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If you have a blog, you know that it’s important to have a static web host. But if you’re new to blogging, it can be hard to understand what all the jargon means and how to choose the right host for your needs. That’s why we created [company name]: we want to make sure that everyone has access to quality hosting without having to go through the hassle of shopping around for it themselves.
Our goal is simple: we want everyone who wants a static web host to be able to get one quickly and easily—no matter what their budget is or how much time they have available for research.
Free Static Web Hosting
roof that everything old eventually comes back into style, the best static web hosting plans strip away all unnecessary complexities to provide simple services focused on performance and efficiency. Instead of relying on databases, static websites concentrate on basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to produce lightweight landing pages and business profiles.
While static sites are hardly a new concept, the streamlined development model is enjoying a resurgence for those seeking simple coding built around speed. With so many features stripped away, these free and paid hosting services represent some of the most affordable plans out there.
Plus, static sites aren’t just for individual developers or those looking for a simple template system. Nest, MailChimp, and even Google rely on static websites, with media properties at Vox and Vice even creating entire publishing systems crafted around static site generators. Here, we’ve ranked the best values and free platforms out there, complete with all the dev tools you’ll need.
Cheap | Free | FAQs
Best “Cheap” Static Web Hosting
As the Web 2.0 era of interactivity and dynamic websites matures, an increasing number of site owners are feeling the bloat of inefficient code, layers of plugins, and applications vulnerable to attacks. Static web hosting represents a refreshing return to the good ol’ days of code repositories and direct editing.
The absence of a database or third-party application dramatically increases a website’s performance and security, with a static website loading 10 times faster than a dynamically generated one. Scalability is inherently more achievable, given the simpler server workload and infrastructure associated with basic HTML and CSS code.
For those not looking to frequently update content on their online presence, static websites are an incredibly low-cost, highly reliable solution that requires next to no technical experience and administration. That said, we’d recommend a service that gives you the flexibility to adapt to audience needs and design trends. These hosts strike the perfect balance between high-speed static hosting with the ability to add additional services and tools as needed.
- Hostinger.com
Hostinger Review
Monthly Starting Price
$1.99
Unlimited everything, from storage to databases
FREE site builder & WP performance upgrades
FREE daily or weekly backups
Custom control panel and auto-installation scripts
SSH access & unlimited FREE SSL certificates
Get started on Hostinger now.
CHEAP
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★
Our Review
Hostinger: Our Expert’s Review
Hostinger Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com): As the shared hosting market becomes increasingly saturated, unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email accounts have become surprisingly average. Hostinger, however, extends the routine, expected metrics to greater lengths — the number of websites, databases, FTP users, subdomains, and parked domains are all unrestricted for most customers. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 50 GB to 200 GB SSD FREE (1 year) 3 minutes
- Bluehost.com
Bluehost Review
Monthly Starting Price
$2.95
Cheap shared hosting from a highly reputable provider
Ideal for hosting a WordPress website
FREE Weebly website builder and Cloudflare CDN
Unlimited traffic and 24/7 live chat support
Get 63% off today with our Bluehost coupon
Get started on Bluehost now.
CHEAP
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★
Our Review
Bluehost: Our Expert’s Review
Bluehost Review
Ryan Frankel (HostingAdvice.com): Bluehost pricing is about as competitive as the industry offers. Sign up for a shared hosting plan for as little as $2.95 per month, and WordPress hosting packages are consistently priced; a VPS plan starts at around $18.99 per month; and the dedicated hosting rates are as little as $79.99 per month. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 50 GB SSD – unlimited FREE (1 year) 5 minutes
- Veeble.org
Veeble Review
Monthly Starting Price
$0.95
Instant setup with no fees
A massive library of 419 one-click installation applications and scripts
FREE cPanel integration for easy management and metrics tracking
FREE SSL security
99.99% uptime guarantee
Get started on Veeble.org now.
CHEAP
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★
Our Review
Veeble: Our Expert’s Review
Veeble Review
Lynn Cadet (HostingAdvice.com): If you’re looking for fantastic service on a smaller budget, Veeble is the web host for you. Its inexpensive hosting plans deliver the essential resources to run a website with the same high-performance capabilities as many other web hosts. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
14 days 20 GB SSD – unlimited SSD FREE with select plans 3 minutes
- HostGator.com
HostGator Review
Monthly Starting Price
$2.64
Get 70% off by buying 36 months up front
Unmetered disk space & bandwidth
Unlimited email addresses & free SSL certificate
One-click WordPress install & free blog tools
Free 1-year domain registration on select plans
Get started on HostGator now.
