Dec 31, 2020
Guide to Free/Cheap Deployment Options 2020–2021
And the categories are…
So we are going to cover a lot of current options for deploying your website. The options on this list should all have a free tier and of course, upgrades as your site grows.
- Static Site/JAM Stack Friendly Hosts
- Full Stack Hosting
- VPS/Cloud Providers
- Other Free Options
Static Site/JAM Stack Friendly Hosts
These are sites that allow you to quickly push a git repository or connect to a github/gitlab repository and deploy a frontend application. Many offer other cool features, I’ll let you explore.
- Netlify (Netlify.com)
- Vercel (Vercel.com)
- Surge (Surge.sh)
- Github Pages (Github.com)
- Gitlab Pages (Gitlab.com)
- Aerobatic (Aerobatic.com)
Full Stack Hosting
These are hosts that also allow you deploy backend applications with robust tools and often generous free tiers. Also included are hosts that focus on deploying docker containers like Fly.
- Heroku (Heroku.com)
- PythonAnywhere (PythonAnywhere.com)
- Glitch (Glitch.com)
- Fly (Fly.io)
- Octopus (octopus.com)
- Section (section.io)
- Arukas (arukas.io)
- Cloudflare Workers (workers.cloudflare.com/sites)
VPS/Cloud Providers
These providers provide the ability to create VPS instances and other cloud services often with cheap or free tiers that allow you do anything you want.
- AWS (AWS Amplify is their Netlify like Service)
- Google Cloud (Firebase offers Netlify Like Services)
- Azure (Azure Static Sites offers Netlify like services)
- Linode (Linode.com)
- Digital Ocean (DigitalOcean.com)
- Vultr (Vultr.com)
- Buddy (buddy.works)
- Kamatera (Kamatera.com)
- Atlantic.net (Atlantic.net)
- Upcloud (upcloud.com/)
Headless CMS
These aren’t hosts, these take the place of your backend. Headless CMSs provides you a graphical dashboard to manage data that can be delivered to your frontend application via their API.
- Contentful (Contentful.com)
- ButterCMS (ButterCMS.com)
- GraphCMS (GraphCMS.com)
- CraftCMS (craftcms.com)
- AgilityCMS (agilitycms.com)
- Strapi (strapi.io — self-hosted)
- FlexType (flextype.org — self-hosted)
- ContentStack (contentstack.com)
- dotCMS (dotcms.com)
- cockpit (getcockpit.com — self-hosted)
- Zesty.io (www.zesty.io)
- DirectUs (directus.io — self-hosted)
- DatoCMS (datocms.com)
- CosmicJS (cosmicjs.com)
- Prismic (prismic.io)
- Sanity.io (sanity.io)
- CrafterCMS (craftersoftware.com — Self-hosted)
Other Free Options
Other Hosting Options that offer a free tier. These are often more geared towards casual/consumer customers vs. developers like the other categories.
- Wordpress.com
- Wix.com
- Weebly.com
- Google Sites
