if you want (just add the repo there).
All these services I mention are excellent, but slightly different. Neocities
is more of a quirky/indie website community, for example, which I love.

~~~
indigodaddy
I likes. Suggestions on how to integrate comments into it?

~~~
StavrosK
I use commento, but generally find comments a bit useless.

------
ken
Do you have an old computer at home, and an internet connection? You can
always host it yourself.

The electricity used may not be cheaper than paying someone else a few bucks
to host it from their data center.

~~~
ganstyles
I don't think this would work. How would one get around the ISP's NAT to
expose your address to the wider internet? At least, without potentially
paying the ISP extra or going through a (relatively) lot of trouble to
monitor/manage where your DNS is pointing. If I am way off base on this,
please elucidate.

~~~
StavrosK
Not all ISPs have NATs, I guess.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
In the US, most don't have NATs, in my experience.

------
volkandkaya
[https://www.netlify.com/](https://www.netlify.com/) if you have a lot of
time. If you're still using github pages give it a try you will be very
impressed.

Time isn't free, we have a lot of backend developers use
[https://versoly.com/](https://versoly.com/) as they don't want to focus on
design and actually want a good looking website quickly.

~~~
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
Looks like netlify requires a github account? I have an issue with that, as
I'm against monopolies. As far as small private web sites are concerned, there
are a lot of totally free options, and Hetzner offers web sites for 2 euro a
month - 10GB space and unlimited traffic included, and it's a very solid
company.

~~~
chrisdalke
If you're against a monopoly Netlify is actually a good option for static
hosting, since it's a competitor to GitHub Pages. They also support Gitlab and
Bitbucket. I'd assume the reason they don't integrate with arbitrary git
repositories is that a lot of their automation features rely on workflow
messages from the repository hosts beyond what a normal Git server would
provide.

------
ziffusion
If you have a constant-on internet connection, then right on your own machine
(WIndows or Linux). Use a dynamic DNS (DDNS) service (with a low TTL) so
people can always find you by name even if your IP address changes. After
that, learn a bit of PHP or Python and use one of many web application
frameworks (Flask or Bottle or Django).

Price $0.

Around $12 annually to buy a domain name if you like (if you are not happy
with one that the DDNS service will give you).

When you start getting traffic, you may want to consider AWS, starting at the
free tier and going up.

------
galeactena
Just another option:

V-Server from [https://netcup.de](https://netcup.de) ca. 3$/month

.space domain ca. 2$/year from [https://gandi.net](https://gandi.net)

(I am not affiliated with any of them)

I wanted to a little bit more e.g. having my own calendar, and hosting my own
Mercurial server (since almost nobody supports that anymore, maybe GitLab in
the future). Found than out that this offer is good enough for my own VPN and
even having my own tiny cloud storage.

------
babbledabbler
I'm building a site generator for this very purpose (apologies for the
shameless self promotion)....

[https://findingmyhtmlgoddess.com](https://findingmyhtmlgoddess.com)

git:
[https://github.com/jonascript/htmlgoddess](https://github.com/jonascript/htmlgoddess)

It generates static HTML pages that are as simple as can be. If you setup a
git account, it will cover the hosting for free. A domain typically costs $12
a year.

------
nickthemagicman
Namecheap WordPress hosting.

3 bucks a month and they handle scaling and all that shit for you supposedly.

It's not free but you get a way more functionality than a static site offers.

------
fs_tab
You can host websites from a spare computer at home. You can use Cloudflare's
free CDN for serving cached responses. If your ISP does not provide static IP
addresses, and you wish to use a custom domain then you will need to
periodically update your domain's A Record to point to your current public ip
(which can be automated).

------
thiht
On a side project[1] I used Vuepress[2] and deployed it using Github+Netlify
and the experience was amazing. On Netlify, the whole deploy script is: `yarn
docs:build`. That's it.

[1]: [https://smocker.dev/](https://smocker.dev/)

[2]: [https://vuepress.vuejs.org/](https://vuepress.vuejs.org/)

------
abana
I am not sure I fully understood you. Do you want to have a static site
without the hassle of having to host it with Go Daddy?

------
jfoster
It might not be that simple. How long do you want the solution to last for?

