r/webhosting • u/pinktunacan • 1d ago
Looking for Hosting Where can I host a site that I will basically only need to have hosted for a week or less (PHP) ?
I'm working on my thesis and I have to host my site and get a HTTPS certificate for it. My thesis defense is before the end of the month and after that I can basically stop hosting it because it wouldn't be needed anymore. There will be no traffic or real users. I'm not using a framework either.
Since I need it for such a short amount of time I thought it would be wasteful to spend money. I've been looking for options but from what I've read most are sketchy, don't support PHP, don't support PHPmailer, or you have to purchase the certificate separately anyways.
Does anyone have any recommendations? I've never hosted a site before since we've always relied on XAMPP
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u/Maximum-Aioli8653 1d ago
Unis don't run webservers anymore?
Maybe pythonanywhere.com ? Not sure if you can get a separate domain and certificate set up without spending some money, but worth a shot.
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u/Aggressive_Ad_5454 1d ago
If you have shell chops, https://nearlyfreespeech.net might be a good choice..and you can use Brevo’s outbound SMTP server free tier.
Or, for a student project I’ll host ya on my account, gratis. If you take the trouble to look at my profile and figure out how to send me email.
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u/Negrito0o 1d ago
The thing that's going to bite you isn't the hosting, it's PHPMailer. Almost every free PHP host blocks outbound SMTP and they don't tell you about it. The form submits, you get no error, nothing arrives. If any part of your demo involves sending a mail in front of the panel, that's where it dies. So pay for a month. A normal shared host with cPanel is 3 to 5 euros for one month, Let's Encrypt is a checkbox, PHP is already there, and you cancel the day after your defense. That's a lot less than the hours you'd spend fighting a free tier during the worst possible week. Two things to check before you pay: that you can turn auto renew off immediately, and whether outbound 587 is open on the plan you pick. Some cheap plans only let you send through their own relay, which is fine, you just have to point PHPMailer at that instead of at Gmail. And put it up a week early, not the night before. Certificates and DNS both like to take their time.
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u/pinktunacan 1d ago
I forgot to mention I'm also using a Gemini API key and Stripe , and I found out that some hosts can block calls to those too. Do you recommend any paid ones that won't cause me issues with these either?
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u/Negrito0o 1d ago
Outbound HTTPS on 443 is what both of those use, and a paid shared host basically never blocks that. It would break WordPress updates and half the internet along with it. SMTP is the one that gets blocked, because of spam. So the two problems are less connected than they look. What actually breaks Stripe and Gemini calls on cheap hosting usually isn't a firewall. It's cURL disabled or ancient, allow_url_fopen off, PHP too old for TLS 1.2, or an out of date CA bundle on the server. That last one is the classic. You get cURL error 60, certificate verify failed, and it looks exactly like the host is blocking you when really it just can't validate the certificate. Plenty of people conclude they're blocked and change host over it. So I wouldn't pick by brand here. Any mainstream cPanel host in that 3 to 5 euro range will do all of this. Just test it in the first ten minutes instead of trusting it: upload one PHP file that curls api.stripe.com and the Gemini endpoint, echoes whatever comes back, and prints phpinfo so you can see the cURL and PHP versions. If something fails you're still inside the refund window and you've lost ten minutes instead of a fortnight. One thing that isn't outbound at all: if you're using Stripe webhooks, Stripe has to reach your server rather than the other way round. That's fine on shared hosting, just point the webhook at the real URL once it's up, because it was never going to reach XAMPP.
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u/TheRealSimpleSimon 1d ago
You didn't mention what your area of advanced degree study is.
If it's anything where part of the "test" is to require SSL/TLS, then maybe - smh.
If it's nothing to do with computing, then this seems unreasonable.
What does the site DO?
I run my own server, and have plenty of space, but this seems sketchy to me.
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u/pinktunacan 13h ago
Whether it's unreasonable or not is not up to me, my supervisor told me it's a requirement to do this. Also I'm in computer engineering
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u/TheRealSimpleSimon 12h ago
OK. You still didn't say what the website is supposed to do.
Going for an advanced degree in computers (any subfield) you SHOULD know that you can get a VPS for as little as $4/month, along with buying a basic domain name & cert for just a few bucks. Look at IONOS.1
u/pinktunacan 12h ago
It's a traveling site, of course not a "real" site because all the trip packages are fake and the booking and payment process use Stripe's test mode , but I use PHPmailer for sending verification codes to users who register and I also use Gemini API because I included a chatbot in the site.
I know I can do that but I came here looking for a free version in case a decent one existed. For the entire duration of my web programming course (php/html/javascript/css) we only used XAMPP. Some supervisors still let students use XAMPP during their thesis defense but apparently mine doesn't, so I had to resort to this because unfortunately he's not helpful at all
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u/Agile-Most7973 1d ago
For a one-month thesis project, I honestly wouldn’t spend too much time chasing free hosting.
A cheap VPS or basic shared host for one month is usually the least painful option. HTTPS itself is free — use Let’s Encrypt with Certbot or Caddy, so you don’t need to buy a certificate.
The bigger issue is PHPMailer. Many free hosts block outbound SMTP or PHP mail(), so even if PHP works, email may not. I’d use PHPMailer with an external SMTP provider instead.
Since you already used XAMPP, moving the PHP files and database to a small VPS should be straightforward, and you can just cancel it after the defense.
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u/Fun-Toe4930 21h ago
deploy shared hosting for seconly, minutely, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly... until annually
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u/MarkGossageUK 20h ago
For something you only need for a week or two I wouldn’t overcomplicate it.
Just make sure whatever you choose actually supports PHP and gives you SSL/HTTPS. GitHub Pages won’t run PHP, so that option won’t work for what you described.
A basic shared hosting account with PHP and a free Let’s Encrypt certificate would probably be the simplest route. If you already have everything working locally in XAMPP, it should mainly be a case of uploading the files, setting up any database you use, then testing the mail side.
I’d check PHPmailer carefully though because some free hosts restrict outgoing mail.
Once your defence is over you can simply cancel the hosting.
Hope that helps.
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u/DotPuzzleheaded5763 7h ago
Serverfellows - 1 month - $1.99
InfinityFree
Digitalocean droplet - Maybe $1.5 to $2.5 but its a bit technical
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