Publish a static HTML website online

Ways to publish a static HTML website in the browser

How do ship.page, Netlify Drop, GitHub Pages, and Cloudflare Pages compare?

When you want to turn an HTML file into a website for a friend or coworker right now, ship.page requires no signup at all. You drop your folder, ZIP, or HTML file, and anyone with the link can open it immediately. Every uploaded page is sent with a noindex header so search engines leave it out, and ship.page does not list uploads anywhere public.

At app.netlify.com/drop, Netlify Drop accepts a folder, ZIP, or single HTML file with no account needed to start, where deploys under 50 MB work best and single files over 10 MB may get stuck. However, a site dropped without signing in stays behind a temporary password until you claim it with a Netlify account, and Netlify's blog says an unclaimed drop expires on its own.

If you need a custom domain or up to 20,000 files for free, Cloudflare Pages and GitHub Pages are the better fit once you create an account. Cloudflare Pages Direct Upload takes up to 1,000 files of 25 MiB each in the dashboard (or 20,000 files via the wrangler command line) and gives you a name.pages.dev address plus up to 100 custom domains per project, though Cloudflare's docs now suggest starting new projects on Workers. GitHub's web upload (Add file, Upload files) takes up to 100 files at a time and 25 MiB per file without Git installed, and publishes a few minutes later at username.github.io/repository after you pick a branch under Settings, Pages.

How do links, folders, and static assets work once published?

On ship.page, index.html is always the homepage, and a ZIP with a single top folder is unwrapped automatically so your homepage opens at the root URL. A page saved as about.html opens at /about.html, while the short /about address only works when the file is saved at about/index.html.

Because ship.page hosts static files only with no server code, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts, audio, video, WebAssembly, and JSON all work out of the box, while PHP, Node.js, Python, databases, and WordPress do not run. Contact forms need a third-party form service, and single-page apps with client-side routes should use hash routes like #/about because there is no single-page-app fallback or custom 404 page.

• A lone PDF, image, or video file is not accepted; put it in a folder or ZIP with an index.html.
• Folder uploads go up in one 10 MB request (roughly 7 MB of files); zip bigger folders first to host a ZIP file up to 25 MB on free.
• Files are served as they are with no Content-Encoding, so turn off .br or .gz pre-compression or include a JavaScript decompressor.
• Developers can also automate deploys with one curl command (POST https://ship.page/deploy), the MCP server at https://ship.page/mcp, or the GitHub Action.

How do I update my page or keep the same URL?

With drag-and-drop website hosting on the free plan, a free page cannot be updated in place; uploading a new version creates a new link. You can sign in with Google or an email link (no credit card) to claim your upload, and it stays online as long as you keep it, and free pages show a small Hosted on ship.page badge that visitors can close.

If you need to replace files on an existing link, Pro is $4 a month (billed monthly, cancel anytime) and lets you re-upload or edit a page and keep the same link. Pro pages never expire (or you can pick any expiry from 60 seconds), never show the badge, support password protection, raise limits to 100 MB ZIPs (400 MB unpacked), 10,000 files per upload, and 120 deploys a minute, and include up to 5 custom subdomains like yourname.ship.place.

Tip: Custom subdomains on Pro use 3 to 40 characters of lowercase letters, numbers, and single hyphens, and you can point them at any of your pages at any time.