HelioHost

Today I learned about HelioHost offering free hosting to everyone. When I first began building my online identity, I struggled with steep prices (I still am), and free hosts were a godsend for me. Back then, I used 000webhost and a lot of other free hosts. All of which sucked, because there was always a catch.

Today, when I was scrolling the Free for Dev list for interesting things, I noticed HelioHost. The word non-profit caught my attention. Usually, company offers free hosting to entice would-be customers buying their paid plans. Incoporating a non-profit to offer free hosting is quaint.

I visited their website, and I recall they are one of the hosts I have visited years ago when searching for free web hosting options. Back then I was unable to pay even $1 because I was still a student. Their free Johnny plan is always full. Now that I can offer some donations, I decided to check their Tommy plan, which offers free hosting for one-off donations.

For just 2 dollars I can have a 1GB website for life. This is a steal. I donated right away. Back then it was $1 I believe. Earlier this year they stopped serving ads on their free and Tommy websites as well. The only catch is that for free and one-off donation plans, users must login every 30 days, otherwise the account will be considered inactive.

Of course, since this is a free and fairly cheap host, I expect it to be quite unstable. But looking at Tommy's status page, I think I would not have to worry about it. Most of the downtime is caused by scheduled restart. And most downtime is solved within 5 minutes. Acceptable for a free host.

I don't think I will use it for anything serious. But I will use it to host YOURLS. I am currently hosting my go.karsten.ws branded url using GitHub and Vercel. With HelioHost, I can use a proper short url solution.