Is it really free for a business website?

For a site made of files, yes: on the free plan you pay nothing for requests or bandwidth. What may cost money is a domain, plus a mailbox if you want to send email from it.

Do I need a credit card to start?

No. Cloudflare’s own pages say you can start building for free, with no credit card required. It will ask for a payment method when you buy something, such as a domain.

How many visitors can the site take?

Cloudflare sets no number for static files: requests to them are unlimited, on the free plan as well. The limits you might meet are the file count and the size of each file.

How do I get the site on Google, for free too?

Publishing puts it online; Google finds it later, at its own pace. You can tell Google it exists for free with Search Console, and the Google guide goes through it step by step.

Can I put a WordPress site on Cloudflare Pages?

No. WordPress needs a server that runs PHP and a MySQL or MariaDB database, while Pages serves files. This route suits sites that are already plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Where can I publish a website for free?

On any service that serves files as they are. Cloudflare Pages charges nothing for requests or bandwidth on its free plan; Netlify also has a free plan, with monthly credits; GitHub Pages isn’t meant for a business or a shop; and Vercel’s free plan is for personal use only. Each one’s limits are above.

How do I put an HTML page online for free?

Put index.html in a folder with its pictures and styles, create a free Cloudflare account, open Pages, choose to upload files and drag the folder in. A few minutes later you have a your-name.pages.dev address. If you’d rather not prepare anything, a Promti kit comes with the site built and this guide inside, and for one made to your brief there’s a custom website.

Does the .pages.dev address stay once I add my domain?

Yes, both work side by side. If you want a single address, Cloudflare explains how to send the .pages.dev one to your domain with Bulk Redirects.

Publish your website for free, from a folder on your computer

Yes, you can publish a website for free, with no card: create a free Cloudflare account, drag your site’s folder into Pages, and minutes later it’s online at your-name.pages.dev, with no limit on visitors or bandwidth. The steps are below, with the limits and the mistakes that cost a second try.

Updated 9 October 2026

Time: 5 minutes
Cost: Free

This is for anyone whose website is a folder of files: an index.html at the top, with the styles, scripts, pictures and fonts beside it. Hand-written sites, static exports and a page an AI chat wrote for you look like that. So does a Promti kit once you unzip its download, which carries this guide inside.

By the end, the site is online at an address ending in .pages.dev, on Cloudflare’s free plan, and you know how to replace it with a new version. The upload itself takes minutes; checking the folder first is what saves you a second attempt.

Hosting costs nothing. Cloudflare doesn’t charge for requests to static files on any plan, so money only comes into it later, if you want your own domain or a mailbox at it.

Before you start

The site’s folder, or a .zip of it, with index.html at the top level rather than tucked into a subfolder.
An email address for your Cloudflare account, and the computer where the folder is saved.
A project name you’d be happy to see in the address, because it becomes the first part of your-name.pages.dev.
If the folder holds video or 3D models, the size of the largest files: the upload has a limit per file, given in the steps.

Step by step: put your site online

Have the file you downloaded at hand: Cloudflare takes the .zip as it is, or the folder inside it (index.html and the rest).
Go to dash.cloudflare.com and create a free account (or sign in).
Open Workers & Pages and click Create application. The page starts with Workers: click Get started where it offers Pages, then Drag and drop your files.
Name the project — your business, lowercase, with dashes — drop the .zip or the folder in and click Deploy site. (It takes up to 1,000 files of 25 MiB each.)
It’s live at your-name.pages.dev in a moment. To change it later: open the project, Create a new deployment, choose Production and drop the new version.

At the end: Your site is online, fast everywhere, with HTTPS.

Any host that serves plain files works too (Netlify, your own server…): upload the folder’s contents. Check that its plan allows a business site — Vercel’s free plan, for one, is for non-commercial use only.

What the free plan gives you

Cloudflare lists unlimited requests and bandwidth on every Pages plan, the free one included. Its documentation adds that requests to static assets are free and unlimited on all plans, and a site made only of files uses nothing else.

The limits are about files, not visitors. A site on the free plan can hold up to 20,000 files, and no single file may exceed 25 MiB. Dragging a folder into the dashboard is capped at 1,000 files; past that, Cloudflare’s command-line tool, Wrangler, uploads the full 20,000.

One account can run up to 100 Pages projects, each with up to 100 custom domains on the free plan.

Other hosts that take the same folder

Any service that serves plain files can host it. What differs is the small print of each free plan.

