I am looking to get some hosting for a static website. Sadly, doesn’t seem like privacyguides recommends any web hosting services… It would be nice if it did!
Anyway, these are my requirements:
Cheap. Money is tight right now.
Reputable. I don’t want some random shell-company registrar in Seychelles that is probably a honeypot
Good with privacy (Duh, why else would I be asking here?)
Good whois privacy protection
Preferably can do both Domain and Webhosting (not a must)
Beginner friendly (aka probably offers WordPress)
So far, I have found 1984 and Porkbun. But I am open to any reasonable suggestions. I would especially appreciate experienced members (or privacyguides team members) to chime in, as this is a new thing for me
Another option for static websites (HTML, CSS, JS, pictures) is neocities.org
It’s completely free (I think 1 GB of storage), and you don’t need to give them any information about yourself (no name, no phone number, no payment info; just an email).
If you pay for premium ($5/month) you can host any file types you like and connect a domain to it. Neocities - Become a Supporter
The cheapest and most secure way to host your static website would be Arweave. In fact, it’s not a host, though. It’s a decentralized infrastructure that you can build upon.
I would also look into actually static pages (you mention Wordpress, but that is a PHP and database-powered CMS) aka Jamstack. Then you can use the already mentioned Codeberg Pages for free or sourcehut pages for cheap.
As for domain, well not registering one in your name in is both cheap and privacy-friendly. You can use the domain that’s coming with your hosting solution. But if you want one, I would probably choose Porkbun for a cheap option that doesn’t suck. (Hint: Namecheap sucks.)
Cloudflare pages meets all your requirements. They’ve got the most secure and reputable services around. Privacy-wise, they’re solid too since you don’t need to run any 3rd party JS from them on your website. If you choose to put your email there, they can protect your email from crawlers and bots. The website itself can be locked down too if you really want to avoid getting crawled.
I was about to post a similar question here. In regards to my use case, I am trying to create a design portfolio website, but without money I need a free yet as private as possible web host. I’m not versed in legal stuff nor that good at this kind of research so forgive me if I make any mistakes, misinterpretations, or overblow anything. Currently I am stuck between either Neocities or Codeberg Pages and here’s what I found about them:
Neocities
I found this post on reddit which highlighted two things for me (the post goes more into detail on stuff so I recommend reading that):
The fact that despite it being open source and the language implying that the there is a group behind the project, Neocities seems to almost be entirely run and managed by one person for years
That same person, who happens to be the founder, says in an old post that the organization behind Neocities is for-profit
I would also like to note that I don’t know if Neocities is being hosted from its own servers or is being hosted on another company’s servers. The Privacy Policy does state:
"We may provide your Personally Identifiable Information to affiliates that provide services to us with regards to our Website (i.e. payment processors, Website hosting companies, etc.)
In addition, Neocities’ Privacy Policy, while not terrible, does raise other concerns such as reserving the right to disclose personal information without notifying you, or assuming consent from your usage of the site (I used TLDR:TOS for help with this)
Codeberg (Pages)
By contast, Codeberg seems to commit to as minimal of data collection as possible according to their Privacy Policy
Codeberg does seems to not only be run by more than one person, but is also extremely active in terms of updates to the community
I am not familiar with how services like github work so please point out any flaws in this logic: Comparing commit history on some repos on both Neocities and Codeberg, it seems that more active people have hands on the source code at Codeberg compared to Neocities
Comparing Updates, Codeberg has a blog that updates every few months, meanwhile Neocities seems to have slowed down their blog to once a year if lucky.
I don’t want to be overly antagonistic to Neocities however, looking at the issues page, it does seem that the founder does still interact with the community. with this example being the most recent one I found.
Codeberg does explicitly say where data is being handled from, to quote them:
" We are hosted on our own hardware in a rented facility in Berlin, Germany. We might additionally offload certain tasks to other providers, e.g. netcup GmbH and Hetzner Online GmbH, e.g. for backups / redundancy etc. We make sure that your data is sufficiently protected and avoid large cloud providers where possible."
On a more personal note regarding my use case, I am concerned regarding this part of the FAQ regarding licensing. My portfolio is a bunch of graphic design work that I prefer not to be free to use, copy, and modify currently. Would Codeberg not be a good fit for me because of this? I am not knowledgeable on licenses and copyright if someone more knowledgeable on this topic can better inform me that would be great.
Again, I am new to all of this, so please feel free to constructively correct any critiques I made. I just did this all in one night. Overall both services seem to be the most private, free website hosting services that I have found.
Would like to update this in regards to the licensing issue I had in case anyone else had that same reservation. Talking with the community (not the team), I come to these conclusions:
Licensing in regards to Codeberg Pages only applies to the code of the Pages’ server, not the code of your site.
Codeberg Pages is primarily for sites that focus on, or have something to do with free and open source software. However it can be used as for sites like a non-coding portfolio provided the following:
So long as your site is static, and doesn’t take up too much space in the servers (ex: your repo being 50-100MB) then you’ll be fine.
Again, new to website hosting and codeberg so feel free to correct me.
Additionally, you can take a look at Jamstack to find static site generators and content management systems that you may want to use for the website:
I want to chime in on a couple of details here. Most of the domain name providers have WHOIS privacy protection, however if they are offering “GDPR Whois Protection” they will not redact the Country, State, and Organization fields. This something that never really gets talked about.
Since you are looking at something beginner friendly, you likely want to go with shared hosting and a one-click install. Most providers would be entirely fine for this use case, including companies like DigitalOcean.
The issue here is that you haven’t really brought up your threat model and use case. If you just want a personal blog with your name attached to it, then as good as any provider will do. If you are looking to have anonymity and pay with Monero, then you’ll want to look at the options I listed in the other thread. It also depends on what kind of content you want to publish. For example, some providers, such as FlokiNet, pride themselves as a free speech VPS provider, however they are known to suspend accounts for “medical disinformation”, especially relating to Covid.
I can provide a more accurate selection of hosts, but you would have to elaborate more on your use case and threat model, otherwise it’s difficult to make a more targeted recommendation.