Personal site, five mostly static pages plus a contact form, about 200 visitors a month, and I want to spend as close to nothing as possible without waking up to it being gone. I already had one free host disappear with three days' notice. I can write HTML but I am not going to administer a server. Domain is already registered elsewhere and I can point DNS.
Static pages plus a form is the exact shape that costs nothing on the modern free tiers. Cloudflare Pages gives you 500 builds a month and doesn't meter bandwidth, and the form can go through a form-to-email service. The genuine risk isn't disappearance, it's a terms change in three years, so keep the site in git and the move becomes an afternoon rather than a disaster.
Keeping it in git so the migration is cheap is the reframe I needed. I was optimising for never having to move, which isn't achievable.
The disappeared-with-three-days-notice thing is exactly why I separate concerns now. Domain at a registrar you trust, DNS somewhere independent, site wherever is cheap. Losing the host becomes annoying rather than fatal.
If you want boring and paid, small shared cPanel plans still exist in the $2-3 a month range, including at a couple of registrars who also do hosting. Just find out what year two costs before you buy anything.
And check whether the $2.95 requires a three-year prepay. A lot of those cheap tiers only exist at a 36-month commitment and the monthly rate is a different number entirely.
Static site plus a form endpoint. I've had that combination running for six years across two host changes and the total cost has been the domain renewal.
@tiny_steps_tam · 2mo ago
Counterpoint from someone burned the other way. I put a client site on a free tier and when the account got flagged by an automated system there was no human to appeal to for four days. For $3 a month you get a support address that answers. For a personal site I'd still take free.
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