Currently, there are two options
One is Cloudflare Pages
The other is GitHub Pages
I highly recommend the first one because its ecosystem is more mature, while the second often experiences occasional stability issues.
Free Websites
Everything is free except for custom domains.
You can deploy your own HTML, such as for tool sites or blogs.
Currently, one of my navigation sites is deployed on Cloudflare Pages, and it has repeatedly helped me avoid the risk of service interruption due to local network problems.
My local network has experienced issues at least seven or eight times, and each time, it made the website inaccessible.
Services for personal use are fine, but if it’s a public service with traffic, stability is crucial.
For example, a blog.
My other blog site is also deployed on Cloudflare Pages; the website is very fast, scoring over 90, meeting SEO requirements, and is stable.
There’s no need to bother with SSL certificates or website deployment yourself. I use Astro.js; I just need to package the dist folder and drag and drop it onto Cloudflare Pages.
From personal experience, a few images can be packaged along with the articles and uploaded to the dist folder to publish pages.
I’ve asked AI multiple times: even if a blog receives hundreds of thousands or millions of visits a day, there’s no need to worry about costs; it’s all free. Moreover, Cloudflare Pages will help defend against most network attacks.
With my own server, I encounter a series of problems such as crashes, viruses, network attacks, website deployment, backups, and so on.
For non-technical people, this is simply hell-level difficulty.
Recommendation
Therefore, Cloudflare Pages is currently what benefits me the most.
Except for a custom domain, which costs a few dollars a year, everything else is completely free.
I recommend that university students, students from mountainous regions, and entrepreneurs looking to minimize expenses prioritize Cloudflare Pages, especially for tool sites and blogs.
It truly is your own web asset, and you can earn income through various methods such as Google Ads, affiliate commissions, and paid e-books.
AI
With AI writing code now, a tool site can be set up in just a few minutes.
Even without earning money from ads, if the website helps improve efficiency and supports business, that’s enough.
Of course, Pages is only for the frontend. Most website and business operations still require a database backend to process data.
In this case, a server is still needed.
Therefore, I recommend Pages for writing blogs, taking notes, doing affiliate marketing, etc.
Go the content route.
Everyone can do it.