6 ms·

Ask HN: Affordable and reliable hosting for static pages

22 points by Siah 16y ago

I am planning to get a hosting service for a client. we are not using any kind of server side programming and the server will just serve a couple of static html, pdf and flash files. What is the most affordable (while reliable) hosting that we can get?

noob007 16y ago
dropbox?
- satori99 16y ago
  ^ This. Use dropbox. You get 2Gig for free. It is available from the web and you get total control from anywhere. You can even get a $5 domain to point at your dropbox web location.
  - realize 16y ago
    Note that some corporate firewalls block dropbox for security reasons. This means your site is blocked too... Caught me out once!
eterps 16y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142510 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142510
mgz 16y ago
http://pastehtml.com http://pastehtml.com
aaronblohowiak 16y ago
s3 / cloudfront
- bigiain 16y ago
  This is what I'd suggest too, with the proviso that the most likely "single point of failure" moves from being some technical decision you make to being the credit card it's paid for with. At ~3c or 7c/month it becomes easy to forget you need to update the expiry date every 3 years...
  - cperciva 16y ago
    The credit card I used for a development account expired in January, and Amazon sent me email reminders. They also continued to charge the (expired) card. This suggests to me that card expiry is not a likely failure mode.
    - bigiain 16y ago
      No no, that's _exactly_ the failure mode to keep an eye out for. I've seen AWS not actually bill me, and just send email accounts, for months and months. It's not worth their time billing a few cents or even a few dollars a month, so by the time an account "goes wrong" it can have been half a year or more since your card got re-issued, and you've forgotten you need to update Amazon for anything. (it's much less of an issue if you're piggybacking your AWS stuff on a regularly used Amazon account/creditcard, but if you set this up as a one-off for a tiny S3/CloudFront "web hosting" setup, it could easily bite you on the ass in a few years time...)
  - tzs 16y ago
    If the account number has not changed, the card will continue to work after the expiration date. All that most payment gateways and credit card companies require is that when you attempt to charge it, you give an expiration date that is in the future. I've seen some recommend that if the card on file is expired, just add 3 years to the expiration date and try it. Also, VISA and MC both provide an updater service, that some payment gateways make available to some merchants. The updater service allows a merchant to ask for an update on the status of a credit card. Possible responses are: no update available; account is closed; here is the new expiration date for the card; card was replaced and here is the new number and expiration date. The service is pretty cheap. One of the card companies charges something like $150 to sign up, the other charges nothing. Queries are free if there is no updated information available, and something like $0.10 if updated information is returned. They do require that you query for all your stored cards at least once a year. This doesn't work for all cards. Although the service is provided by VISA and MC, it is up to the individual bank or other organization that actually issued the card to decide if they will support it. When we started using it, it boosted revenue on subscription billing by maybe 2-3%. I don't think the updater service is available to everyone. I believe they do some looking over your history to try to ensure that you aren't the kind of business that would be misusing the service. I'm sure Amazon would qualify.
- aeden 16y ago
  Are there any tools that you recommend that make it super easy to get a static site up and running on S3 and Cloudfront?
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    They have excellent web-based control panels. I doubt you could make it significantly easier really.
  - bigiain 16y ago
    On Mac OS X I use an app called S3 Browser, and the ElasticFox Firefox plugin. I dunno if they're "the best", but they're certainly workable.
- pw 16y ago
  You don't even need Cloudfront. You can now host static sites directly from S3. See http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/02/host-your-static-website-on-amazon-s3.html http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/02/host-your-static-website-... and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5043616/amazon-s3-static-web-sites-custom-domain-or-subdomain http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5043616/amazon-s3-static-...
jarin 16y ago
You can host a Sinatra app on Heroku for free. Here's the complete app: require 'rubygems' require 'sinatra' get '/' do File.read(File.join('public', 'index.html')) end Just put all of the files in /public and you're good to go.
- pwim 16y ago
  If you're just going to host static files, just host them directly through Rack as described here: http://mwhuss.com/2009/12/13/static-sites-on-heroku-in-two-lines http://mwhuss.com/2009/12/13/static-sites-on-heroku-in-two-l... Also, make sure you are using http caching - that way Heroku will use Varnish to cache them.
nayanga 16y ago
weebly
mhiceoin 16y ago
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ Excellent Pay as you go hosting with specific plans for static only content.
- nico_h 16y ago
  I second that. With no traffic, 10$ lasted me 4 years. They have decreasing cost per GB of bandwidth too.
  - yarapavan 16y ago
    NFSN is very good for me too.
olegp 16y ago
If you want to have the option of doing dynamic stuff later, you should try Akshell (http://www.akshell.com http://www.akshell.com). It's really good for static sites too though, since the newly added Git support allows you to deploy with a git pull from a remote repo, giving you revision control and all the goodness that comes with it.
bdr 16y ago
AppEngine would probably be free and is reliable.
thethimble 16y ago
I've been using Dreamhost for my static (and an initial version of my Django site) for a few months now. I've been happy with their uptime and support.
hardik988 16y ago
Github Pages is a great choice for hosting static files IMO. However I'm not sure if you can host gh-pages on a private repository or not.
- atheken 16y ago
  You can host them from a private repo.
patio11 16y ago
I ran BCC off of GoDaddy's $4 a month Linux hosting for nearly 2 years and only had a problem once.
fleitz 16y ago
I'd definitely recommend dreamhost, very reasonable, great one click installers for things like wordpress. also they support rails/django. Something like $8/month.
stylejam 16y ago
I would try S3 as for now
sudhirj 16y ago
Go with Google App Engine... you'll probably never break the free barrier.

