It's pretty sad how there doesn't seem to be any decent free options for websites which are easy to use. Squarespace and such cost a fortune which isn't worth it if you aren't trying to run a full ecommerce site. Plenty of services offer free hosting of static content but don't have any way a normal person can use them. Having to use a static site generator is too hard for non programmers.
I'm just surprised we haven't seem some app that can act like a wordpress admin page but generating a static output you can host for free or very cheap somewhere.
Squarespace is like $20/mo for a basic site promoting your Brick and Mortar business. That includes domain, hosting, and a template/CMS. It's not that pricey.
It's not pricey if you are a serious business making good money. It's a huge price if you are say a part time artist just wanting somewhere to store a price list, gallery and contact form.
I'm just surprised there is nothing that fills the gap between github pages and a full hosted solution with a ton of junk you don't need. All it really needs is maybe a locally running app that can handle generating the static pages and uploading them for you.
The barrier to create a website using Astro + a Template + telling an LLM like Gemini what you want is very low nowadays. So still, if you work with code some technical knowledge is required, but it will only get easier, probably.
There is very little chance a non developer would make it through that. The current options are Instagram/Facebook page which is free and easy. Or a website which is either expensive or requires you to be a developer.
Let's be more honest: if the power is on, the sheriff isn't locking your doors, but customers can't reach your web presence, the problem isn't really "the entrepreneur".
A webapp or gui WYSIWYG static generator with basic git support abstracted away would go far for many. Just let it push to some private repo which cloudflare pages or similar would deploy off of.
It really feels like the only part of a non-static site most want is an editor. I absolutely loathe the matter but I do see why some restaurants only maintain a facebook page for their online presence.
This is what Netlify does. Hook up a private repo and deploy. Make a commit and it auto builds and you have a CI/CD pipeline. This is what I build all of my static sites with. You can do almost any JS framework like React, Angular, Vue, etc.
Netlify does way more than this, but it makes hosting static stuff super easy.
> I'm just surprised we haven't seem some app that can act like a wordpress admin page but generating a static output you can host for free or very cheap somewhere.
Google Sites exists. Buy a domain, point it at a free Google site. So easy a religion major can make a site that looks pretty decent (ha ha, only serious; I thought he'd used Wordpress at first) for just the cost of domain registration.
Frontmatter CMS is a VSCodium plugin that works as a somewhat user-friendly CMS for the likes of Hugo. https://frontmatter.codes/
I set it up for my brother to run his static blog, and it's quite good if you like that kind of thing. There are some quirks where it gets confused if you rename mycoolarticle.md, so I still prefer using notepad++ and git and CLI for mine.
There are at least a few CMS editors for static sites intended for non-technical/less-technical users. They often still require someone technical to setup (config files and OAuth connections to GitHub, for example) but then provide an experience somewhat like what one would expect from the WordPress Admin Page.
Honestly, there are some easier ways out there now, although of course no solution is perfect.
For non-technical people I'd recommend the Hostinger Website Builder, Obsidian Quartz or Astro Starlight.
Although as a front-end dev I'd choose building a custom page with Astro, which has now become much easier though with good templates available + LLM assistance.
That’s what I’ve been working on for the last few years: https://palacms.com (MIT)
Not ready to announce the V3 RC yet (need to fill out the starter sites) but it’s working well if you wanna give it a spin - runs & deploys on Railway’s free tier.
This is exactly what we're trying to build with https://github.com/accretional/statue - you can email me or hit me up on Linkedin to get early access to our free static site hosting (which our new site for the project at https://statue.dev runs on, and which will Soon™ have a public-facing product doing exactly what you just asked for)
Basically you'll be able to edit the markdown for your site in a souped up version of our lightly reskinned vscode IDE at https://brilliant.mplode.dev and instantly publish/preview the changes in the same browser tab in a pane. Brilliant comes with a full Linux environment running in a container on our cloud platform, and building a Statue static site is already a one-command operation. The little UI we're working on let's nontechnical people skip that and just edit files and click buttons to make changes and publish it, though.
Here's a one-liner that will get you an entire static site with content (not the landing page yet, though) you can edit via markdown:
I'm just surprised we haven't seem some app that can act like a wordpress admin page but generating a static output you can host for free or very cheap somewhere.