CHEAP
RATING
4.7 ★★★★★
Our Review
HostGator: Our Expert’s Review
HostGator Review
Ryan Frankel (HostingAdvice.com): HostGator is a great compromise between performance and price. The company offers unlimited emails, MySQL databases, disk space, and bandwidth, plus one-click installs of popular open-source projects, in addition to a 99. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
45 days Unlimited FREE (1 year) 4 minutes
- iPage.com
iPage Review
Monthly Starting Price
$1.99
Easy setup and superb reliability since 1998
FREE domain and Google marketing included
Unlimited bandwidth, storage, and emails
FREE site builder and shopping cart
Get more than 75% off today (was $7.99/month)
Get started on iPage now.
CHEAP
RATING
4.6 ★★★★★
Our Review
iPage: Our Expert’s Review
iPage Review
PJ Fancher (HostingAdvice.com): Whether you’re a first-time website owner or a web veteran, iPage’s excellent hosting services and a fantastic list of extras make the brand one of the best values in web hosting. Unlimited disk space, scalable bandwidth, and emails are just a part of what makes iPage’s shared hosting plan a great deal. Go to full review »
Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days Unlimited FREE (1 year) 5 minutes
See other affordable hosts »
Best “Free” Static Web Hosting
Static web hosting specialists feature a command line interface or terminal to execute commands and integrate with code repositories and online projects. The nuts-and-bolts approach allows for continuous integration and deployments, along with high levels of automation.
We’ve long been critics of many free web hosting services, but the stripped-down nature of static hosting bodes well for budget-minded site owners. By working so seamlessly with the git command and other open-source technologies, tons of reputable free services abound for developers and communities to host simple sites that build a following of users and contributors. Here’s our list of the most popular options:
- GitHub Pages
GitHub Pages logo
As the development platform of choice for more than 40 million developers, GitHub is a trusted resource for hosting and reviewing code, managing projects, and building software for both individuals and Fortune 500 organizations. The company’s static hosting service, GitHub Pages, takes code straight from a GitHub repository, optionally runs the files through a build process, and publishes a website. Configuration is simple, and updates are a simple edit and push away.
Number of sites: One site per GitHub account, plus unlimited project websites
Storage and bandwidth: 1GB storage and 100GB bandwidth per month (soft limits)
Domains: Custom domain name or a github.io subdomain
Key features: HTTPS support, built-in integration with static site generator Jekyll
- Netlify
Netlify logo
Trusted by the likes of Facebook, Citrix, Verizon, Peloton, and Kubernetes, Netlify leverages serverless functions and continuous deployment to deliver sites up to 10 times faster than other configurations. The platform bet heavily on JAMstack, unifying JavaScript, APIs, and prerendered Markup for an impressive infrastructure well-suited for businesses and developers looking for a commercial solution. Netlify originally made a splash in static hosting with the drag-and-drop deployments at BitBalloon, but leaders brought the service under the Netlify umbrella to create Netlify Drop.
Number of sites: One website with 300 build minutes per month
Storage and bandwidth: 100GB storage and 100GB bandwidth per month (soft limits)
Domains: Custom domain name or a netlify.com subdomain
Key features: Global CDN deployment, HTML forms, and instant cache invalidation
- Firebase
Firebase logo
With the powerful backing and oversight of Google, Firebase gives mobile and web application developers tons of tools to move quickly online. Users can run static or dynamic sites on Google’s SSD-powered infrastructure, with built-in analytics, performance monitoring, and crash reporting tools to help site owners optimize and perfect their site. Google further expanded its static hosting footprint in 2015 by snatching up DivShot, another popular brand in the free hosting space.
Number of sites: Multiple websites within a single Firebase project
Storage and bandwidth: 1GB storage and 10GB bandwidth per month
Domains: Custom domain name or subdomains on web.app and firebaseapp.com domains
Key features: Zero-configuration SSL certificates, global CDN, A/B testing, and analytics
- Amazon S3
Amazon Web Services S3 logo
Not surprisingly, another powerful name on our list is Amazon Web Services on our list. Amazon S3, the company’s object storage service offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. As with seemingly all things AWS, setup is a little complicated for first-time users, but the company includes a helpful setup guide to using Route 53 for DNS and CloudFront for content distribution. Amazon’s free tier for all these services gives users 12 months to experience enterprise-grade static hosting.
