Side projects
Combine filters →A side project is an application with an audience of one to a hundred and no revenue behind it. What it needs is a low floor rather than a high ceiling: something that costs little or nothing while it is idle, deploys without ceremony, and can be abandoned without an invoice arriving afterwards. A free tier is aimed squarely here, and so is the risk of billing in arrears.
60 providers market themselves for side projects, listed alphabetically. Mostly shared hosting, platform as a service and serverless, of 12 categories in all. 46 records do not record this field, and cannot appear here either way.
0–9
- 1984 Hosting
Icelandic host founded on a free-speech and privacy position, running on geothermal and hydroelectric power, selling web hosting, VPS and free anycast DNS.
A
- ALL-INKL.COM
Owner-run German shared hosting and managed server provider operating from Friedersdorf in Saxony, with data centres in Dresden.
- alwaysdata
French managed hosting running a wide set of language runtimes on isolated Debian accounts, with a permanently free tier below the paid plans.
- Appwrite
Open-source backend platform sold as a hosted service, running user functions alongside managed databases, authentication, storage and messaging.
B
- Back4App
Managed Parse Server backend with an auto-generated REST and GraphQL API, plus a container platform that builds and runs Docker images from GitHub.
- Binary Lane
Australian VPS provider selling hourly-billed NVMe cloud servers with independently adjustable memory, storage and transfer, and a public API.
- Bolt
An AI builder from StackBlitz that turns a prompt into a web app and can publish the result on its own bolt.host hosting or push the code to GitHub for deployment elsewhere.
- Byet
iFastNet's free hosting brand, running PHP and MySQL accounts on a control panel it wrote itself.
C
- cyber_Folks
Polish shared host from Poznań with a per-domain choice of PHP version alongside Node and Python, running on LiteSpeed with DirectAdmin as the panel.
D
- Deno DeployOne we like
Serverless hosting for JavaScript and TypeScript built by the Deno team, running the Deno runtime with Node and npm compatibility.
- Dinahosting
Dinahosting is an independent Galician host selling shared hosting, domains and email from its own servers in Spain.
- DonWeb
DonWeb is an Argentine hosting and cloud provider running its own data centres, selling shared hosting, VPS, bare metal and pre-configured application stacks.
E
F
- Fasthosts
Fasthosts is the UK hosting brand of the IONOS group, selling shared hosting, VPS and dedicated servers from UK data centres.
- Firebase
Firebase is Google's application platform, bundling a document database, authentication and storage with hosting that builds framework applications onto Cloud Run.
G
- Gandi
Gandi is a French registrar whose Simple Hosting product runs application code in per-customer Linux containers, deployed by git or SFTP.
- Gigalixir
Gigalixir is a platform-as-a-service built around Elixir and Phoenix, keeping hot upgrades, remote observer and distributed clustering intact.
- GitHub PagesOne we like
Static sites served from a GitHub repository, built by Actions or from a branch, free on public repositories.
- GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a US shared hosting company and the world's largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar, listed on the NYSE as GDDY.
H
- HelioHost
A volunteer-run, donation-funded free web host with a paid tier alongside its free hosting.
- Heroku
Heroku is a polyglot PaaS — the original "git push to deploy" platform, now a business unit of Salesforce.
- Hugging Face
Machine-learning hub whose Spaces product hosts running applications — Gradio, Streamlit or an arbitrary Dockerfile — on CPU or rented GPU hardware.
I
- InfinityFree
Free PHP and MySQL hosting from a Dutch company, run on iFastNet's platform.
- InterServer
American host selling one shared plan at a price it undertakes not to raise, on DirectAdmin and CloudLinux, alongside VPS, dedicated servers and colocation.
K
- KingHost
Brazilian shared, WordPress and VPS hosting brand under LWSA, documenting PHP, Node.js, Python and Java application deployment on shared plans.
- KrystalOne we like
British host running PHP, Python, Perl and Ruby on cPanel, powered by certified renewable electricity and operated as a certified B Corp.
L
- Laravel Cloud
Laravel Cloud is the official platform by Laravel Holdings — managed, scale-to-zero hosting for Laravel and Symfony applications, billed by subscription plus usage.
