A domain is only ~$12/year if you don't buy it through a scammy site like godaddy that adds fake fees or quadruples the cost after a year. WordPress is easy for blogs, or you can just vibe code something in an afternoon if you don't care to have comments. Even embedding forms or an emailing tool can be done statically. Heck, there's probably a free option out there for simple posting that I don't know about.
The biggest costs are not the money, but the work and cognitive load of the thousand cuts it takes to not only bring all of this up, but keep it running, not to mention migrating the content.
However/also, "only" $12 to some is a considerable amount of money to others.
If its a static or client-side website, GitHub Pages is free and allows you to use whatever domain you have already own. Almost all of the websites I run are hosted on GitHub Pages. No maintenance required, and updates are as easy as `git push`.
Having done this for multiple sites, there's still a lot of friction and gotchas in the setup process, and it's also not guaranteed to not break/rot (e.g. have to renew the domain.)
You didn't use the word "just", but I still want to link this article:
Did you just post a link to a 23 year old news article with no sources on an http-only site as supporting evidence that your airbnb unit's AC unit can go dangerously low?
You really think your guests will get frostbite if you don't do them the favor of limiting the AC temperature (with the unintended side-effect of saving you some money)?
That's also what my real life social circle does. My friends and family test out home reno/decoration ideas, and as I posted in another comment, my wife likes to visualize different layouts and changes to her flower gardens.
reply