Number of sites: One
Storage and bandwidth: 5GB storage and up to 1GB per month of bandwidth
Domains: Custom domain name or AWS Region-specific website endpoint
Key features: Integrations with 175 AWS services, 99.99% uptime, unlimited scalability
- Zeit
Zeit logo
Behind a mission to make cloud computing accessible to everyone, Zeit promises zero-configuration static hosting that integrates with a variety of web frameworks. By installing the command line interface, users can publish and deploy in just a few keystrokes. The platform’s automatic SSL security and smart CDN don’t require any setup, providing an all-in-one solution for static and JAMstack deployments. Premium plans add unlimited deployments and greater collaboration tools.
Number of sites: Unlimited websites
Storage and bandwidth: Up to 10,000 files and 20GB of bandwidth per month
Domains: Custom domains supported or now.sh subdomain
Key features: HTTPS support, smart CDN, continuous deployment with GitHub and GitLab
- Forge
Forge logo
Billed as the fastest, simplest, and most affordable way to host and deploy static websites, Forge takes publishing beyond GitHub or the command line interface by including built-in Dropbox compatibility. The user-friendly platform includes a drag-and-drop interface for file syncing, as well as TurboJS and content delivery network integration to optimize page load speeds. Bandwidth restrictions make the free plan tough to stay in for the long haul, but we love that Forge comes with 24/7 support.
Number of sites: Unlimited publishing on one project
Storage and bandwidth: 5GB of storage and 1GB bandwidth per month
Domains: Custom domains supported
Key features: Hosted forms, .htaccess rewrites and redirects, plus live site previews
What is Static Web Hosting?
Simply put, static web hosting supports fixed-content, HTML-based websites that display the same information to all visitors. When a user’s web browser retrieves a static website from a static web hosting server, the entire page is already constructed in HTML files (along with possibly CSS and JavaScript).
When the World Wide Web emerged in the early 1990s, HTML consisted of just 18 tags, or elements. Every page was static and unstyled, with web browsers simply fetching HTML files from servers and enabling users to navigate through links. As design principles and programming languages evolved, databases emerged as a way to separate a website’s content (blog posts, photo galleries, products, and the like) from the underlying designs and layouts.
Desktop applications like Adobe Dreamweaver were great for static HTML and CSS sites, but the original static website generators struggled to reasonably connect to the SQL-based relational databases in a visual, user-friendly manner. As a result, content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla gained popularity and led the tectonic online shift into interactive web design and dynamic, tailored visitor experiences.
What is the Difference Between a Static and Dynamic Website?
With static websites, each HTML file represents a complete page of a site; the web browser simply retrieves and displays the file. Dynamic websites, however, use server-side technologies (like databases and PHP) to essentially build a web page as a user’s browser accesses the various files. Basically, the browser will find several different pieces of information and then stitch them all together into one cohesive, dynamic web page.
Image of datacenterStatic and dynamic websites take drastically different approaches to attracting and engaging visitors.
Static sites are good for smaller websites that don’t need to update their content frequently, while large sites with hundreds or thousands of pages are much easier to maintain dynamically. For example, if you wanted to add or remove a link on your website’s footer, you would have to make the change in every HTML file that contains the footer. To update the footer on a dynamic website, you’d likely only edit one file.
Static websites are created manually, likely via coding by hand or by using a static website generator that relies on a command line interface and a text editor that formats content in Markdown. Although dynamic websites can be coded from scratch, you’re more likely to use a web-based interface that handles the programming languages and database connections for you. Drag-and-drop website builders, WordPress, and other content management and publishing systems are prime examples of dynamic site creators.
What Are The Advantages of Static Websites?
Given the user-focused design of dynamic websites and content management systems, it can be difficult to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of static vs. dynamic websites. Generally speaking, static websites are typically faster, more secure, and more affordable than dynamic alternatives. Here’s a more comprehensive list of pros:
Faster performance
Lower cost
Higher reliability and scalability
More secure
Less time to create
Easier for search engines to index
With all of these perks, static websites draw their strength from their sheer simplicity. The absence of databases and third-party applications removes potential security vulnerabilities, points of failure, performance hangups, expensive add-ons, and infrastructural inefficiencies.
To be fair, however, static websites come with a few major drawbacks worth considering: content is not easily changed and functionality is limited. Because of the reliance on coding and the command line, not all site owners are able (or willing) to make the manual, tedious updates needed to have a modern and effective online presence. Plus, given the scaled-back nature of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript when compared with dynamic programming languages, site owners will have a harder time capitalizing on current design and development trends.
