#webhosts

[screentones-webcomicresources]

There are many web hosting companies to choose from if you're taking the plunge into making your own website with a comic content management system (CMS) like ComicControl or Grawlix, a Wordpress comic theme like Toocheke or ComicPress, or a HTML template to cut/paste code like Rarebit. While these solutions are generally free, finding a home for them is... generally not. It can be hard to choose what's best for your webcomic AND your budget!

We took a look at a few of the top hosting services used by webcomics creators using webcomic CMSes, and we put out a poll to ask your feedback about your hosts!

This post may be updated as time goes on as new services enter the hosting arena, or other important updates come to light.

Questions:

💻 I can get a free account with Wix/Squarespace/Carrd, could I just use those for my comic? - Web hosts like this may have gallery functions that could be adapted to display a series of pages, but they are very basic and not intended for webcomics.

📚 Wait, I host on Webtoon, Tapas, Comic Fury, or some other comic website, why are they not here? - Those are comic platforms! We'll get into those in a future post!

🕵️‍♀️Why does it say "shared hosting"? Who am I sharing with? - "Shared hosting" refers to sharing the server space with other customers. They will not have access to your files or anything, so it is perfectly fine to use for most comic CMSes. You may experience slowing if there is too much activity on a server, so if you're planning to host large files or more than 10 comics, you may want to upgrade to a more robust plan in the future.

Web Host List

Neocities

Basic plan pricing: Free or $5/month. Free plan has more restrictions (1 GB space, no custom domain, and slower bandwidth, among other things)

Notes: Neocities does not have database support for paid or free accounts, and most comic CMS solutions require this (ComicCtrl, Grawlix, Wordpress). You will need to work with HTML/CSS files directly to make a website and post each page.

Hostinger

Basic plan pricing: $11.99/month or $7.99/month with four year commitment (monthly, 1, 2, and 4 year plans available).

Notes: Free domain for the 1st year. Free SSL Certifications. Weekly backups.

KnownHost

Basic plan pricing: $8.95/month or $7.99/month with four year commitment (monthly, 1, 2, and 4 year plans available).

Notes: Free DDOS protection. Free SSL Certifications.

InMotion Hosting

Basic plan pricing: $12.99/month or $9.99/month with three year commitment (monthly, 1, and 3 year plans available).

Notes:  Free SSL Certifications, free domain names for 1 and 3 year plans. 24/7 live customer service and 90-day money-back guarantee. Inmotion also advertises eco-friendly policies: We are the first-ever Green Data Center in Los Angeles. We cut cooling costs by nearly 70 percent and reduce our carbon output by more than 2,000 tons per year.

Reviews:

👍“I can't remember it ever going down.”

👍“InMotion has a pretty extensive library full of various guides on setting up and managing websites, servers, domains, etc. Customer service is also fairly quick on responding to inquiries.” 👎“I wish it was a bit faster with loading pages.”

Ionos Hosting

Basic plan pricing: $8/month or $6/month with three year commitment (monthly, 1, 2 and 3 year plans available).

Notes: Free domain for the first year, free SSL Certification, Daily backup and recovery is included. Site Scan and Repair is free for the first 30 days and then is $6/month.

Reviews:

👍“Very fast and simple” 👎“Customer service is mediocre and I can't upload large files”

Bluehost

Basic plan pricing: $15.99/month or $4.95/month with three year commitment (monthly, 1, 3 year plans available).

Notes: Free domain and SSL certificates (for first year only). 24/7 Customer Service. Built to handle higher traffic websites. Although they specialize in Wordpress websites and provide updates automatically, that's almost a bad thing for webcomic plugins because they will often break your site. Their cloud hosting services are currently in early access with not much additional information available.

Reviews:

👎"The fees keep going up. Like I could drop $100 to cover a whole year, but now I'm paying nearly $100 for just three months. It's really upsetting."

👎"I have previously used Bluehost’s Wordpress hosting service and have had negative experiences with the service, so please consider with a grain of salt. I can confirm at least that their 24/7 customer service was great, although needed FAR too often."

Dreamhost

Basic plan pricing: $7.99/month or $5.99/month with three year commitment (monthly, 1, 3 year plans available).

Notes: Free SSL Certificates, 24/7 support with all plans, 97-day moneyback guarantee. Not recommended for ComicCtrl CMS

Reviews:

👍“They've automatically patched 2 security holes I created/allowed by mistake.” 👍“Prices are very reasonable” 👎 “back end kind of annoying to use” 👎 “wordpress has some issues” 👎 “it's not as customizable as some might want“

GoDaddy

Basic plan pricing: $11.99/month or $9.99/month with three year commitment (monthly, 1, 2, and 3 year plans available).

