It Is 2025. Why Are You Paying to Host HTML?
I audited a client's expenses last week. They were paying $240/year to Bluehost to host a WordPress blog that gets 500 visitors a month. I almost threw up.
The "Shared Hosting" industry (Bluehost, GoDaddy, HostGator) relies on the fact that you don't know any better. They sell you "Unlimited Bandwidth" on a server from 2012 that chokes if 5 people visit at once. Then, after the first year, they jack up the renewal price by 300%.
Stop it. In late 2025, you should either be paying $0 or $5. Anything in between is a scam. Here is the honest infrastructure stack that developers actually use.
1. The "Free" Winner: Cloudflare Pages
If you are hosting a blog (like this one), a portfolio, or a documentation site, you should pay $0.00.
"But what about Vercel?" Vercel is great. Until you go viral. Vercel charges for bandwidth. If your site hits the front page of Hacker News, you wake up to a $500 bill. Cloudflare Pages gives you unlimited bandwidth on the free tier.
- Speed: It serves your site from the "Edge" (200+ cities). It is faster than any $50/month shared server.
- Cost: Zero. Forever.
- The Catch: It's for static sites (React, Vue, HTML). You can't host a PHP database on it easily.
2. The "Power" Winner: Hetzner (VPS)
You need a database. You need Docker. You need a backend. Everyone tells you to use AWS or DigitalOcean. Don't.
- DigitalOcean: $6/month gets you 1 vCPU and 1GB RAM.
- Hetzner: $5/month gets you 2 vCPUs and 4GB RAM (ARM64).
Hetzner is the best-kept secret in tech. You get 3x the power for the same price. The only "downside" is their UI looks like it was designed in 1999. Who cares? You SSH in once and never look at the UI again.
3. The "Coolify" Flex (Self-Hosting Vercel)
The ultimate setup in 2025 isn't Vercel. It's Coolify. Coolify is an open-source tool that you install on your $5 Hetzner server. It gives you the exact same UI as Vercel—automatic deployments from GitHub, free SSL, database management—but you own it.
- Cost: $5/month (for the VPS).
- Limits: None.
- Privacy: You own the data. No "Platform Risk."
The Real Numbers: The "Shared" Scam vs. The Modern Stack
I compared the cost of hosting a standard portfolio site for 3 years.
| Provider | Year 1 Cost | Year 3 Cost (Renewal) | Performance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bluehost / GoDaddy | $35 (Promo) | $450+ (They jack it up) | Slow (Shared CPU) |
| Vercel / Netlify | $0 | $0 (Unless you go viral) | Fast |
| Cloudflare Pages | $0 | $0 (Unlimited Traffic) | Instant (Edge Network) |
| Hetzner + Coolify | $60 | $60 | Extreme (Dedicated RAM) |
The Verdict: If it's static, use Cloudflare. If it's dynamic, use Hetzner. If you use GoDaddy, I can't help you.
Frequently Asked Questions (That Hosting Companies Hide)
Is WordPress dead?
Not dead, just expensive to host correctly. To run WordPress fast, you need a VPS (Hetzner) or "Managed Hosting" (WPEngine), which costs $30/month. If you just want a blog, switch to a Static Site Generator (like 11ty or Hugo). It loads instantly, cannot be hacked, and hosts for free.
Why is AWS so expensive?
AWS is for the Fortune 500. They charge you for everything—ingress, egress, load balancers, NAT gateways. A $5 Hetzner server is equivalent to a $80/month AWS setup. Unless you need "Compliance" (HIPAA/GovCloud), stay away from AWS for personal projects. See our Cloud Bill Nightmare guide for horror stories.
Is self-hosting hard?
It used to be. You had to know Linux commands. Now, with Coolify, you just run one command line script, and you get a dashboard. If you can click "Connect GitHub," you can self-host.
Leon Staffing knows infrastructure. If you need a DevOps engineer who can save you 50% on your cloud bill, hire from our network.