blogging on a budget

I’ve been loving Manu’s People and Blogs series, but one thing that has caught my eye is how much some people are paying to run their blogs. Sometimes, it’s much more than I can afford and, I suspect, more than many beginning bloggers are willing or able to shell out.

So, for you wonderful, creative beginning bloggers, I’ve done some research and put together this guide to blogging on a budget.

tools

Before we dive in, let’s take a look at the fundamental building blocks of a blog.

A way to publish your thoughts easily
A way to customize the presentation of those thoughts to fit your personality
A way for others to follow along
A way for your readers to respond

Your solution needs a way to accomplish all of these.

The most common option is to find a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, but for this Blog on a Budget I’d like to recommend looking for a Static Site Generator you like; SSGs essentially take files with your blog posts and follow a set of rules and templates to generate the code of your site.

Now, how well does a static site generator meet those goals we set?

Publishing thoughts easily: For most static site generators, you’ll write your posts in Markdown, a plain-text system for writing easily with formatting. Whether or not you go this route, it’s worth learning Markdown; it’s used on many different platforms and very simple to learn.
Customizing the presentation: With most static site generators, you can either pick from numerous themes or design a site from scratch yourself. If you want a nice, readable theme where you can just focus on your writing, CJ made a wonderful Hugo theme and starter template using a stylesheet I developed, readable.css.
Readers can follow along: If you don’t know about web feeds yet, now is the time to learn. Pretty much all static site generators will generate a feed for you, which is cheap and easy for readers to follow along with. If you want to send emails as well, you could use something like Buttondown, but that will cut into your budget.
A way for readers to respond: The simplest way, I believe, is to add a “Reply by Email” button like I’ve done, optionally with a link to a social media post to reply to. Webmentions are also a good option if you have the know-how to set it up.

I’m planning a project to make a simple, lightweight implementation of the Open Heart Protocol intended for use with static sites as part of The Static Quest for easy feedback from readers—keep your eyes open for that if you’re interested!

As you can see, all of the requirements of a blog are met, even if sometimes through methods not common on mainstream websites.

price points

Once you’ve got your site figured out, it’s time to figure out where to host it. We’re going to assume you’re not one to try and set up a server in your own home; that’s a wonderful approach, but if you have that know-how this probably isn’t the article you’re looking for. 😉

free

There are myriad companies that will provide free static site hosting:

Codeberg Pages
GitHub Pages
Neocities
Vercel
Netlify (though be warned; I’ve heard you can get unexpected high charges if you get traffic above what’s included)
Cloudflare Pages

Some of these platforms will take care of building your site for you if you upload the code. Others may want you just to upload the resulting files. I haven’t actually used any of these platforms, but if you search Clew you’ll probably find the experiences of others who have.

If you want your blog to be completely free to you, you’ll need to use a platform which provides a free subdomain; I know that Codeberg and GitHub Pages do, as does Neocities, but I don’t think the others here do.

…which brings me to the next price tier.

$1 per month

The biggest upgrade you can make is to own your own domain name; a .com domain will cost you about $10/year from Porkbun, my preferred registrar. A .blog domain is also cool (I use it for tty1.blog), but be warned that it’s more on the order of $20/year.

At this price point, your own domain name on a free hosting platform is about the best you can get, currently. That said, I am toying with the idea of providing $12/year static site hosting (though that wouldn’t include a domain name, it would include unlimited domains/sites of your own). If you like that idea or have thoughts in that area I’d love to hear from you about them (my email is at the bottom of this article).

Note that some platforms (notably Neocities) charge extra to bring your own domain name, though I personally strongly disagree with this practice. You’ll want to check your chosen platform’s policies in this regard. The best thing about static sites, though? If you decide you want to switch providers, you can super easily.

$5 per month

At this point you can really begin to cut loose! Have a little elbow room. This is my sweet spot, my comfort zone. You’re done relying on companies to provide free services.

My top pick for this price point is Uberspace, who have hosted all of my websites since 2022.

Why is Uberspace so amazing? Well, they do provide an amazing service which has always come through for me, they go up to bat for their customers, and are just amazing on that level. But it’s their business model that really grabs my attention.

Okay, here it is. Are you ready? Brace yourself. The cost for an Uberspace account is… pay what you can. Yes, you heard that right. You set your own price for the service; people who can pay more help subsidize those who can’t afford to pay as much. It’s brilliant and foolish and amazing all tied up into one wonderful package, and the best part is it seems to work.

I love that picture of the web, and it’s one I want to encourage. From what I’ve seen, they truly care about their customers and strongly believe that everyone deserves a voice on the internet and are willing to build a payment model that demonstrates that belief.

Uberspace is the first hosting company I’ve used that I can tell truly cares about me and not just my money.

Their recommended minimum cost is €5/month (you can set it lower if money is short for a bit, but they’ll automatically raise it at the end of the month), so if that’s your budget I’d say you need look no further. They include a subdomain of *.uber.space and (and this was a surprise to me) email hosting.

If you can afford a little more, I do recommend paying it to help support their mission, but there is absolutely zero shame in paying what you can, since that’s exactly what they ask for.

They essentially provide you with a user on a Linux box. You can have as many sites as you want using any language they support, not just static sites. They also have some of the best documentation I’ve seen as well as the Uberlab with guides to hosting a number of open source software platforms. I even hosted Polymaths Alpha on my Uberspace account for months, which it handled capably.

$6 per month

Pretty simple; Uberspace with a custom domain. 😉

>$6 per month???

Honestly I don’t think you’re gonna need more than $6 per month to host a blog. If you do feel the need for more, well, you’re probably outside the scope of this article. That said if you still want my tips, do let me know! My email is at the bottom of this article and I’d love to help you brainstorm an idea to fit your use case.

honorable mentions

Here are some other platforms for hosting blogs that I’ve heard great things about but didn’t cover in this article.

prose.sh
Bear Blog (has regional pricing!)
WriteFreely

And some email-sending platforms:

Mailgun (may take some technical know-how)

And an interesting hybrid:

FastMail appears to let you host static sites as part of your email plan

a tentative suggestion

If something I suggested here is saving you money, perhaps consider donating a portion of those savings to help support my work? If that’s not in the cards, no worries, continue enjoying everything here for free. If you do feel led to help me support my projects, you can do so on my Liberapay profile!