- Lolipop!
Japanese rental server from GMO Pepabo, selling shared hosting for personal and small-business sites through its own control panel.
- Loopia
Swedish hosting provider and registrar in Västerås offering Linux and Windows shared hosting with SSH, PHP, Python, Perl and ASP.NET.
- LovableOne we like
Lovable is an AI-assisted low-code no-code platform that generates web app code from natural language prompts and deploys it on its own infrastructure.
- lowcloud
A Bielefeld startup that runs an application as a managed container in Germany, or operates Kubernetes inside the customer's own cloud account.
M
- MilesWeb
Indian host from Nashik selling shared hosting on its own mPanel control panel, with SSH and Git on every plan and a stated renewal-price guarantee.
- MyDevil.net
Polish shared hosting with SSH on every plan, unlimited sites, mailboxes and databases, and Node.js, Python and Ruby alongside PHP.
- Mythic Beasts
British host selling web and email hosting in a long ladder of graded sizes, with a choice of PHP release per site and MySQL as standard.
N
- NearlyFreeSpeech.NETOne we like
Shared hosting metered by what a site consumes rather than sold by the plan.
- NeocitiesOne we like
Free static site hosting for personal pages, funded by supporters rather than by advertising.
- netcup
Karlsruhe-based provider selling low-priced webhosting, VPS and root servers from European, North American and Asian locations, part of the Anexia group.
- Nhost
Open-source backend platform built on PostgreSQL, Hasura GraphQL and serverless functions, with a managed container runtime for the customer's own services.
O
P
- PythonAnywhere
Browser-based Python hosting with in-browser consoles, scheduled tasks and managed web apps, sold by CPU-seconds, web workers and disk.
Q
- Qoddi
Managed application platform deploying Node, Java, Go, Ruby, PHP, Python and Docker workloads with per-second billing and managed databases alongside.
R
- RailwayOne we like
Railway is a polyglot deployment platform with subscription plus usage billing, four regions and a build system that detects most common languages.
- Replit
Browser-based development environment with hosting attached, sold around an AI agent that writes, runs and publishes the application.
- Rocket
An AI builder that generates a Next.js and Supabase application from a prompt, publishes it at a builtwithrocket.new or custom address, and syncs the code to a customer's own GitHub repository.
S
- Same
An AI builder that generates a Next.js web app from a prompt, deploys it through a Netlify-backed hosting flow, and lets a paying customer download the code or push it to GitHub.
- Simply.com
Danish shared hosting provider selling bundles of web space, mail and a website builder, with a documented public API alongside.
- SiteGround
Independently owned managed hosting running on Google Cloud, aimed at WordPress and WooCommerce, with its own control panel.
- Sliplane
German Docker hosting that bills for the server rather than the container, so unlimited services can share one machine, with managed Postgres and S3 storage.
- Supabase
Open-source backend built on PostgreSQL, with authentication, storage, realtime and Edge Functions that run the customer's own TypeScript on Deno.
- SurgeOne we like
Static publishing from one command, free for the basics, running since 2014 with no visible change in ambition.
T
- TransIP
Dutch registrar and hosting provider selling shared webhosting, VPS, OpenStack cloud and managed Kubernetes from its own Netherlands data centres.
U
- UberspaceOne we like
Uberspace is a small German hosting service sitting between shared hosting and a VPS, running since 2011, with a shell account and a documented stack.
- Umbler
Brazilian host selling per-application PHP hosting billed by the hour from account credit, with git deploys and one-click CMS installs.
W
Z
- Zeabur
Container platform that reads a git repository, works out what kind of project it is and deploys it without a configuration file.
- ZeropsOne we like
Czech container platform running applications and managed services on rented infrastructure in Prague, billed by resources consumed rather than by plan tier.
- Zone Media
Estonian hosting provider and domain registrar, selling shared hosting and cloud servers from northern European locations.
Who is the best host for side projects?
We can't tell from here. A host that suits a small agency site can be wrong for an API with users in Asia and Europe. The list is alphabetical and nobody paid for a place on it. The guide covers what to compare.