Due to its overall simplicity and convenience, static websites are excellent means of publishing various kinds of content requiring a fixed display of information such as blogs, landing pages, or personal portfolios. They allow for the publication of data similar to printed media without the need for intricate knowledge on database configuration or web programming – making it scalable, manageable, and cost-effective.
When it comes to hosting your static website on the cloud, you have both free and paid ones available. While these services have a good number of similarities including port speed, security, and network bandwidth; there are noticeable differences in key specialty sets offered such as disk storage capacity, data transfer limit, additional scripting support, and many others. Numerous companies provide cloud hosting services, but in this article, we will be discussing the top 3 of them, namely AWS, Digitalocean and google cloud storage.
Amazon Web Services
As one of the leading platforms in the industry, Amazon Web Services offers a broad range of features to help you develop and host your static websites. By employing its cloud services, users are ensured of reasonable operational costs and extensive site development versatility.
Deploying their cloud-hosting service for your static websites begins with setting up a valid AWS Account. While AWS hosting services are paid, they offer free 5 GB data storage and different free utilities for the first twelve months of usage. Afterward, static websites are configured through AWS Amplify, via its Amplify Console. This component provides a git-based workflow for continuous deployment of the static website to be uploaded on the app. Upon purchasing a domain and final in-app configuration process, your static website shall be available for viewing.
DigitalOcean
Partnered with several industries leading businesses such as Docker, Github, Slack, Hashicorp, and many more, DigitalOcean offers developers excellent cloud-hosting services ensured with reliable flat-pricing structure, word-class service, and security up to international standards. Deploying DigitalOcean’s cloud-hosting service for your static websites is comparatively similar to AWS, if not a bit more streamlined.
Using DigitalOcean’s platforms involves setting up an account both for DigitalOcean and Github. Github hosts your static websites by pushing codes to newly created repositories, which shall be deployed towards DigitalOceans App Platform service for viewing. App Platform, by default, provides SSL support but can be customized depending on the developer’s needs. While users are encouraged to pay for their cloud-hosting service to enjoy their platform’s full feature set, you may deploy up to three static websites for free.
Google Cloud Storage
As one of the leading figures on cloud-based technologies, Google cloud-hosting services are readily available for developers looking for an easily accessible platform for their static websites, free of charge.
To deploy their services, it is essential for users to properly configure their Google Cloud Console by ensuring the creation of a GCP project, setting up their billing accounts, and ownership and management of a top-level domain. The set-up process begins with developers connecting their domain to their cloud storage, followed by creating their Google cloud storage bucket. Files to be included to their websites are then uploaded with access control models tweaked depending on user preferences. Finally, after testing the working condition of the registered domain, your static website will be readily available for use.
Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean, and Google Cloud Storage provide some of the industry’s best cloud hosting services. Although these are the top three cloud-hosting platforms, you may also go through the features of other cloud hosting companies and see which one will suit you the most.
