Web Platform 2022
This post has been updated and turned into an article.
I have launched a few websites over the years and have tried many different companies and services. There are many services to set up to have a full online presence. If this isn’t your day job to deal with, it can be a little overwhelming.
Consider my list below an essential checklist of establishing a low-cost online presence in 2022. None of these are affiliate links, but if you find this list useful, you can thank me in other ways.
Domain: Cloudflare Registrar
Cloudflare sells domain names at cost, so it literally can not be any cheaper. I always liked to put my sites behind their free DDoS protection anyway, so registering the domain itself with Cloudflare skips that step.
Runner-up: Hover.
Hosting: Render
If you’re deploying a static site or a web application, Render is straightforward and powerful. It feels like the heir apparent to Heroku. The free plan goes a long way. Runners up:
- Fly.io. I love what they’re doing, awesome free tier.
- Cloudflare Pages. Powerful but gets complicated if not 100% static.
Email: Fastmail
What good is a website without a way to contact you? Fastmail is an excellent privacy-friendly value at $5/month, with additional users for $3, 30-day trial. Runners up:
- Proton Mail. Also good, priced similarly.
- Google Workspace. $6/user/month includes Meet/Drive, and SSO
- Microsoft 365. $6/user/month includes Office
Analytics: Plausible Analytics
Simple, lightweight, as privacy focused as analytics can be. $9/month, 30-day trial.
Code: GitLab
The free version of GitLab comes with 5GB of storage and 400 CI/CD minutes per month, more than enough to build the average static site several times a day. You can host your site directly with GitLab pages, but there are also integrations with Render, CloudFlare Pages, Vercel, Netlify, and others.
Runner-up: GitHub.
In all, this could be $15 out of pocket to launch and $15/month for email and analytics.