Netlify also accepts a dragged folder. Its free plan comes with 300 credits a month: every production deploy uses 15, and every GB served uses 20. When an account hits its limit, Netlify pauses its sites until the next billing cycle.

GitHub Pages is free, with a 1 GB cap per site and a soft limit of 100 GB of bandwidth a month. GitHub also states that it isn’t meant to be free hosting for an online business or a shop.

Vercel’s free Hobby plan is limited to non-commercial, personal use; a business site needs its Pro plan, listed at $20 a month.

Free hosting with your own domain

The free plan takes custom domains: up to 100 per project. The hosting stays free; the domain itself is paid for once a year to whoever sells it, and the domain guide covers where and for how much.

For an address like yourname.com, without www or anything in front, Cloudflare asks for the domain to be added to your Cloudflare account and for its nameservers to point at Cloudflare. That account can stay on Cloudflare’s Free plan, at $0 a month.

For an address like www.yourname.com or shop.yourname.com, the domain can stay where it is: you add the address in the Pages project first, then a CNAME record at your current provider pointing to your-name.pages.dev. Doing it the other way round leaves the address showing a 522 error.

A page an AI chat made for you

If Claude, ChatGPT or another assistant wrote the page as one HTML file, it’s already most of a site. Make a new folder, save the code inside it as index.html, and put any pictures it uses beside that file, with the same names the code gives them. That folder is what you drag into Pages.

Before uploading, open index.html in your browser from the folder. If the pictures show there, they’ll show online too; if they don’t, a name or a path in the code doesn’t match the file.

What can go wrong, and the fix

The address shows an error instead of your home page. Check whether index.html has ended up one level down, which happens when you drag the folder that contains your site’s folder. Upload again with the right one.

A file has a red warning beside it. It was too large and didn’t upload. Cloudflare lets you drop it from the upload but not swap it for another, so shrink the file and upload the whole project again.

Your update doesn’t show. A new deployment can go to production or to a preview, and a preview leaves the live site untouched. Pick production.

The address has a few extra characters. The name was already taken, so Cloudflare added random ones to make it unique. Once your own domain is connected, that’s the address people will use.

One choice is final: a project created by uploading can’t switch to deploying from Git later; you’d need a new project.

Once it’s live

With the site live, the next guides cover a domain of your own, an email address at it, and telling Google the site exists.

To see a folder online without an account first, there’s Cloudflare Drop (cloudflare.com/drop): it keeps the upload live for an hour, and you claim it with an account to keep it. It creates a Worker, not a Pages project, so the domain steps won’t match it.

Questions

Is it really free for a business website?: For a site made of files, yes: on the free plan you pay nothing for requests or bandwidth. What may cost money is a domain, plus a mailbox if you want to send email from it.
Do I need a credit card to start?: No. Cloudflare’s own pages say you can start building for free, with no credit card required. It will ask for a payment method when you buy something, such as a domain.
How many visitors can the site take?: Cloudflare sets no number for static files: requests to them are unlimited, on the free plan as well. The limits you might meet are the file count and the size of each file.
How do I get the site on Google, for free too?: Publishing puts it online; Google finds it later, at its own pace. You can tell Google it exists for free with Search Console, and the Google guide goes through it step by step.
Can I put a WordPress site on Cloudflare Pages?: No. WordPress needs a server that runs PHP and a MySQL or MariaDB database, while Pages serves files. This route suits sites that are already plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Where can I publish a website for free?: On any service that serves files as they are. Cloudflare Pages charges nothing for requests or bandwidth on its free plan; Netlify also has a free plan, with monthly credits; GitHub Pages isn’t meant for a business or a shop; and Vercel’s free plan is for personal use only. Each one’s limits are above.
How do I put an HTML page online for free?: Put index.html in a folder with its pictures and styles, create a free Cloudflare account, open Pages, choose to upload files and drag the folder in. A few minutes later you have a your-name.pages.dev address. If you’d rather not prepare anything, a Promti kit comes with the site built and this guide inside, and for one made to your brief there’s a custom website.
Does the .pages.dev address stay once I add my domain?: Yes, both work side by side. If you want a single address, Cloudflare explains how to send the .pages.dev one to your domain with Bulk Redirects.

What a site made with Promti looks like

One kit for each kind of business, each with its live demo. Your words, your colours and your pictures go in its place.

Want it in 3D? Start here: What an immersive website is · What a 3D website costs · 3D website examples.