# 12 cent blog | Jan Kremer

2023-08-27

# 12 cent blog

Hosting a website at (almost) no cost.

Yes, the title is correct. Well, actually it is 0.119 € per month or 14.28 € for 10 years.

To be fair, it was a special offer and only covers the domain. Fortunately, my provider, Netim has a free hosting plan with fits my needs. I even get email hosting with my own domain. There are also services like Neocities where you can host your website for free if you are willing to live with a subdomain.

## Why should I? XYZ is free!

Yes, you can post wherever you want. 𝕏 (formerly known as Twitter) is free1, Mastodon is free, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Reddit, you name them, are all free, but you are giving up your freedoms. Mastodon might be a little better than the rest, but ultimately you depend on the host to let you post there. And they can block you and delete all your data without even giving you any notice. I hope you have a backup.

Hosting this blog allows me to write whatever I want. Sure, Netim could also block me and delete my data, but since I use Hugo I always have everything backed up on my system anyways. In a matter of hours I could be up and running on another hosting provider.

I can also use any format I want and have nearly endless possibilities to customize my blog. The sky is the limit. For example am I hosting my own photos instead of using Instagram and my own microblog instead of using Twitter/Mastodon. Whatever media I plan to share in the future, there is a solution out there. Want comments? I’m trying Cactus Comments at the moment.

Let me know what you think!

1. Or is it? I’m not in the loop. ↩︎

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