Startups that need a site before they need a platform

Static website hosting for startups is the honest choice when your public surface is a marketing site, waitlist, docs marketing page, or hiring page—not the product API itself. Build the site locally with whatever stack your eng team already knows, upload the output, and go live behind HTTPS. StaticHost will not run npm or Hugo for you. It will not give you email, a built-in CDN product, serverless functions, or forever-free hosting after a short trial. Plans: Starter $9, Pro $30, Scale $65, Business $130.

Routing is file-based: try_files $uri $uri/ =404. If your marketing “app” is a client-side router with no HTML files for deep links, those URLs 404. Fix the architecture or pick a platform that sells SPA fallbacks.

Who this is for inside an early company

  • Founders shipping a brochure before the app is ready.
  • Marketing needing campaign pages with teardown dates.
  • Design/eng handoff where CI already produces dist.
  • Tiny teams that want staging without inventing S3+CloudFront glue on day one.

Who should look elsewhere: teams that need host-native forms email, WordPress for non-technical editors, or edge compute on the same vendor.

Publish path that matches eng culture

  1. npm run build (or equivalent) on a laptop or in CI—never on StaticHost.
  2. Upload only the build directory; exclude node_modules.
  3. Open HTTPS preview; run smoke checks.
  4. Attach the apex/www domain; create DNS; wait for verification; wait for certificate.
  5. Roll back from deploy history if a Friday experiment fails.

Useful companions: small business static hosting, HTML for small business, and nonprofit static sites.

Worked example: freelance designer portfolio for the founding designer

Before the startup brand is final, the founding designer still needs a personal portfolio online. They export a clean multipage HTML portfolio, zip with index.html at root, and park it on Starter ($9) under a personal domain. HTTPS preview catches a missing font file; they add /fonts, redeploy, then point DNS and wait for the certificate.

Separately, the company waitlist page can live as another site on Pro ($30) with staging: counsel reviews staging copy, founders approve, production receives the same artifact. Personal and company properties stay isolated. Neither site uploads node_modules. Neither site expects StaticHost to compile TypeScript. When the company later buys a fancy app host for the product, the marketing static pages can stay put—portability is the point of file output.

Failure to avoid: uploading node_modules instead of dist/

Early teams zip the repo root “to be safe.” The archive balloons with node_modules, deploy gets slow or hits storage ceilings, and the site root may not even contain index.html. StaticHost serves files; it does not install dependencies or run your bundler. Upload dist (or build/public/_site). Verify the zip’s top level lists index.html and asset folders only.

If storage spikes on Starter’s 2 GB, look for accidental dependency trees before you blame image weight. This failure is pure process: CI should publish artifacts, not working copies.

When to pick a different product

Pick an app platform when the marketing site needs authenticated dashboards on the same host. Pick PHP hosting for WordPress-driven content ops. Pick a mail vendor for founders@ and support@. Pick a CDN vendor if you require a CDN checkbox—StaticHost does not include a CDN product. Pick forever-free Pages for throwaway experiments if $0 forever is non-negotiable.

Stay here for prebuilt marketing surfaces with predictable quotas. Scale ($65) fits multiple campaign microsites; Business ($130) fits larger site inventories and teams. No tier adds remote builds or SPA index fallbacks.

Metrics and third parties

Analytics snippets, waitlist embeds, and chat widgets are just script tags in static HTML. They do not require StaticHost to become a backend. Keep third-party scripts intentional; they are still files and network calls you own from a privacy perspective.

FAQ

Can we deploy from GitHub Actions?

Yes—build in Actions, upload or push the artifact workflow you already use. StaticHost still receives files, not an npm install job on their side.

Do startup plans include email?

No. Use Google Workspace, Fastmail, or similar.

Why do refresh-on-deep-link routes 404?

No SPA fallback. Pre-render paths or use hash routing.

Is there a free forever hobby tier for side projects?

No. Short trial, then paid $9/$30/$65/$130. Use a free host if you need forever $0.