Portfolio — small scale stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
Static Hosting / Edge Hosting Platform
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel Hobby Free: $0 - 100GB bw, 6000 exec hrs, 100 deploys/day / Pro $20/seat/mo + $40/100GB bw overage + $0.15/GB build / Enterprise custom $2500+/mo - SLA 99.99%, SSO / Cloudflare Pages Free: unmetered bw, 500 builds/mo / Netlify Free 100GB bw, 300 build mins / Render Free 100GB bw, Starter $7/mo 500GB bw
Domain / DNS Management
Your human-readable address on the web plus the DNS records that point it at your servers. Skipping this is not an option — users need a domain to reach you.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free: $0 - 1 domain unlimited queries, 50 domains max / Pro $20/mo - 50 domains, WAF incl / Business $200/mo - 100 domains, SLA 100% / Enterprise $5000+/mo custom - unlimited domains, 24/7 / Registrar: Cloudflare $9.19/yr .com / Route53 $0.50/hosted zone/mo + $0.40/M queries + $12/yr .com / Namecheap $12.98/yr .com / DNSimple $6/mo 5 domains + $0.30/domain over
CDN / Edge Delivery Network
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free: $0 - unmetered DDoS, unlimited bw, 3 page rules / Pro $20/mo - 20 rules, WAF, image opt / Business $200/mo - 50 rules, SLA 6mo logs / Enterprise $2000+/mo - 100% SLA custom edge / BunnyCDN $1/mo min + $0.01/GB NA/EU, $0.03/GB Asia, 500GB=$5 / Fastly $50/mo min - $0.12/GB over, $0.028/10k req / CloudFront Free Tier 1TB 12mo then $0.085/GB + $0.0075/10k req
SSL / TLS Certificate & Management
Encrypts traffic between your users and your servers. Without it browsers flag your site as insecure and you lose trust and search ranking.Pricing & free-tier limitsLet's Encrypt Free: $0 - 90-day certs, unlimited, wildcard via DNS-01 / Cloudflare Universal SSL Free $0 auto-renew included / ZeroSSL Free: 3x 90-day free, then $10/mo unlimited / DigiCert Basic OV $248/yr single, $0 reissue / Secure Site Pro $699/yr OV + SAN / AWS ACM Public Free $0 with AWS, Private CA $400/mo per CA + $0.75/cert / DigiCert EV $500/yr
Object Storage for Media Assets
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare R2 Free: 10GB storage, 10M Class A ops, zero egress free / Paid $0.015/GB-mo + $4.50/M Class A, $0.36/M Class B, $0 egress / Supabase Free 1GB storage, 2GB bw / Pro $25/mo - 100GB storage, $0.021/GB over / S3 Free 5GB 12mo then $0.023/GB-mo + $0.09/GB egress + $0.005/1k PUT / Backblaze B2 Free 10GB, $0 egress via CF, then $0.006/GB-mo + $0.01/GB egress
CI/CD Pipeline Automation
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Actions Free: 2000 mins/mo Linux, 500MB storage / Team $4/user/mo - 3000 mins incl, over $0.008/min Linux, $0.016 Win, $0.08 macOS / Enterprise $21/user/mo - 50k mins / Vercel Built-in CI Free - unlimited auto deploys on git / CircleCI Free 6000 mins/mo / Performance $30/mo - 25k credits, $0.00006/credit over / Buildkite Free 1 self-hosted agent
Source Code Repository Hosting
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free: unlimited public/private repos, 500MB Packages, unlimited collaborators / Team $4/user/mo - 2GB Packages, required reviewers, CODEOWNERS / Enterprise Cloud $21/user/mo - SLA, SAML SSO, audit log 1yr, 50k Actions mins / GitLab Free 5 users, 400 CI mins / Premium $29/user/mo - 10k CI mins / Bitbucket Free 5 users 50 build mins / Data Center $3k/yr 25 users
Error Tracking / Frontend Monitoring
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsSentry Free: 5k errors/mo, 1k session replays, 10k attachments, 1 user / Team $26/mo - 50k errors, 500 replays, over $0.0006/error, $0.0001/replay / Business $99/mo - 100k errors, 1k replays, SSO / Enterprise custom $1000+/mo - 500k+ errors, custom retention / LogRocket Free 1k sessions/mo / Bugsnag Lite $35/mo 50k errors $0.0005 over
Contact Form Submission API
Interactive assessments, quizzes, or forms that capture structured input from users.Pricing & free-tier limitsFormspree Free: 50 submissions/mo / Gold $10/mo 1k subs, 10 forms / Platinum $40/mo unlimited / Formsubmit.co Unlimited Free - no limits, captcha incl / Getform Free 100 subs/mo / Growth $12/mo 5k subs, 30 forms / Typeform Basic $25/mo 100 responses/mo, $0.10/response over / Jotform Bronze $34/mo 1k subs $0.02 over / Tally Free 100 responses
