As per title, can anyone recommend a good hosting service for a portfolio site?

Several years ago, I had a site hosted on Justhost. I pulled the plug on it a year after the low introductory monthly rate ended. I can't remember exactly what the regular monthly rate was, but I think it must've been over 10 USD. I figured I could look around for a cheaper hosting service, but never actually followed up on it.

After the site went down I noticed a substantial drop in the number of incoming job enquiries...trickled down to almost none, really. I do have a deviantart account where I have some of my works showcased but I feel I need something more professional looking to attract clients. However, it's been many years, things have changed and once again I'm clueless about the available hosting options. So I'd like to ask for some recommendations and opinions from those around here who has a portfolio site of their own and more experience with regards to choosing a hosting service.

I'm also looking for a local (PJ/SJ/KL area) webdesigner to help me with rebuilding my site (paid of course), so if you know anyone you can recommend please drop me their contacts.

Those web designers may have their own recommendations.

Or you may want to try https://console.cloud.google.com. They give you $300USD credit upfront. If you used up your credits, it will cost you from about $5 USD per month upwards.

Let me know if you have further questions.

I'm pretty much a layman on these matters, so I'm not sure how an art porfolio site fits in a cloud platform. Sounds like it's meant to run applications on the cloud, whereas all I need is a conventional website for people to be able to find me and browse through my works.

I'm confused about the pricing too, since it appears to be geared for high usage. It seems they charge you for actual resources used per second instead of simply leasing a server and DNS address on a monthly basis. Although they have a calculator for it, I have no clue how to use it to get an estimate.

If you're subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud, it comes with a free portfolio site. It's pretty basic but it's good enough to showcase your work.

Alternatively you can try ArtStation. It's similar to deviant art but geared more to professionals. They have free and paid options.

If it is minimal use of Word Press site, it costs only about USD 5 per month (f1-micro). Don't worry if the per second charges cost you 50 cents or $1 more It barely works though. So if there more more than say 10 unique visits, your server may 'hang', which you'd need to reset it manually, or maybe some codes can be written to restart it automatically.

There is a market place in Google Cloud which you can simply choose Word Press and you can then install it.

The next step is g1-small (1vCPU, 1.7 GB Memory), which costs about USD 17 per month.

Let me know if you have further questions.

On the other hand, there is another approach using social media to put up your work and promote them E.g. Pinterest & Instagram. In that case, you don't have to worry about hosting and DNS and costs etc.

That alone makes it a whole lot more expensive than my previously subscribed hosting service


I definitely want my own domain name. I'm not just looking for more exposure, I would like to present a more professional appearance. An official face, if you will.

I'm also looking to have a site design that isn't "pick your template and customize it". My old site wasn't the Mona Lisa of websites, but it was certainly disctinctive and had character. I have access to deviantart's portfolio site service, but I didn't care much for the templates and themes they have to offer. Artstation and Adobe CC are slightly better options, but even so I feel it's still a bit too cookie cutter.

There's something about having your own site with your own look that makes prospective clients feel like this guy really means business. Even though my artwork back in those days then wasn't all that impressive compared to my current stuff, I still managed to attract some really serious clients without having to go out and solicit them myself.

Simply attaching my own domain name to the already mentioned portfolio sites could have been enough, except that the customizations are too limited and ultimately restrictive. So I instinctively feel that site hosting will meet my requirements.

Here's a portfolio site I've always liked the look of: https://loish.net/

In fact, it doesn't even need to look as great as that (though that would be a plus), if I could just make it look different than the usual mosaic/tiled layout that is prevalent that would be enough. Here's another site, while modest looking, gives the appearance that the artist had put effort into making it their own: http://konjak.org/

Understandable.

Building a website nowadays isn't as straight forward like last time tho. Today's websites need to be compatible with mobile devices and also adapt to different screen sizes. Honestly, it's more trouble than it's worth for a solo artist.

It's going to cost you quite a bit to get one done. So be prepared to fork out some big money for personalized design and hosting. Just make sure you're able to update the site on your own, and not have to rely on the web designer to do it for you each time.

Good luck!

This post has been edited by purplefellow: Feb 18 2020, 02:07 PM

Thanks, I know it will cost me quite a bit to get it properly designed, but I'm willing to invest for the long term. It's the cost of hosting that I need to keep low, since that one is recurring.

I don't know how much webdesign it costs these days, but if it's too expensive I can fall back on my old design which I still have on backup. It's a bit dated, but with a little bit tweaking I can get my site running again.

I can help you reset your computer automatically when the webserver stops using the lowest cost option in GCP.

If you're interested, PM me.

I used to host myself a portfolio site using Indexhibit with exabytes.
Domain + Linux hosting would be around RM100/year.
But I have abandoned it some time ago...wanted to use a simpler Wordpress thing but got no time to work on it.

Try cargocollective?