Hosting Free Web Apps for Developers: Your Essential Toolkit
Are you a web developer tired of the endless search for free web hosting services online? Well, consider this the Holy Grail of free web hosting.
In this guide, I’ll lead you through a plethora of free web hosting services, all of which I have personally tested on my own, covering front-end, back-end, and database technologies, while also highlighting their advantages and disadvantages.
I’ll guide you through a series of options to deploy websites that use HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, jQuery, React, Node, Flask, Django, PHP, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB and more.
Let’s dive in, pal!
Free Hosting Services for Front-End Technologies
GitHub Pages
If you just want to deploy simple static websites that only contain code in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other simple front-end libraries such as Bootstrap and jQuery. You’ll find GitHub Pages to be the right fit for you.
I have personally used it several times to deploy simple front-end exercises such as a Responsive Fictitious Mexican Restaurant Landing Page, Desktop Photography Company Landing Page and HTML5 games like Rock Paper Scissors and Etch a Sketch App.
However, you cannot deploy your back-end using GitHub pages and you’re limited to the content you can deploy. Nonetheless, you may deploy your back-end somewhere else and communicate to it through AJAX requests.
Pros
Website Speed: Your website will be quite fast which provides an awesome user experience.
Deployment Convenience: You mostly need to deploy your front-end code to GitHub and choose the branch that contains your website to deploy it.
Cons
Subdomain Limitation: You cannot choose the subdomain of your website. It will always be your GitHub username.
No Customer Support: You are the only person who is responsible for the performance of your website. You’re the programmer, figure it out.
Netlify
Netlify is a great website that allows you to deploy complex web applications that use modern web development libraries and frameworks such as React.js, Vue.js, Node.js, Next.js, etc.
I have personally used it to deploy a React App I was building as part of a Udemy course.
Pros
Easy Deployment: All you need to deploy a front-end app to Netlify is to provide the GitHub repository of your app and go through the deployment steps.
Automatic Deployments: Your Netlify Web App will automatically deploy the most recent changes of your GitHub repository once it’s already been deployed.
Cons
Limited Hosting: The maximum number of websites you can deploy under Netlify’s free tier is 500. Beyond that you cannot deploy more websites.
Costly Resources: Even though you use the free-tier, Netlify still tracks the charge of certain features such as the build time of your website and bandwidth.
Free Hosting Services for Back-End Technologies
Render
I think this is a fantastic service to use not only to deploy back-end services, but full-stack web applications as well. It contains built-in support for the most popular and modern web development technologies such as React, Node, Express, Flask, Django, Go, Ruby on Rails, and Laravel.
I have personally used render to deploy a news header website I developed on my own called News Maximus built upon React and Node:
However, in case your back-end stack is not natively supported you can still deploy your web application thanks to Docker. Most of the time all you need to do is to package your web application, create a Dockerfile to describe it and Render will take care of the rest.
I have personally deployed a Java Spring Boot Web Application thanks to Render’s Docker support to showcase a prototype of a Job Posting Management System along with the PostgreSQL database it uses to store data about job postings.
Pros
Service Diversity: You may deploy static websites, full-stack applications as web services, and even PostgreSQL and Redis remote database instances.
Easy Deployment: You need to connect your web app’s GitHub repository to Render and then go through the deployment steps which are simple to follow and provide logs in case any error arises during deployment.
Cons
Slow Rendering: According to the Render Documentation on their Free Tier. If your website remains inactive for 15 minutes or more, the next time you visit it the website will load way slower.
Expiring Databases: In case you chose to build a remote instance of a database, this instance will be destroyed after 3 months unless you upgrade the database instance.
000WebHost
Now, we’ve all heard good old PHP is dead and that no one uses it anymore. However, if that is the case, then why is 000WebHost still offering it’s free web hosting service for PHP web applications? Questions like that do not let me sleep at night.
Anyway, in case you are a good and traditional PHP developer looking to deploy a PHP website then 000WebHost is the right fit for you. In fact, it even deploys Wordpress websites for FREE.
I have personally used it to deploy a sample Artist Portfolio Web Application that connects to a MySQL remote database and uses PHPMailer to send emails. Moreover, I plan to still using it because my journey on PHP development has just begun.
Pros
Password Protected File Manager: Indeed, 000WebHost will require you to create a unique password to modify each website you wish to deploy there which entails a nice security measure.
