Looking for very simple webhost for a static html page
December 1, 2020 1:29 PM

I'm not looking for anything fancy, I'm planning on hosting my personal webpage as a static HTML page (Tiddlywiki if you are interested) and I'm pretty sure I can get away with minimal host services that way. Who is best and cheapest? I tried AWS before and it was super complicated and got expensive.
posted by gzimmer to Technology (8 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
Are you wanting to export TW or use it interactively? I just set it up on GitHub a few days ago as a private repo published to a Github Pages site. This was not very hard and to be able to host a private repo w/a github page is $48 a year.

If you just want to export from TW to a static page, e.g., you don't want to edit it in place, GitHub pages would work. Also you could use static hosting on a site like Linode or Digital Ocean. The docs look a little scary but it's basically a one-time setup. Not sure why that got expensive on AWS - can you elaborate? Is there just a bunch of traffic, or?
posted by jzb at 1:40 PM on December 1, 2020


I think NearlyFreeSpeech.net would work for your use case, probably around $5 hosting a year?
posted by foxfirefey at 1:43 PM on December 1, 2020


Options:

1. GitLab and GitHub both offer free static site hosting and will let you point existing domains at them. GitHub is probably easier (just push a specially-named git branch, compared to using GitLab's CI build infrastructure) but on the other hand, GitLab didn't make a deal with ICE and then brush off users' concerns over it, so there's that.

2. Neocities offers both free and paid hosting. You'll need to use the paid version if you want to use your own domain, though. It's $5 a month.

3. My spouse uses Hawk Host and they're pretty good and cheap. They're currently offering $0.90/month (less than a dollar!) for shared hosting, although that seems to be a Cyber Monday deal.
posted by suetanvil at 1:45 PM on December 1, 2020


AWS will be effectively free unless you have a MASSIVE amount of content or traffic. It can be complex if you go down those paths, but your statement that it's expensive makes me think you were doing more than you need to do. Those static website instructions above will lead to a very, very inexpensive setup.
posted by primethyme at 2:10 PM on December 1, 2020


Netlify has free hosting for low-traffic (less than 100GB per month) static HTML pages.
posted by panic at 2:13 PM on December 1, 2020


Tilde.club appears to be free and has retro charm.
posted by adamrice at 2:38 PM on December 1, 2020


My site (probably 500 plus pages) at NearlyFreespeech is about 40 cents a month. It's not the most intuitive interface though - you probably want a passing familiarity with web hosting.
posted by COD at 3:04 PM on December 1, 2020


I found NearlyFreeSpeech.net to be excellent as far as price and outcome, but complex and requiring many simultaneously open webpages to get set up.
posted by lhauser at 7:00 PM on December 1, 2020


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