I’ve written previously about consolidating blog posts from other platforms & social networks using Gatsby & AWS Amplify. Up until now, that approach worked very well at an attractive price point (free!). Alas, it was not meant to last. I received the following message from Amazon Web Services at the beginning of this month:

This is to notify you that your Free Tier eligibility with AWS Amplify will end on February 28, 2023. After this date, your account will be charged as detailed on our pricing page [1].

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/pricing/

Sincerely, Amazon Web Services

I’m not opposed to paying for web hosting, but considering this blog is more of a hobby than an income-generating service I try to avoid and minimize costs whenever possible. Fortunately, the message from AWS reminded me of a similar circumstance prompting Chris Titus to change web hosting providers. I learned a lot from operating a blog with Gatsby, Github, and AWS Amplify. As with most technology stacks, there are benefits and drawbacks to this particular combination.

Given my desire to maintain a “free” web hosting solution and my willingness to experiment with new frameworks, I chose to embrace the combination of Hugo, Github, and Cloudflare Pages. The learning curve for Hugo is (thankfully) much easier compared to Gatsby. A few hours of work over a couple of evenings later, everything’s switched and running well.

The new stack still ranks well on GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights. As an added bonus, my pages also seem to be smaller (and consequently faster & snappier). I may finally be worthy of joining Kev Quirk’s distinguished 512k Club. This little blog is trying to stand out in an otherwise ad-cluttered, JavaScript-bloated Internet crawling with trackers and other dodgy bits. How refreshing it is to share thoughtful, human-made content (and nothing more) with other humans.