Free Extra Services: Other Free extra services such as 1 database, 1 FTP account and 1 CRON job are available under the free tier.
Cons
No Git Support: You cannot clone the GitHub repository that contains your web app right into the file manager dashboard. You’ll have to do that manually. Moreover, editing files in 000WebHost is quite cumbersome.
Strict Limitations: You can only deploy 2 free websites without any backups, SSH access, customer support, or management tools for your Wordpress website.
Python Anywhere
If you love the Python Programming Language and the Linux Operating System then you will definitely love Python Anywhere, my friend.
This free service not only allows you to develop Web Applications built with popular Python back-end frameworks such as Flask and Django, but it also allows you to use the Bash terminal to interact with your file manager. In fact, it already has text-based command line editors such as Nano and Vim.
What sort of back-end developer and command-line lover would hate this platform?
I have personally used Python Anywhere before to deploy an Email Sending API that has the option to send emails based on HTML email templates. Unfortunately, right now my Email Sending Web API is down because I forgot to renew it.
Pros
Git Support: You can perfectly clone your GitHub repository into your Bash console in Python Anywhere to import your web application files. In fact, I think this is the only efficient way to do so.
Free Hosting Renewal: After 3 months of deployment, your web application will be discontinued from the internet. However, you can deploy your web app again for another 3 months and ALL FOR FREE.
Cons
Complex Deployment Process: To deploy either Flask or Django apps on this platform you’ll have to read the documentation to change some key configurations. It may take you a long time to debug and deploy your web app.
Restricted URLs Whitelist: If the web app you’re building requires the usage of an external Web API or you’re doing web scrapping. Then, you’ll get a Networking Error from the platform if the websites you’re trying to access from your Python code are not present in the Whitelist for Free Users.
Free Hosting Services for Remote Databases
FreeDB
Have you noticed how easy it is to create free remote MySQL database instances? I have looked through a series of options. However, I only have personal experience with FreeDB.
FreeDB offers us one FREE MySQL database that we can use for any programming project: web apps, mobile apps, data analysis, you name it since you’re free to store any kind of data according to their Terms of Service
Pros
Easy Configuration: Even a 4-year old child can create a remote MySQL instance on FreeDB. All you need to do is to configure the basic features of your MySQL database and it will up and running in no time.
Customer Support: Once you create an account on FreeDB you’ll have a Contact section available that will allow you to query the team behind the platform. I have never used it yet. However, it’s there for a reason.
Cons
String usage limitations: You can only store up to 50MB of data and you can only connect to your remote instance around 800–1000 times which makes it quite cumbersome to develop web and mobile applications.
Limited User Privileges: You will be unable to use root/super privileges on your remote MySQL database instance. In fact, you’ll be unable to do this even with an upgraded account.
MongoDB Atlas
No-SQL databases are in everybody’s mouth nowadays, we have MongoDB, Redis, Firestore, and many others. They are popular because they allow us to store data without specifying a clear schema. However, they come with the disadvantage that it is way harder to find relationships among data.
However, I’ll stick to MongoDB Atlas because it is a service I have used before and because MongoDB is a popular No-SQL database technology because it belongs to the MEAN, MERN, and MEVN stacks that use Node and Express for the back-end.
(The only difference among them is the Front-End JS framework they use: Angular, React, and Vue respectively)
Pros
Clear Instructions: Scared because you have no idea how to connect to your remote MongoDB Atlas cluster? Worry no more, MongoDB Atlas gives you clear instructions on how to connect your remote instance to either your shell or your Node application.
Performance: One of the main reasons why No-SQL databases are so popular is how quick their write and read operations are. Indeed, MongoDB Atlas will not take that from you even under their free tier.
Cons
Complex Installation: Installing the software required to use MongoDB in your system’s command line is a long and strenuous process. I would not like to go through it again because I even needed to create a new Ubuntu VM that was compatible with the MongoDB command-line client application.
Costly resources: Resource limitations under their Free Tier are quite limited and it is hard to track down the cost of any extra resources you use. So be careful.
Conclusion
Now that you know what the Holy Grail of free deployment services for web development is. What are you waiting for, my friend?
Go on, build fantastic web apps, and share them with your friends.
Grow on your path to becoming a full-stack web developer and get used to deploying your websites.
I’m counting on you.
Happy coding!
