How to Host Ghost as a Static Site for Free
Replace your monthly Ghost hosting bill with free static hosting on Cloudflare Pages. Step-by-step guide for Ghost site owners.
The Problem with Dynamic Ghost Hosting
Running Ghost on a VPS costs $6–$20/month and require server maintenance. Ghost Pro starts at $9/month. For a personal blog or low-traffic site, that is a lot to pay for content that rarely changes. Especially if you dont need subscription and use Ghost just create blog or informative business site.
Static hosting on Cloudflare Pages is free for up to 500 builds per month and unlimited requests.
How It Works
SnapStatic fetches your Ghost content via the Content API and generates plain HTML files. These files contain no server-side logic — they can be served from any CDN.
Requirements
- Ghost site with Content API access
- Cloudflare account (free tier works)
- SnapStatic account (free tier for up to 500 routes this includes posts,pages,tags,pagination pages)
Step-by-Step
1. Generate Your Static Site
Use the SnapStatic generator with your Ghost API credentials. Download the ZIP output.
2. Create a Github Pages Project
Follow quick start guide to create Github pages project:
3. Upload Snapstatic generator generated static site your repository
Create new repository and upload your static site in your repository.
Connect your uploaded site into Github Pages
Add custom domain your Github Pages site.
Now you can host your site free and no worries server maintenance. When you have your static site published into Github Pages, you can update your site in Ghost (check site before publish that all are in site like you want) and generate updated static site and copy into Github Pages connected repository and it update your website automatically what is hosted your Github Pages.
Github Docs you can find more Github details.
4. Set Up Auto-Deploy (Pro Feature)
This above steps can fully automate with SnapStatic Pro, git push module and configure a Ghost webhook to trigger regeneration automatically when you publish new content. Full auto-deploy you will need these:
- Ghost CMS (can run in your local machine what needs to be exposed during generation public internet, this can do safely with claudflared what can install your Ghost CMS)
- Snapstatic Pro generator
- Ghost content API key
- Setup snapstatic webhook for auto publish
Tip! Create all your content in draft and publish at once ( Pro generator webhook publish is limited 5 times/24h ) if need more publish you can always publish manually if needed more.
Hosting Cost Comparison
| Setup | Monthly Hosting Cost |
|---|---|
| Ghost on DigitalOcean | $6–$12 |
| Ghost Pro | $9–$25 |
| Ghost + SnapStatic Free + Github Pages | $0 |