As probably most of you, I love trying new frameworks and tools, creating my little projects... you know, the typical stuff.
But it is always an excellent idea, once you finish them and publish them on GitHub, to include a demo link, so people don't need to download your project, initialize it and try to figure out how to run it.
In the past, a good solution was uploading your project to Heroku since it had a free tier that allowed you to host the project for free, and since those projects are just some demos, you don't have to worry about the low specifications of the free machines.
But... it has ended because Heroku announced they would shut down all their free dynos, postgress, and Redis storage, so you have two options: to upgrade to a paid instance or to move your demo projects to another free provider.
Since they are just demo projects, I would say that it is not worth it to switch to a paid instance, so in this article, I am going to give you several free options, each of them with its own "special" things, so it is easier to pick one based on your demo project. Enjoy!
Cloudflare Pages - The best for hosting static pages
Unlimited bandwidth, CDN supported without any changes, it allows custom domains, and even it has a very generous free plan for serverless functions (plus all the other cool stuff like R2, Durable Objects, KV, etc.)
Netlify - The one that has been around for years
If you are looking for another trendy and well-known, Netlify is a solution used by thousands of users and an excellent free plan!
Deta - Good for Node.js and Python apps
They promise they will stay free forever, and you will enjoy deployments in seconds!
Firebase - Provided by Google
If you are already using other Google services and you want to integrate easily with each other, or if you just like Google itself, Firebase provides an excellent free plan for you!
Render - Blazing fast and with lots of free extras
If you are looking for a new provider with speedy servers and DB and Redis for free, this is the one for you!
Railway - If you need support for lots of languages & frameworks
This is your solution if you need to support Node.JS Django, Laravel, Kotlin, Spring, Ruby... out of the box. It has a friendly UI and support for lots of frameworks and languages.
Fly.io - If you are looking to deploy using a Dockerfile
Maybe you want to deploy your Dockerfile instead of a small Node.js server file, a few serverless functions, or a static site.
In that case, this service is perfect for you!
Fleek.co - For those working in web3
It's as simple as deploying on Netlify but supports Web3, so your page can be stored forever on IPFS (even if your domain name expires) without the need to deal with the complexities of web3 development.
Qoddi.com - The Heroku replacement
This is similar to the others in the list but with a significant difference: it is compatible with Heroku buildpacks, so you can move your Heroku project here without making any changes!
Gigalixir.com - For those who develop on Elixir
We have this one for Elixir developers, which is suitable for prototype and testing small apps at no cost.
📰 Some final thoughts
These are a few I have tested myself, but there are even more options out there. As extra advice, if some site asks you for a credit card for using the trial, you could use a disposable credit card (like the ones generated with Revolut or another neo bank)
Let me know in the comments which one you are using or if you know any other provider so I can update this post with them!
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- Twitter: @thenaubit