Where a private-link host fits next to other ways to put an HTML file online.
You built a one-page site someone paid you for, and you are about to put it on a free plan. The question is not whether the free plan can handle it — it is whether the host's own terms permit it. Two different walls, and only one of them shows up as a bill.
Every list of free HTML hosts assumes you'll sign up. If you won't, the field narrows to a handful — and each one charges you for it in a different currency. Which hosts genuinely need no account, what you give up, and when signing up is the cheaper trade.
When the page is a folder rather than one file, the hosting question changes and so do the ways it breaks. Which free hosts take a ZIP, what happens to your folder structure once they unpack it, and the four failure modes that account for almost every broken zipped site.
Claude Code wrote the file. Now a teammate or a client has to see it working — and the obvious options each solve a different half of that. An honest split across GitHub Pages, Notion, paste-style hosts, an internal server, plain email, and a private link, judged against the five things people actually ask for.
Sending a file attaches a frozen copy to an inbox; sending a link hands over a URL you still control. The three places that gap shows up — size ceilings, what actually renders, and who holds the deliverable after it lands.
A Loom or screenshot shows the reviewer your build. A live private link lets them click through it themselves. Here's exactly what each format loses in transit — and when a recording is still the right call.
Static hosts are metered on the assumption a human edits a few times a day. An agent doesn't work that way. Which hosts count builds, which count deployments, which count nothing — and where the bill actually comes from.
A sandbox preview link is bound to a live session and a project you keep open. A private link is a finished artifact. Here's exactly when the preview stops being the right thing to send — and what to send instead.
Cloudflare Pages is a public, global CDN site — built to be found and to scale. A private link is built to reach a named audience and nobody else. They solve opposite halves of "I made a page, now what." Here's the honest fit for each, where the backend boundary sits, and how to pick in one question.
GitHub Pages publishes a public, git-tracked site to the open web. A private unguessable link delivers a self-contained page to specific people. Here is the honest split — by who reaches it, what the URL is for, and where the work lives — so you pick the right one instead of bending one to fit.
A private link and a public deploy are the two ends of one dial: how findable the page should be. A job-by-job map of where each endpoint fits, plus the in-between cases most real work actually lands in.
Cloudflare's changelog gives it straight: the no-account preview stays live for one hour unless you claim it into an account. That's not a catch, it's the design — and it draws a line worth seeing, because a preview and a delivery are different objects.
A SCORM package isn't a course you can open — it's a course wrapped for a machine. Here's what that wrapper buys you, what it costs, and when a plain web link is the honest artefact to hand someone.
They solve the same problem — getting someone from the physical world to a URL — in ways that fail differently. The deciding question isn't which is more modern; it's whether the person can point a camera at it.
Sending a client a finished page? A Drive link hands them a file in a filing cabinet to download or preview flattened. A private link hands them the thing itself, already open. The three places the two diverge: rendering, control, and who the link assumes the reader is.
WeTransfer is a courier: it drops the file and leaves, and the link self-destructs. A private link is a room that stays open. Which fits depends on whether you're moving a file or showing a finished page — and on how big it is.
A ZIP is a moving box: the recipient has to unpack it, find the entry file, and hope their mail provider didn't strip it. A hosted link is the room already set up. When a multi-file build should travel as a link instead of an attachment.
PageDrop vs miinideck, compared by design: one was built for links that expire on purpose, the other for links that need to last. What each was for, where they genuinely overlap, and where the disposable-page job goes now that PageDrop is winding down.
Two tools that both turn a dragged file into a URL. One is designed for public deploy testing; the other for private one-recipient delivery. When each fits, where the overlap is real.
Vercel Drop turns a dragged file into a live production URL on a major platform. miinideck turns one into a private link for specific people. Both fit 'drag a file, get a URL' — and were built for opposite jobs. When each fits, where the overlap is narrow.
Vercel just shipped drag-a-file-get-a-link. With Netlify, tiiny, and others already here, sharing a built page as a live link is officially the new normal. Here's the whole landscape of tools — and how to pick one — if you're done emailing PDFs.
Twelve ways to put a single HTML file online for free — GitHub Pages, Netlify, Cloudflare, Vercel, Tiiny, Neocities, Static.app, EdgeOne, host-html, Linkyhost, Wasmer, and a private-link option — with an honest table of which fits which job, public or private.
Two tools that both host an HTML file, designed for different jobs. When tiiny.host fits, when miinideck fits, and where the choice actually matters.