I'm on the hunt for the best free tier options for hosting a React website. I started with Vercel, but I've noticed I've quickly burned through their 100GB limit. The site isn't large and is currently only being tested by one friend for feedback, yet it seems like the data usage has shot up. I also know about Netlify, but I suspect its free tier is just as limited as Vercel's. Are there any other good alternatives out there for hosting small websites without incurring costs? I'd rather not pay for hosting since this is for a family member's small business.
5 Answers
That's a lot of bandwidth for a solo dev site. Are you hosting any large files or 3D content? Double-check if there are videos or big images consuming all that data. Typically, an average website shouldn't go over 1GB per month unless you have loads of traffic.
100GB usage is surprisingly high! Do you have large media files? If you're just dealing with a few static images, then it’s likely your site's setup causing the problem rather than the free tier itself.
For hosting a React website, static file hosting works well. You might want to check out Cloudflare R2; they offer a solid free tier that should fit your needs. But honestly, if you're burning through 100GB a month on a small site, something seems off. You might want to double-check your setup.
Yeah, it felt a bit overwhelming seeing that usage! I only deploy every few days and went live about mid-March with just one tester. I've reached out to Vercel support to clarify if I messed up something in the configuration.
Why not consider self-hosting? Grab a small mini PC; that could be a great solution for you!
Cloudflare Pages is definitely worth it! They offer an excellent free tier, and I've been using them for over a year with no costs at all. If you want, you could also use AWS S3 buckets with a trick to set metadata for HTML display, but you'll incur small fees for routing eventually. I'd recommend going with Cloudflare!
I have a few static images, but nothing excessive. I'm starting to think it might be related to the coding or how I've structured everything.