Web Hosting for basic website?

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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.

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