This is a review of using the Google Cloud Free Tier for hosting a little used web site on a single linux server. If you have read my previous post, you know that his server is hosted on an f1-micro (1 vCPU, 0.6 GB memory) linux vm, which is the spec of the server Google will let you run for free. Since this website generates no revenue, this is the appropriate level for me. I really just hold on to this site for sentimental reasons.

I used to host this site on one of the web hosting providers at around $5 per month. Since I have moved to the Google Cloud Free Tier and my free trial has expired, I have been paying less than $0.10 per month to keep this site up and running. On a cost basis, this is a big win. The next step up in server size would cost about $15 per month, so I won’t be doing that unless my website actually were to generate that kind of revenue.

The tradeoff is on the performance side. The server is easily overwhelmed. If more that one person at a time were hitting this server, it probably wouldn’t work. To keep a place holder blog site alive, Google Cloud Free Tier is the best option available.