What free website hosting actually gives you

Free website hosting is not a trick. Serving a small static site genuinely costs a provider very little, and the free tier is how they meet you.

But "free" is never unlimited, and providers differ enormously in where they put the limit. Some cap bandwidth. Some cap builds. Some are free until you want a domain. Some are free until someone actually visits.

This is a guide to reading those limits — including ours, which we will be specific about rather than vague.

The five limits that actually exist

Nearly every free tier is defined by some combination of these. If a provider does not state one, that is the one worth asking about.

Storage. How much your files take up. A text-and-images site is usually under 10 MB. Video will blow through any free tier, which is why people put video on YouTube and embed it.

Traffic. Usually counted in visits or in bandwidth. This is the one that surprises people: a site can be free forever and then suddenly not be, because it got popular.

Number of sites. One free site is common. It is limiting the moment you want a second one.

Custom domains. Very often the free/paid line. Free gets you yourname.provider.com; your own yourname.com costs. It is worth checking rather than assuming — it is not universal, and we do not do it.

Server-side code. Static pages are cheap to serve. Code that runs on every request is not, so it is usually restricted, metered, or paid.

What happens when you hit a limit

More important than the number, and much less often stated. There are three behaviours, and they are very different:

• The site goes offline until the period resets or you upgrade.
• You get billed for the overage, sometimes without a cap.
• The site slows down but keeps serving.

The middle one is the dangerous one. Stories of surprise four-figure hosting bills almost always come from a service with no spending ceiling. If a provider does not tell you what happens at the limit, assume the worst and ask.

We stop serving. Your sites return an error until the month resets or you upgrade. That is worse for your uptime and better for your bank account, and we think that is the right trade for people publishing a personal site.

Our limits, specifically

Free:

• Two websites
• 100 MB storage
• 100,000 requests a month — requests, not visitors. A single page view is the page itself plus every image, font and script on it, so a simple page costs several requests
• One custom domain — your own name, not just a subdomain of ours
• A free dashploy.app address for every site, with HTTPS
• No credit card

Paid, if you outgrow it — Starter is $4.99 a month or $49 a year, Pro is $14.99 or $149. Those add more sites, more domains, more storage and more traffic.

What free does not include:

• More than one custom domain. One name pointed at one site is free. A second name, or one for each of several sites, is a paid plan.
• Room, not capability. Static sites and server-side apps both publish immediately on the free plan — a login, a form that stores what people submit, an API. What runs out first is storage, traffic and the number of sites, which is what the paid plans buy.

Worth stating plainly, because most hosts do it the other way round: paying does not unlock server-side apps here. They are on from the start. Payment buys quota.

The questions worth asking any provider

Whoever you end up with:

1. What happens when I hit the limit — offline, throttled, or billed?
2. Is there a spending cap, and can I set it?
3. Is a custom domain included, and what happens to my site if I stop paying?
4. Can I get my files back out?
5. Is HTTPS included, or is that the upsell?

A provider that answers all five plainly is telling you something about how they will behave later.

Where free is genuinely enough

For a large number of sites, the free tier is not a trial period — it is the permanent answer:

• A portfolio
• A small business page with hours and contact details
• A wedding or event page
• A menu
• A landing page for something you are testing
• A calculator or small tool that runs in the visitor's browser

None of these come close to the request allowance. A light page costs perhaps five requests a view, so 100,000 requests is on the order of twenty thousand visits a month — and if you are past that, it is a good problem and $4.99 is not the obstacle.

Where it is not

Be realistic about when you will need to pay:

• You need your own domain — that is the most common reason, and it is reasonable.
• Your site stores data — bookings, accounts, submissions.
• You are running something with real traffic.

The useful question is not "is it free" but "what does it cost when it works". A host that is free at zero visitors and unpredictable at ten thousand is worse than one that is $4.99 and boring.