Regarding some cost free solutions mentioned here: how does the saying 'if it is free, then you are the product' hold up?
Likely a loss leader, since "free static site hosting" is usually not the main product.
Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
51–60 of 507 posts
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#52I use https://nearlyfreespeech.net for my static site. It isn't free -- it is pretty cheap -- but it has a lot going for it. It requires no custom tooling -- I upload via rsync. This makes it trivial to migrate to a new provider if necessary. I develop my site locally, then rsync it up. I have a custom domain pointed at the site, and also a custom .htaccess, so I have a good amount of control over the site. I do thin…
I'm a huge fan of NearlyFreeSpeech as well! Its super cheap, has a great user-forum, and just... feels like something I can wrap my head around easily. Love it
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#53Cloudflare Pages
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#54Regarding some cost free solutions mentioned here: how does the saying 'if it is free, then you are the product' hold up?
I suppose Netlify free users pay it back in free advertisement.
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#55I have my site in an S3 bucket with the static-site flag activated. It would not win for 'easiest'. However, it's the only thing in my personal AWS account right now and my monthly bill is $0.83
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#56Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#57Google App Engine has a very generous free quota. The setup isn't as easy as good old FTP, because you need to define your static files in a configuration file. Once the config is written the deployment is a single command though. https://cloud.google.com/appengine
The free bandwidth quota isn't enormous, but if you put Cloudflare in front then you're good for practically unlimited free traffic. App Engine is overkill for a completely static site but it's great for something that is mostly static with one or two things that change.
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#58I have my site in an S3 bucket with the static-site flag activated. It would not win for 'easiest'. However, it's the only thing in my personal AWS account right now and my monthly bill is $0.83
An S3 bucket is intended as storage, not retrieval. Downloading from S3 means grabbing shards. You should put a proper CDN, like CloudFront or Cloudflare, in front.
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#59Seconding the https://nearlyfreespeech.net suggestion. I used to be their customer and had absolutely no complaints.
I have switched to BunnyCDN [1] a while back, also very happy with it. Pricing is extremely cheap, and has the added benefit of being able to cache anything dynamic you might add in the future.
[1]: https://bunny.net/
Re: Ask HN: Cheapest/easiest way to host a static site?
#60> jumping through AWS hoops I found S3 static hosting to be fairly straightforward. Once set up, a single `aws s3 sync . s3://my-bucket/path` updates the content.
Agreed! It's super easy
It was observed that setting up let's encrypt certs on s3 static sites can be a unique challenge