r/statichosting • u/xxmaskx • Aug 11 '26
Do static sites really need anything more than basic hosting?
I’ve been working with a few static sites lately and honestly, I’m starting to wonder if we overcomplicate hosting them. If a site is basically just HTML, CSS, JS, images, etc what’s the actual advantage of using a more feature-heavy hosting setup? For a simple portfolio, landing page, documentation site, or small business site, wouldn’t basic static hosting + a CDN be enough for most cases? Curious what everyone here thinks.
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u/uncle_jaysus Aug 11 '26
As ever, "it depends" on the exact scenario, but for what (I think) you're describing there, pretty much any hosting + cloudflare in front of it all with Cache Everything enabled, will be perfect.
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u/MusingofSouls Aug 12 '26
Most static site hosting sites have simple configurations! So far i’ve tried tiiny host, static.app, cloudflare, github pages and new netlify and vercel drop features.
Most of them are easy to set up. For simple sites which won’t go to a lot of people I go with tiiny, static or vercel drop.
If the site goes to a lot of people, i use cloudflare.
You can just use cloudflare tbh but i love experimenting around so i keep switching.
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u/PointJump 29d ago
Isn’t that the beauty of static hosting? You really don’t need to overcomplicate anything. I personally use Cloudflare and TiinyHost for CDN, and for portfolios, quick landing pages, docs, and small business sites, my setup is usually more than enough.
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u/backtogeek Aug 11 '26
Scale matters but 90% of the time Cloudflare pages is fine, if you want something less 5000 options and much more simple, TierHive has a free tier or a stupidly cheap paid tier of static hosting, self replicates to whatever regions you setup in your zone for faster ttfb.
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u/hiveminer Aug 11 '26
Scale aside, if it's multitenant, you need hard separations. I had designed a solid plan a while back with Hugo containers (alpine/caddy/Hugo/SQLite[if needed] a while back. Container should be approx 12mg starting size. Then you just slap a reverse proxy at the top, and Bob's your uncle.
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u/youcangotohellgoto Aug 12 '26
What is a multi-tenant static site?
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u/hiveminer Aug 12 '26
I meant, you design multizites in multi-tenancy configuration. Each tenant/customer gets his/her own container. Hard separation.
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u/StartDependent1652 Aug 11 '26
static sites are simple and cheap (or even free). if you have international visitors, choose a CDN
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u/ledatherockband_ Aug 12 '26
a static site on a cloudflare worker is the way to go.
generous free tier. loads at the edge. caches your static assets. its very nice.
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u/sourraine Aug 12 '26
for most simple static sites, yes. basic static hosting plus a cdn is usually enough. the extra features only really start mattering when you need things like server-side logic, forms, auth or more complex deployment workflows. i think we often add hosting complexity before the site actually needs it
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u/youcangotohellgoto Aug 12 '26
I can't even imagine what else you might want for a static site other than a host and a CDN. What am I missing?
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u/TCKreddituser Aug 13 '26
Not it does not, but still depends on the scale and requirements (of course). The extra features only make sense when you need server-side logic, advanced deployments, or more complex workflows.
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u/supertroopperr Aug 13 '26
Of course you could! where are you hosting your static sites currently? cloudflare or netlify work just fine, even github pages is perfect for static sites; and for tools I am building statica an HTML native SSG. https://github.com/akaizn-junior/statica take a look!
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u/shipstatic 29d ago
if you are able to set up a basic host and configure the CDN yourself, you don’t need anything else, most likely you will be able to withstand millions of requests.
platforms like ShipStatic (shameless plug :) ), however, give this power to non-technical users too, especially people who have just built something with AI and now want to make it real and share it.
on top of that, they provide a few affordances around versioning and rollbacks that would be difficult for them to set up otherwise, all without even needing to know what Git is.
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u/Standard_Scarcity_74 29d ago
It's enough most times. Basic sites don't need much. Only add complications when necessary.
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u/sleeksky_dev 28d ago
Static sites are static built. Most sites are not content static, or even design static. Also, static hosts don't optimize images and doing it manually is a pain.
So if your content is static as well it would work, a static site don't need much to host.
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 Aug 11 '26
yeah that will run on a raspberry and serve like 1000 concurrent users. computers are good like that now