22 points by Siah 16y ago

noob007 16y ago

dropbox?

satori99 16y ago
^ This. Use dropbox. You get 2Gig for free. It is available from the web and you get total control from anywhere. You can even get a $5 domain to point at your dropbox web location.
- realize 16y ago
  Note that some corporate firewalls block dropbox for security reasons. This means your site is blocked too... Caught me out once!

eterps 16y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142510 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142510

mgz 16y ago

http://pastehtml.com http://pastehtml.com

aaronblohowiak 16y ago

s3 / cloudfront

bigiain 16y ago
This is what I'd suggest too, with the proviso that the most likely "single point of failure" moves from being some technical decision you make to being the credit card it's paid for with. At ~3c or 7c/month it becomes easy to forget you need to update the expiry date every 3 years...
- cperciva 16y ago
  The credit card I used for a development account expired in January, and Amazon sent me email reminders. They also continued to charge the (expired) card. This suggests to me that card expiry is not a likely failure mode.
  - bigiain 16y ago
    No no, that's _exactly_ the failure mode to keep an eye out for. I've seen AWS not actually bill me, and just send email accounts, for months and months. It's not worth their time billing a few cents or even a few dollars a month, so by the time an account "goes wrong" it can have been half a year or more since your card got re-issued, and you've forgotten you need to update Amazon for anything. (it's much less of an issue if you're piggybacking your AWS stuff on a regularly used Amazon account/creditcard, but if you set this up as a one-off for a tiny S3/CloudFront "web hosting" setup, it could easily bite you on the ass in a few years time...)
- tzs 16y ago
  If the account number has not changed, the card will continue to work after the expiration date. All that most payment gateways and credit card companies require is that when you attempt to charge it, you give an expiration date that is in the future. I've seen some recommend that if the card on file is expired, just add 3 years to the expiration date and try it. Also, VISA and MC both provide an updater service, that some payment gateways make available to some merchants. The updater service allows a merchant to ask for an update on the status of a credit card. Possible responses are: no update available; account is closed; here is the new expiration date for the card; card was replaced and here is the new number and expiration date. The service is pretty cheap. One of the card companies charges something like $150 to sign up, the other charges nothing. Queries are free if there is no updated information available, and something like $0.10 if updated information is returned. They do require that you query for all your stored cards at least once a year. This doesn't work for all cards. Although the service is provided by VISA and MC, it is up to the individual bank or other organization that actually issued the card to decide if they will support it. When we started using it, it boosted revenue on subscription billing by maybe 2-3%. I don't think the updater service is available to everyone. I believe they do some looking over your history to try to ensure that you aren't the kind of business that would be misusing the service. I'm sure Amazon would qualify.
aeden 16y ago
Are there any tools that you recommend that make it super easy to get a static site up and running on S3 and Cloudfront?
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  They have excellent web-based control panels. I doubt you could make it significantly easier really.
- bigiain 16y ago
  On Mac OS X I use an app called S3 Browser, and the ElasticFox Firefox plugin. I dunno if they're "the best", but they're certainly workable.
pw 16y ago
You don't even need Cloudfront. You can now host static sites directly from S3. See http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/02/host-your-static-website-on-amazon-s3.html http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/02/host-your-static-website-... and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5043616/amazon-s3-static-web-sites-custom-domain-or-subdomain http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5043616/amazon-s3-static-...

jarin 16y ago

You can host a Sinatra app on Heroku for free. Here's the complete app: require 'rubygems' require 'sinatra' get '/' do File.read(File.join('public', 'index.html')) end Just put all of the files in /public and you're good to go.

pwim 16y ago
If you're just going to host static files, just host them directly through Rack as described here: http://mwhuss.com/2009/12/13/static-sites-on-heroku-in-two-lines http://mwhuss.com/2009/12/13/static-sites-on-heroku-in-two-l... Also, make sure you are using http caching - that way Heroku will use Varnish to cache them.

nayanga 16y ago

weebly

mhiceoin 16y ago

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ Excellent Pay as you go hosting with specific plans for static only content.

nico_h 16y ago
I second that. With no traffic, 10$ lasted me 4 years. They have decreasing cost per GB of bandwidth too.
- yarapavan 16y ago
  NFSN is very good for me too.

olegp 16y ago

If you want to have the option of doing dynamic stuff later, you should try Akshell (http://www.akshell.com http://www.akshell.com). It's really good for static sites too though, since the newly added Git support allows you to deploy with a git pull from a remote repo, giving you revision control and all the goodness that comes with it.

bdr 16y ago

AppEngine would probably be free and is reliable.

thethimble 16y ago

I've been using Dreamhost for my static (and an initial version of my Django site) for a few months now. I've been happy with their uptime and support.

hardik988 16y ago

Github Pages is a great choice for hosting static files IMO. However I'm not sure if you can host gh-pages on a private repository or not.

atheken 16y ago
You can host them from a private repo.

patio11 16y ago

I ran BCC off of GoDaddy's $4 a month Linux hosting for nearly 2 years and only had a problem once.

fleitz 16y ago

I'd definitely recommend dreamhost, very reasonable, great one click installers for things like wordpress. also they support rails/django. Something like $8/month.

stylejam 16y ago

I would try S3 as for now

sudhirj 16y ago

Go with Google App Engine... you'll probably never break the free barrier.