My good friend asked me to help him set up a simple splash page for his new business. The requirements were simple: get something up quickly that showed their branding and allowed interested parties to leave an email address to get more information.
I was busy with work and other things at the time, so didn't put too much thought into it and pointed him to use either Wix or Square Space. Those both work, and have a nice GUI to build out a simple site, but there are many cheaper options available these days that are almost as simple to set up, and likely a better end result.
We'll break this down into a few parts:
- Hosting the site
- Designing a simple splash page with a background image
- Setting up a form, which is slightly outside the normal specs of a "static site"
This post will focus on the first, and we'll follow up with the other two. The options we'll go through are:
Static Site Hosting Options
Github Pages
This is the solution currently used (as of May 2025) for this site. It's fast, easy, and free. However, this solution,
like most of the services here, are more technical than something like Square Space, and knowing or being familiar with
command line tools like git will certainly help.
Gitlab Pages
Cloudflare Pages
Cloudflare is.. kind of awesome. They offer free static site hosting and have a global CDN as well that not only can help prevent some bot spam, but should give quick page load speeds across the globe.
Similar to other solutions, there is a git integration to deploy the site, but there is also a
Direct Upload solution for those less technical.
Vercel
I've never used Vercel, but have heard great things. Upon browsing their docs, however, it seems slightly more complex than some other solutions here. Although, if you're using one of their supported frameworks (see link above), it might be a good fit.
Netlify
Similar to Vercel, also have not used, but have heard much about.
AWS S3 + Cloudfront
The heavyweight in the ring - AWS - offers a few different solutions for hosting. The most basic is setting up a storage bucket in S3 and throwing your files there. However, Cloudfront is needed to then serve the site over a CDN for much better global performance, and to set up SSL.
AWS usually provides a free tier for a limited amount of time (usually up to a year though), and then should be quite cheap even after that.
AWS Amplify
This is Amazon's more plug-and-play, bells and whistles version of the above. It seems similar to Vercel and Netlify, Amazon-style. As above, this is free for up to a year with bandwidth limits before being charged (but again, should be inexpensive).
Amplify can work directly with assets stored in S3, or there is a drag-and-drop solution as well.
The Verdict?
To be honest, we're a bit spoiled these days; all of these solutions are great. The "right" one really depends on your requirements, where your code is stored, your technical prowess, and your familiarity with some of the services and tools above.
My recommendation would be to try out Cloudflare Pages first, and move to other options if needed.