Conventional shared hosting in Nepal costs roughly Rs. 2,000–6,000 per year and often gives you a slow site, a confusing control panel and constant security worries. This website — the one you are reading right now — runs on Cloudflare’s free tier and costs Rs. 0 per year, apart from the free .com.np domain.
Here is the exact architecture, explained in plain language.
What the system looks like
sarojkc.com.np
│
▼
Cloudflare DNS (free, global)
│
▼
Cloudflare Pages (free hosting)
│
▼
Astro + Markdown (this site)- DNS — Cloudflare’s nameservers answer every request for my domain.
- Hosting — Cloudflare Pages serves the built website from 300+ cities worldwide, with HTTPS, caching and DDoS protection included.
- The site itself — built with Astro from Markdown files, so writing an article is just writing a text file.
Step-by-step (the short version)
1. Build the site
I write articles as Markdown with a small header of metadata (title, description, category, date). Astro turns every file into a fast HTML page with proper SEO metadata automatically.
2. Push to GitHub
Every push to the main branch triggers a new build and deployment on
Cloudflare Pages. About 30 seconds later the article is live.
3. Connect the .com.np domain
For .com.np domains the registration stays at Mercantile (the only place
that sells them), but you only touch it once: to change nameservers to
Cloudflare’s. From then on, everything — DNS records, SSL certificate,
redirects, security, analytics — is managed from the Cloudflare dashboard.
Why this beats WordPress for a site like this
| WordPress | Static site on Cloudflare | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Hosting + domain + plugin fees | Rs. 0 (free tier) |
| Speed | Usually slow (PHP + database) | Very fast (pure HTML on CDN) |
| Maintenance | Updates, backups, security | Essentially zero |
| Security | Plugin risk, hacks are common | Nothing to hack |
| Writing | Admin dashboard | Any text editor, even your phone |
WordPress is still a good choice if you need a complex editorial team setup or plugins you cannot live without. But for a personal knowledge site, the static approach gives you 90% of the features with 10% of the pain.
What you get for free
- ✅ Unlimited bandwidth & requests on the free plan
- ✅ Free SSL certificate, auto-renewed
- ✅ Global CDN — fast for readers in Nepal and abroad
- ✅ DDoS protection
- ✅ Free email routing (you@sarojkc.com.np)
- ✅ Free analytics without cookie banners
Try it yourself
I keep the template I use in the Projects section. Clone it, change the text, push it to GitHub, and you will have your own free site in under an hour — no server, no cPanel, no monthly bill.