Simplify Your Hosting Experience Even More With Static Site Generators
When it comes to getting a static website off the ground, many traditionalists and old-school programmers will simply open their favorite text editor and start coding. For many others, however, a static website generator will do the trick. Much like the best website builders that offer visual ways to design dynamic websites, static site generators work to pair your content with a design template and produce static HTML code as a result. Check out the list of top generators and frameworks, according to the experts at StaticGen:
Hugo
Gatsby
Hexo
VuePress
Jekyll
Pelican
Again, selecting a static website generator is similar to the steps taken when weighing how to choose a web host. Have a clear and detailed picture of your project’s needs and goals to inform your decision-making process. From there, you’ve essentially got two paths to choose from: do you seek out the highest number of built-in features or the stripped-down and efficient platform with a vibrant plugin marketplace?
Fortunately, many of the best static site generators are based around open-source projects and technologies. After choosing a cheap or free static web hosting plan from the list above, you’ll have numerous options to demo, try, and experiment with. Take your time to learn which types of site creation processes you value the most, whether it’s pure usability or efficient build times. Enjoy exploring the freedoms and possibilities that static site generators give you!
free static website hosting with custom domain
With the increasing popularity of static site generators, a lot of services have come up allowing you to host static website or JAM-stack site for free. However, not all these services allow mapping your site to a custom domain. If you are looking for hosting a static site completely free and mapping it with a custom domain, then we have brought together this handy list of hosting companies and free services which allow you to do that.
You can choose from many top static site generators, such as 11ty and Hugo when building your own static site. Or you can code up easily build a static website with HTML and CSS using a pre-built template. However, when it comes to hosting them, you may be able to find easy and free hosting, instead of going with a premium option, specially if your website is still in early stage and doesn’t require complex infrastructure.
Hosting a static site doesn’t require the server to be doing process intensive jobs or managing a database as compared to serving a dynamic site on a CMS such as WordPress. This is the reason, most of the services and platforms mentioned below are able to provide you with a free plan to host your own static site. Some of these platforms even offer features like free SSL, continuous integration (CI) and custom domain mapping. Let us look at them and understand which one is the right fit for you.
Free Hosting for Static Website with Custom Domain
We have compiled together this list of free hosting services which not only offer generous plans to host your static sites but also allow you to map your site with a custom domain.
- GitHub Pages
GitHub allows you to host static websites directly from your GitHub repository and lets you map them to custom domains. Since having public repositories on GitHub is free, you get to have free static website hosting using GitHub pages.
GitHub Pages offers an out of the box support for Jekyll sites. It also has the capability of converting simple markdown formatted content into websites. For any other static site generator, you can use a CI service like Travis or build the site on your local box and then push the built site to GitHub.
Cost: Free
Limits: 1GB size, 100GB Bandwith, 10 Builds per hour. Learn more
SSL support: Only when using sub-domain, but you can use a free service like Cloudflare to get free SSL
Free CI: Only for Jekyll but you can use other free services like Travis
Upgrades: If you don’t want the source code to be public, you can go with GitHub paid plan
- GitLab Pages
Similar to GitHub, GitLab also provides hosting for static websites directly from GitLab.com hosted repositories and lets you map them to custom domains. The aditional advantage here is that you can have unlimited private respositories for free if you choose GitLab.com.
Moreover, GitLab offers an advanced CI system for free which can be used to automatically build almost any kind of static site generator.
Cost: Free
Limits: Same as GitLab.com repo size limits and Free CI limits, as far as we know
SSL support: Yes with few limitations
Free CI: Yes
Upgrades: None that concern GitLab Pages
- Netlify
Netlify is offering an impressive bunch of features which are useful for hosting not just static websites but single-page apps and advanced commercial web projects. Their free plan gives you all the goodness offered by GitHub pages along with added advantages such as a CI system which can be used with private repositories, custom domain which supports free SSL and free CDN out of the box, custom redirect rules as well as hooks and notifications.
Upon upgrading, you can avail additional features like form handling, password protection, pre-rendering, team collaboration and much more. If you have an open source project then Netlify can offer you its premium plan for free to host it.
Cost: Free
Limits: Soft limits of 100GB storage and 100GB bandwidth/month. 3 deploys/minute. Learn More
SSL support: Yes
Free CI: Yes
Upgrades: Yes, Upgrade for additional features like form handling, password protection etc.
- Cloudflare Pages
Cloudflare Pages
Cloudflare pages is an offering by Cloudflare where it allows easy deployment and hosting of JAMstack websites. It integrates well with Git providers and comes with unlimited bandwidth and CDN support, all for FREE. The service is also able to create preview builds for each commits and is great when it comes to collaborating in a team. With it’s global CDN and generous free limits, Cloudflare Pages is sure a promising provider for your static sites.