Notes: Free 24/7 Customer service with all plans, Free SSL Certificates for 1 year, free domain and site migration.

Reviews:

👍Reasonable intro prices for their Economy hosting, which has 25GB of storage 👍Migrated email hosting service from cPanel to Microsoft Office, which has greater support but may not be useful for most webcomic creators. 👎 Many site issues and then being upsold during customer service attempts. 👎 Server quality found lacking in reviews 👎 Marketing scandals in the past with a reputation for making ads in poor taste. Have been attempting to clean up that image in recent years. 👎 “GoDaddy is the McDonald's of web hosting. Maybe the Wal-Mart of hosting would be better. If your website was an object you would need a shelf to put it on. You go to Wal-Mart and buy a shelf. It's not great. It's not fancy. It can only hold that one thing. And if we're being honest - if the shelf broke and your website died it wouldn't be the end of the world.The issue comes when you don't realize GoDaddy is the Wal-Mart of hosting. You go and try to do things you could do with a quality shelf. Like, move it. Or add more things to it.” MyWorkAccountThisIs on Reddit*

Things to consider for any host:

💸 Introductory/promotional pricing - Many hosting companies offer free or inexpensive deals to get you in the door, and then raise the cost for these features after the first year or when you renew. The prices in this post are the base prices that you can expect to pay after the promotional prices end, but may get outdated, so you are encouraged to do your own research as well.

💻 Wordpress hosting - Many of the companies below will have a separate offering for Wordpress-optimized hosting that will keep you updated with the latest Wordpress releases. This is usually not necessary for webcomic creators, and can be the source of many site-breaking headaches when comic plugins have not caught up to the latest Wordpress releases.

Any basic hosting plan on this list will be fine with Wordpress, but expect to stop or revert Wordpress versions if you go with this as your CMS.

🤝 You don't have to go it alone - While free hosts may be more limited, paid hosting on a web server will generally allow you to create different subdomains, or attach additional purchased domains to any folders you make. If you have other comic-making friends you know and trust, you can share your server space and split the cost!

Want to share your experience?

Feel free to contribute your hosting pros, cons, and quirks on our survey! We will be updating our list periodically with your feedback!

[bogleech]

Going to put all this in its own post too by popular request: here's how you make your own website with no understanding of HTML code at all, no software, no backend, absolutely nothing but a text file and image files! First get website server space of your own, like at NEOCITIES. The free version has enough room to host a whole fan page, your art, a simple comic series, whatever! The link I've provided goes to a silly comic that will tell you how to save the page as an html file and make it into a page for your own site. The bare minimum of all you need to do with it is JUST THIS:

Change the titles, text, and image url's to whatever you want them to be, upload your image files and the html file together to your free website (or the same subfolder in that website), and now you have a webpage with those pictures on it. That's it!!!!! .....But if you want to change some more super basic things about it, here's additional tips from the same terrible little guy:

That last code by itself is: <meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=001.html"> Change "001.html" to wherever you want that link to take people. THIS IS THE REASON WHY when you go to bogleech.com/pokemon/ you are taken instantly to the newest Pokemon review, because the /pokemon/ directory of my website has an "index.html" page with this single line of code. Every pokemon review has its own permanent link, but I change that single line in the index file so it points to the newest page whenever I need it to! While I catered these instructions to updating a webcomic, you can use the same template to make blog type posts, articles or just image galleries. Anything you want! You can delete the navigational links entirely, you can make your site's index.html into a simple list of text links OR fun little image links to your different content, whatever! Your website can be nothing but a big ugly deep fried JPEG of goku with a recipe for potato salad on it, no other content ever, who cares! We did that kind of nonsense all the time in the 1990's and thought it was the pinnacle of comedy!! Maybe it still can be?!?! Or maybe you just want a place to put some artwork and thoughts of yours that doesn't come with the same baggage as big social media? Make a webpage this way and it will look the same in any browser, any operating system for years and years to come, because it's the same kind of basic raw code most of the internet depends upon!

