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Add to SafariWhen comparing NearlyFreeSpeech vs Surge, the Slant community recommends NearlyFreeSpeech for most people. In the question“What are the best website hosting providers?” NearlyFreeSpeech is ranked 5th while Surge is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose NearlyFreeSpeech is:
NearlyFreeSpeech charges per resources and services used, as such it is very scalable and makes static site hosting very cheap for users who decide to go with this hosting option since static sites require very little resources.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Very scalable
NearlyFreeSpeech charges per resources and services used, as such it is very scalable and makes static site hosting very cheap for users who decide to go with this hosting option since static sites require very little resources.
Pro Relatively easy to use
NearlyFreeSpeech provides SFTP access and a more traditional shared hosting environment compared to other services. This makes it easy for users who are not very advanced but still want to create a static site.
Pro Very privacy oriented
They will never discuss your situation with anyone to the extent that the law allows. They won't even state why a website is down. If you are not the account holder, don't expect any details from them.
Pro Very informative FAQ
The FAQ will address pretty much everything you might want to know before joining, and then some.
Pro Free Tier
Unlimited projects, deployments, and collaborators in free tier which also includes basic SSL. Pro options for those who need it cost $13/month (or all you can eat top tier at $30/mo) which gives you auto-provisioning SSL certificates on custom domains.
Pro Automatic Clean URLS
/page resolves /page.html
Pro Custom 404.html files
Catch-all 200.html files.
Pro Six Keystrokes to publish site
Type surge and hit enter in your project directory to deploy.
Pro pushState support for single page apps
Great for front ends like React and Vue.
Pro Automatic Gziping
Auto gzips and sends gziped files.
Pro Supports Jekyll and Grunt and other CIs
Pro Far-future expire headers
Pro Support on Slack
Live Chat Support.
Pro ent (intelligently) about trailing slashes (“/”)
Pro Fully featured CLI tool
Provides a CLI tool to easily deploy using terminal with surge command.
Pro Atomic Deploys
Deployments are fast, instant, and atomic - with zero chance of collisions.
Cons
Con Only for those who know what they are doing
They do absolutely no "hand holding" unless you purchase a support package and even then it's barebones.
Con The FAQ is so long that you can spend over an hour reading it
That's the FAQ if you are thinking about becoming a member. There's a much more detailed FAQ for members.
Con Not free
Although it can be very cheap to host a simple static site on NearlyFreeSpeech for about $3/$4 a year, it still is not free.
Con Does not support .pdf by default
Does not support .pdf. To get PDF support you have to add a credit card by running surge card (though no charges apply).
