How To Host Your Website For Free

If you are a student or a professional, you typically work on some projects that you create in your free time for fun, for learning something new, or for your portfolio. Often, you also want that the projects could be shown to your fellow developers so that they can benefit from them. But only showing the code on GitHub is not sufficient because you want to show a running version that can be tested out by everyone before downloading your source code.

Luckily, today exist multiple services that you can use to show your work to the public. Although there are some paid options like AWS, Azure, and GCP (if you are out of the free tier), I will introduce some services that you can use without spending any money on them.

1. Github Pages⁣

GitHub Pages is a feature from GitHub that enables every user or company to host a public webpage directly from your GitHub repository. You can edit, push, and your changes will be live.

Pros of this solution:

• Widely used
• Free hosting
• Fast and easy to setup
• Great customer service
• Great documentation
• Security and reliable

Cons of this solution:

• GitHub pages are limited to static websites
• Special measures should be done for SEO
• No support for any problem. You have to rely on forums and documentation

2.  Netlify

Netlify is an American cloud computing company that offers hosting and serverless backend services for web applications and static websites. Normally, you have to pay for their services but they provide a free plan for personal websites. You can build, deploy, and host any static website or app with a drag and drop interface. Also, it can automatically deploy from GitHub or Bitbucket.

Pros of this solution:

• Provides continuous integration and continuous deployment
• Drag and drop functionality is intuitive
• Customer support service is good
• Easy deploy service and use
• Support Custom domains
• SSL support
• Ability to use plugins to customize build workflow

Cons of this solution:

• Dynamic content cannot be displayed
• Supports only static websites

3. Vercel

A cloud platform for serverless deployment. It enables developers to host websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and require no supervision, all with minimal configuration. Vercel is a tool in the Static Web Hosting category of a tech stack.

Pros of this solution:

• Simple deployment
• Easy, production-ready deployment with one command.
• Simple scaling, including auto-scaling
• SSR (Server-Side Rendering) support
• Free tier
• Free SSL

Cons of this solution:

• The platform is a bit confusing
• Lack of guides and manuals

4. Heroku

Heroku is a cloud platform with a free tier that allows up to 1000 dyno hours per month and includes deployment from Git and Docker. Normally, it is used to build, deliver, monitor, and scale all kinds of apps in different languages/frameworks: Node.js, Ruby, Python, Java, and much more.

Furthermore, with Heroku, you are allowed to use custom domains, container orchestration, and automatic OS patching.

Pros of this solution:

• Deployments with Git and Docker
• Easy to start
• Custom domains
• Free Tier
• Container orchestration
• Automatic OS patching

Cons of this solution:

• Cannot control exact configuration of applications
• Could be too overwhelming
• No SSL
• Could stop working/has some downtime

5. Firebase

Firebase from Google is primarily an app development platform that could be used as a backend for apps and games. It provides several features like Authentication, Remote configuration, A/B testing, and analytics out of the box within the free tier (and more).

Pros of this solution:

• Authentication
• Analytics
• Test Lab
• Free Tier
• Free SSL

Cons of this solution:

• Limitations of real-time database
• More complicated

Closing Notes

All of the mentioned services could be easily used to host your private project. Although some of them have more features than others you could pick the best service for a specific project. Furthermore, you can use every service if you have multiple projects that you want to show.

Use them wisely to spread your work to the public crowd!

If you enjoyed reading this article consider commenting your valuable thoughts in the comments section. I would love to hear your feedback about my tutorial. Furthermore, share this article with fellow developers to help them get hosting their own services for free!

Feel free to connect with me on Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, and GitHub.