[bumb13-be3]

it seems like website building is about to have a boom, let me share my favorite resource of all time!!

this is a website packed to the brim with website building goodies , including a website layout maker that is the easiest and most user friendly maker i’ve encountered! perfect for creating your own neocities (it’s free!!) , the code even has helpful tips in it for those new to html/css!

i also recommend w3schools.com for quick and easy to follow chunks of html/css tutorials! gifcities is a goldmine for old neocities era gifs, and blinkies cafe is perfect for making your own blinkies!

i can’t wait to see everyone’s websites in the coming weeks and months! remember, it’s fine to take it slow and let it look silly, that’s always been the point of websites like this :]

ps check out our neocities and feel free to drop yours in the replies :]

[weirderscience]

well at least the flame wars in every socmed site/region/etc have given me ample reason to work on my personal website. maybe ill even be able to start (and finish) that god damn web serial

[hostpyters]

We provide reliable website hosting, email services, and affordable domain name registration

[trans-axolotl]

Ah I'm sorry capitalism exists and makes you pay for websites and to live! I hope you are able to feel better soon!

thank you!!! life is actually going pretty well for me rn which is a nice change. moving into a new house this week and get my first paycheck for my new job this week so things are looking up!

[themaarika]

Sunny and Rainy update

I recently finished the entire Forest Chapter of Sunny and Rainy. The last pages are up early on Patreon. 🎉

While this is the end of that particular story arc, Sunny and Rainy WILL CONTINUE with a new story/chapter soon! There was some confusion about whether SR was now ending, so I wanted to clear that up. It is not ending!

I'm super excited to work on the next SR story and I'm glad this long chapter is over because I worked on it for so long!!

⭐Read the latest Sunny and Rainy comic ⭐Support this comic on Patreon

[zvaigzdelasas]

do you know what happened to thechinawiki? it seems to be down, ive seen you link it previously and it was a useful website

Been down a couple years now 😔😔😔 webhosting is a *remembers to be feminist* pain

[colortraks]

it's a little annoying when people say "my neocities" like it's a profile on a social media site. it's your website. you are allowed to call it your website. take ownership of your own creation

[ethanjhake]

I've been working on making my own neocities website and I'm actually really getting into the coding part, but I keep making things disappear 😭

I guess this is what I get for trying to " just figure it out" without actually learning how to code with html, css, and javascript

[ancientphantom]

The Phantom Library needs a little help!

Unfortunately, after a couple of moves, a few illnesses, and a rent upswing the likes of which you wouldn’t believe except you all definitely would because you’re living it, too, the Phantom Library is struggling to pay its hosting fees for the year.

If the Phantom Library has ever been useful to you, or you’d just like to help, my Venmo is @MaeveGlaistig and my PayPal is slipsilver AT the mail that starts with G, or please feel free to use the Library’s Ko-Fi.

The hosting fees amount to $150. Donating is strictly voluntary - please don’t if it will be a strain! The worst thing that will happen is the Library will go offline for a little while until I can afford to get it back up, so the world won’t end in the meantime.

Thank you, as always, to everyone who has helped the Phantom Library over the years. I hope we all continue to enjoy it for a long time to come. <3

[my-stupendousbouquetbasemen-blog]

🚀 Looking for a way to buy dedicated servers with cryptocurrency? 💻💰 Check out this comprehensive guide on where to find the best providers that accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more!

🌐 From low-cost options to high-performance solutions, this guide covers everything you need to know to make an informed decision. Whether you're a developer, gamer, or business owner, finding the right server provider has never been easier!

🔗 Read the full article and explore providers like Ultahost, Vikhost, ServerMania, and more: https://medium.com/@jasun.mckarthy93/where-to-buy-dedicated-servers-with-crypto-a-comprehensive-guide-9ca2f336a68a

[pressable]

What's a nice web host like you doing in a place like this?

You're trotting through this here wild west that is Tumblr, moseying from reblog to reblog when you find us.

You think, "what's a fancy managed WordPress host doing in this tumbleweed wonderland, where one doesn't even need a web host to start a blog?"

Don't be afeared, as we found our way round these parts seeing as how photomatt, the fine gent who runs this Tumblr establishment, is our own great-grand boss as well. Besides, who can resist this place?

While we share a lot of handy tips on running a business website over on our blog, we're thinking of this as a more casual space. Herein you can expect us to share nerdy hacker memes, snack-sized tidbits of advice, and news about both Tumblr and WordPress.

We hope this Tumblr will be intriguing for anyone looking to use their website to make a living, from WordPress developers to content marketers to small business owners to agencies.

Whether you're using WordPress or Tumblr, we'd love to hear what questions you have about the business of blogging.

[dst-technology]

DST

No website Is ever quoted the same. But we make sure that you get your money's worth. Online presence is no longer optional t’s a necessity. Get started today!

Contact us: Website: https://www.dst.com.eg/ Mobile: 01119553333 / 01222251333 #DST ..Take Your Business Online

[zombiesama]

damn nekoweb (also atabook, by the same creator) is down for everyone lmao

[hostpyters]

Learn the best practices for managing your business finances effectively.

From budgeting to cash flow management, this article covers everything you need to know to keep your finances in order and your business thriving.