We run 8 live websites across 4 different niches. Our monthly hosting cost is $0. Our monthly software cost is $0. Here's the exact tech stack and why we chose it.
The Stack
Every site in the portfolio uses the same setup:
- HTML + CSS — hand-coded, no frameworks, no build steps. A page is a file.
- Netlify — free tier hosting. Drag a zip, site is live. Free SSL, free CDN, custom domains included.
- Google Search Console — free. Every site verified as a domain property.
- Namecheap — domain registrations, ~$10-12/year per domain.
That's it. No WordPress. No hosting bills. No database. No cPanel. No plugin updates breaking your site at 3am.
Why Not WordPress?
WordPress is fine for blogs and client sites where the client needs to edit content. But for a portfolio of niche sites that we control, it's overhead we don't need.
WordPress means: monthly hosting ($5-30/site), plugin updates, security patches, database backups, theme conflicts, and page speeds that require optimization plugins to fix problems the platform itself created.
Plain HTML means: write a file, drag it to Netlify, it loads in under a second. No maintenance. No updates. No security vulnerabilities. The site is as fast as it can possibly be because there's nothing between the server and the browser.
For 8 sites, the WordPress approach would cost us $40-240/month in hosting alone. We pay $0.
The Workflow
Building a new page
We write the HTML, make sure the on-page SEO is right (title tag, meta description, canonical URL, JSON-LD schema, heading structure), and add it to the sitemap. Then we zip the site folder and drag it into Netlify. The deploy takes about 10 seconds.
Adding a new site
Buy domain on Namecheap. Point DNS to Netlify (A record to 75.2.60.5, CNAME for www). Create the site on Netlify, add custom domain. Build the pages, deploy. Verify in Google Search Console. Submit sitemap. Done — usually under an hour from domain purchase to live indexed site.
Monitoring everything
We built a custom dashboard (Chad HQ) that connects to Google Search Console via a service account API. It pulls clicks, impressions, CTR, and position data for all 8 sites automatically. No manual CSV exports, no logging into GSC for each property individually.
The service account setup takes 15 minutes: create a project in Google Cloud Console, enable the Search Console API, create a service account, download the JSON key, add the service account email as a user in each GSC property. After that, the dashboard pulls everything on page load.
The Economics
The only recurring cost is domain renewals — roughly $10/year per domain. For 8 domains, that's about $80/year total. Everything else is free.
This matters because niche sites take time to rank. If you're paying $30/month per site in hosting, you're spending $240/month across 8 sites before you've earned a single dollar. That pressure makes people quit before the traffic arrives. With zero fixed costs, we can be patient.
What We'd Add If We Had To
If a site starts generating real revenue and needs more functionality:
- Email capture — Netlify Forms (free for 100 submissions/month) or a simple Mailchimp embed
- Analytics beyond GSC — Plausible ($9/month for all sites) or keep using GSC which is free
- Serverless functions — Netlify includes these free, which is how our GSC dashboard API works
The point isn't to never spend money. It's to not spend money until there's revenue to justify it. Build first, optimize later.
The takeaway: you don't need a $200/month tool stack to build niche sites. HTML + Netlify + GSC gets you 95% of what WordPress + hosting + plugins gives you, at 0% of the cost. The sites load faster, rank just as well, and never break.