Cost: Free
Limits: 500 builds per month.
SSL support: Yes
Free CI: Yes
Upgrades: Yes, Upgrade for additional features like more page rules, business support etc.
- Render.com
render.com
Render.com is an easy to use cloud provider that also integrates building and deploying static sites among many other things such as database, docket containers, dynamic apps etc. It providers free SSL support as well support for global CDN and private networks. Automatic deployments from git repos are also support.
Cost: Free
Limits: 100GB bandwidth/month. Learn More
SSL support: Yes
Free CI: Yes
Upgrades: Yes, Upgrade for additional features like background workers, docker containers etc.
- DigitalOcean App Platform
digital ocean
DigitalOcean is mostly known for it’s VPS as demand service. However, it has now started offering a cloud solution named “App Platform” which is capable of hosting static as well as dynamic sites. Deployment from GitHub as well as GitLab are supported and websites are automatically served with HTTPS. Integrated with a custom domain is also added advantage. You can add unlimited team members even in the free plan which is a bonus.
Cost: Free
Limits: 1GB bandwidth/month, 100 builds/month. Learn More
SSL support: Yes
Free CI: Yes
Upgrades: Yes, Upgrade for additional features like dynamic apps, more build minutes and bandwidth.
- Vercel
vercel
Vercel is an feature rich platform that enables developers to build, preview and deploy their sites as well as serverless functions with ease. With vercel, you can easily build and deploy web projects made with JavaScript architecture such as Next.js, Gatsby, React, Vue.js, Nuxt, Angular etc.
On vercel, you can easily deploy any front-end app on their global edge networks and easily scale to million of page views. Moroever, Vercel allows your pages to dynamically request any data source, headless CMS, or API. Previewing your website and sharing with your developer team is also provided. They have generous free plan that support custom domains as well as HTTPS.
Cost: Free
Limits: Plans include unlimited resources (Bandwidth, Builds, and Serverless Function Execution) subject to fair use policy and limits
SSL support: Yes
Free CI: Yes
Upgrades: Additional features like multiple team member, more generous limits, password protection, concurrent builds etc.
- Firebase Hosting
Firebase (now acquired by Google) offers a production-grade web content hosting for web apps and static content. With Firebase hosting, you can host a static website or web-app as well as make use of their real-time database and file storage in the free plan.
Firebase also offers custom domain hosting & SSL in the free plan itself. You can choose a paid plan to increase the storage and bandwidth limits.
Cost: Free
Limits: 1GB storage and 10GB bandwidth/month
SSL support: Yes
Free CI: No
Upgrades: Yes, Upgrade for additional storage and bandwidth. Learn More
- Google App Engine
You can also host a static website for free on Google App Engine. App engine supports many programming languages including PHP, Go, Java, however, you only need to write an app.yaml configuration file if you are just hosting static content.
Refer to the documentation to learn how you can host a static site on Google App Engine. Google offers a daily free quota on App Engine which should generally be suitable for hosting static content.
Cost: Free
Limits: 1GB storage and 1GB bandwidth/day (56MB/min). Learn More
SSL support: Yes
Free CI: No
Upgrades: If you go over the free quota then you will be billed accordingly
- Surge
Surge offers a web publishing platform with an easy to use CLI. Just install surge npm module and run surge command inside your web project folder to get it published. Surge offers free custom domain support along with basic SSL support.
If you want additional features like custom SSL, redirects and password protection etc., you can go with their paid plan.
Cost: Free
Limits: Unspecified
SSL support: Only in paid plan for custom domains
Free CI: No
Upgrades: Additional features like custom SSL, redirects and password protection etc. can be added after upgrade
Other Options for Hosting Static Sites
It is important to note here that, you don’t necessarily need to look for a static web hosting platform as any trivial hosting platform is suitable for hosting a static site. Given the low computation requirement and no database, cheap shared hosting services are also a good fit for it.
You can host a static website on Amazon S3 too and map it to a custom domain by following this guide. Generally the charges incurred would be very small if you go with this option and would largely depend on bandwidth and page views.
I myself have used most of the platforms mentioned above (except Surge and Vercel) and use them for different use-cases. For example, GitHub pages is a good fit for hosting website of an open source project, while Netlify is amazing when it comes to an integrated solution for building and deploying private projects. GitLab pages has an exciting offering too due to its integrated CI and unlimited private repositories.