This short document gives suggestions for how to deploy websites in 2023 without any more expenses or work than is necessary. After getting accustomed to the right tools, it should be able to set up a fast and secure hosted website in about 30 minutes while only paying the cost of the domain name.
Domain names and DNS
Cloudflare offers low/no markup domain name registration with a free DNS service. This will virtually always be your cheapest option for domain name renewals. They don't list prices for all TLDs upfront, so use this list to get your best estimate.
Notes:
If you want to save even more money, you can register your first year on a registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.) when they have a sale and then transfer the domain to Cloudflare. The best possible price for any TLD can normally be found on TLD List. This will only be cheaper than Cloudflare for the first year.
Another benefit to using Cloudflare is the free DNS service they provide. (For more info: "How can CloudFlare offer a free CDN with unlimited bandwidth?")
Hosting
There are a wide number of hosting services you can use which really depends on your requirements, mainly:
1) Can you get by with a static site, or do you require server-side rendering?
2) How much bandwidth will you use?
3) How much storage space will you use?
There are a variety of options you can choose for low-cost sites. Below are a few of the best:
- If you just need a simple static website, consider Netlify.
- Free for unlimited sites
- Deploy via web interface, GitHub integration, or command-line tools
- 100GB/month free bandwidth
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If you use GitHub and need to host a static website, consider GitHub Pages.
- Free for one site
- Stored on a GitHub public respository
- Deploy via web interface, or Git
- 100GB/month free bandwidth
- If you need to run a website with a server-side backend, consider Vercel.
- Free for unlimited sites
- Supports Node.js, Next.js
- 100 GB-hours of serverless function usage (up to 10 seconds per execution)
- Deploy via GitHub integration, or command-line tools
- 100GB/month free bandwidth
All these options allow you to connect to custom domains and at least 1GB of storage. None of them require a credit card to get started. The easiest option for a static site is definitely Netlify, which even has a drag-and-drop interface for uploading files. However I included GitHub Pages since the ubiquity of GitHub among programmers makes it a very convenient option.
Note: None of these options allow you to access a server directly with SSH or FTP they way that you would with a a traditional web host. They are "serverless."
Also, if you're using Cloudflare's free CDN service as mentioned above, the traffic that your host sees could greatly be decreased due to caching, effectively giving you up to ten times more traffic while and staying within the free range.
If you need simple email forwarding for your domain, you can use ImprovMX.
- Free for one domain
- Unlimited forwarding and addresses
- Attachments up to 10MB
If you're looking for hosted email for your domain, you can use Zoho Mail.
- Free for one domain
- Up to five email accounts with 5GB storage each
- Attachments up 25MB
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