There's plenty that will be free or low cost initially, but it may be a matter
of time before the deal changes, they're acquired & shutdown, or they go out
of business.

------
h0p3
Github + Tiddlywiki. That's what I do for
[https://philosopher.life/](https://philosopher.life/). It's free (unless you
rent a domain name), flexible, and easy to distribute over many kinds of
channels.

~~~
StavrosK
What is your site about? I've seen it four times this week, but I haven't
really figured out why it's popular.

~~~
h0p3
I think it's fair to call it a personal site and a public self-model, though I
cannot say it merits popularity. Unfortunately, I don't have a short and clean
answer for what it is about (though I spend significant energy trying to
answer that question). It's a place to think, a conduit to communicate with
myself and others, and it's where I do philosophy. Each member of my immediate
family writes in a wiki every day. We autonomously tell the stories of our
lives with these devices. Some kinds of relationships and conversations
require 10,000 hours, and we aim to make art of our lives together. It is my
honor to speak with others through my wiki.

~~~
StavrosK
That makes sense, thank you.

------
nico_h
github page would be the cheapest. Then it's a control vs price.

You can generate your own static site with Hugo / Jekyll / Frankenstein's
___.sh then upload somewhere (including github)

You can go S3 static pages :
[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/EnableWebsit...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/EnableWebsiteHosting.html)

(I think backblaze has a cheaper API-compatible S3 clone,)

You can go the VPS way, Vultr being amongst the cheapest (Monthly $3.5 IPv4 /
$2.5 IPv6 only)

Or you can go semi managed hosting, with nearlyfreespeech starting at $1.74
per month for static sites if you host DNS with them.

------
iamunr
Type words in a file, run it on vercel, you have free mysite.now.sh

Buy a domain, point at your free site.

------
flitzofolov
This is "free" (sans domain):

* Google Firebase hosting * Static site generator

Example: [https://notes.tomgoren.com/how-this-blog-is-
hosted.html](https://notes.tomgoren.com/how-this-blog-is-hosted.html)

------
binrec
[https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/) has a free tier. It's limited
(no arbitrary filetype uploads, no custom domains), but convenient and easy to
use.

------
ggrelet
OVH has a 10MB storage free plan where you can host a landing pages, images
and such.

------
rramadass
Has anybody had any experience with hosting their domains and web
sites/content(personal and professional) on the Google ecosystem?
Specifically; Google Domains/Sites/Pages/App etc.?

------
ayushgp
You can use multiple static site hosting solutions for this use case for free.
Many have a free tier till 100 GB bandwidth per month. Some that I know of:

Github pages Surge.sh Render.com Gitlab pages Netlify Vercel

------
bilal4hmed
Hugo + Gitlab CI/CD to push in to Google Firebase. I use namesilo for domain
hosting at $12 / yr. I'm well under the free quota offered by GCP

------
earthboundkid
I'm hosting a website with 300K pageviews/month for free (-ish: I'm paying for
form collection but not bandwidth) on Netlify.

------
pixxel
Depends really. Perhaps [https://carrd.co](https://carrd.co) will cover your
requirements.

------
bobbydreamer
You have to buy a domain and if u know to write HTML, Javascript and CSS then
just use Google cloud storage as everything is static.

------
chachan
Hope this helps - [https://free-for.dev](https://free-for.dev)

------
dkxone
[https://zeronet.io/](https://zeronet.io/)

------
ruffrey
$3.50 / mo - Amazon Lightsail with mostly automatic wordpress setup.

------
notetoweb
notetoweb.com will let you convert your Evernote notes to a website for free,
but you have to pay for a custom domain.

If you are comfortable with the CLI Hugo/Firebase hosting is a good
combination

------
rhowells
If you have a domain, check Tumblr as they were hosting for free.

------
AlchemistCamp
You can make one for free on WordPress.com

------
shankmurali
I have found Webflow to be incredibly useful in doing this - the various
templates for different use-cases (Blog, E-Com Store etc) was quite simple to
quickly setup and get something off ground.

~~~
volkandkaya
Are you a designer?

I have spoke to a lot of founders, marketers and developers who struggled to
use the platform.

