Comment by julianeon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by julianeon | Hacker News Reader

Since we're talking about tiny websites, and this seems pretty relevant:

If it's only static HTML and CSS, it's just a bucket o' files. You can store things like that on S3 for... I don't even know how little. A tiny amount. You will not find a cheaper hosting option than this.

I made this site on S3, using Svelte, which is intentionally the humblest, smallest step up from plain JavaScript HTML & CSS, at the link below.

http://pitch-deck-svelte.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

Now, the one drawback here is that this doesn't have HTTPS, and you'd need CloudFront for that. This link covers how to do that (note: you should buy your domain on AWS, using Route 53, when following these instructions to make your life easier).

https://medium.com/@sbuckpesch/setup-aws-s3-static-website-h...

You will find a cheaper hosting option. GitHub and GitLab pages are both free for static sites. I've used both, they both are pretty painless. You basically click "make this a website" and tell it your URL. Automatically HTTPS, completely free.

Wow, I didn't know you can even hook up your own custom domains (looking at GitLab pages). That's pretty amazing.

Yeah, I've been using github pages for my personal site. It even supports HTTPS these days. I only pay for the domain.

gitlab is simply amazing! Moved some years ago from github.com, haven't regretted it at all!

Yep, and there is also https://neocities.org/ for example :).

> You will not find a cheaper hosting option than this.

Services such as Netlify, Surge.sh, and Firebase Hosting can do this at absolutely no cost and you get HTTPS.

Now that I know this, I may try setting up a free static site with Firebase hosting, with a custom domain (my sticking point, before).

> You will not find a cheaper hosting option than this.

If you just want to host static files with HTTPS and reasonable traffic, there's several free options. Netlify, Github Pages, Gitlab Pages, Neocities, ...

I agree that S3, Route 53, Certificate Manager, CloudFront are great for serving small static websites, but as others have mentioned there are plenty of free alternatives. Nonetheless less, I think this approach is the right solution if you're already in the AWS ecosystem since it integrates well with other serveries. E.g, adding LambdaEdge if you need some dynamic components in the future.

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