Web Analytics Infrastructure
Understands your users and supports them. Drives product decisions and retention.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Web Analytics Free: $0 unlimited pageviews, cookieless / Google Analytics 4 Free unlimited, 14mo retention / Umami Cloud Free 3 sites, 10k events/mo / $20/mo 100k events / Plausible Growth $9/mo 10k pageviews $0.001/pv over, $19/mo 100k pv / Simple Analytics $19/mo 100k pv / PostHog Cloud Free 1M events/mo / Growth $0.000248/event after / Mixpanel Growth $28/mo 50k events $0.28/1k over
Automated Backups / Deploy Rollbacks
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel Deploy History Hobby Free: 14d history, instant rollback free / Pro $20/seat/mo - unlimited history, 1yr retention / Enterprise custom - 3yr retention, 99.99% rollback SLA, SSO / Git history free forever / Backblaze B2 Versioning $0.006/GB-mo + $0.005/10k lifecycle / AWS Backup $0.05/GB-mo warm, $0.01/GB restore / S3 Versioning $0.023/GB-mo / Veeam Community Free 10 VMs, Enterprise $1500/yr/socket
Transactional Email Delivery API
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsResend Free: 100 emails/day (3k/mo) / Pro $20/mo 50k emails, $0.0004/email over (1M=$300) / Amazon SES $0.10/1k emails + $0.12/GB attachments, Dedicated IP $24.95/mo warmup incl / Free Tier 3k/mo test / SendGrid Free 100/day / Essentials $19.95/mo 50k emails, $0.0004/email over / Postmark $15/mo 10k emails, $1.80/1k over 10k-300k, $0.25/1k over 300k / Mailgun Flex $0.80/1k
Newsletter / Email Subscription API
Sending transactional email (receipts, resets, alerts) and sometimes marketing mail. Deliverability matters more than features here.Pricing & free-tier limitsButtondown Free 100 subs / Basic $9/mo 1k subs + $5/1k over / Mailchimp Free 500 contacts, 1000 sends/mo / Essentials $13/mo 500 contacts $0.01/contact over / ConvertKit Free 1k subs / Creator $25/mo 1k subs + $10/1k over / Beehiiv Scale $40/mo 1k subs $0.02/sub over / Customer.io Starter $100/mo 12k profiles $0.0012/profile over, Broadcast $0.001/email / Mailchimp Premium $350/mo
Image Optimization & Transformation API
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudinary Free: 25GB bw, 25GB storage, 25k transformations/mo / Plus $89/mo 100GB bw, $0.40/GB over / Cloudflare Images $5/mo base includes 100k stored images, $1/100k delivered after, $0.50/1k transformations / ImageKit Free 20GB bw, 20GB storage / Starter $49/mo 80GB bw, $0.04/GB over / Imgix Starter $75/mo 50GB bw, 100k origin img, $0.08/GB over + $3/10k transforms / Akamai Image $0.20/1k transforms
Caching Layer / Edge Cache Config
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Cache Rules Free: unlimited rules, APO $5/mo/domain 50k purges/day / Pro $20/mo 1000 purge/min / Upstash Redis Free: 10k cmds/day, 256MB, 100MB storage / Pay-as-you-go $0.20/100k cmds over, $0.25/GB storage / Redis Cloud Essentials $10/mo 1GB, $0.25/GB over, $0.20/100k ops over / Free 30MB / Momento Free 50GB transfer $0.50/GB over / AWS ElastiCache Serverless $0.125/GB-hr + $0.0034/10k EPU, t4g.micro $0.017/hr ~$12.40/mo
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Controls and protects your APIs — quotas, abuse prevention, and firewalls. Important once you have real traffic or many clients.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free WAF: 5 custom rules, basic managed ruleset free / Pro $20/mo - 20 rules, OWASP managed, rate limit 1 rule / Business $200/mo - 100 rules, adv analytics 6mo / Enterprise $5000+/mo - 1000+ rules, SLA, 24/7 SOC / AWS WAF $5/mo per ACL + $1/rule/mo + $0.60/M requests + $1/managed rule group / Fastly WAF $20/mo + $0.10/M req / Sucuri Firewall $9.99/mo 1 site, Pro $19.99
Uptime Monitoring (Basic)
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsUptimeRobot Free: 50 monitors x 5-min interval, 12mo logs, email alert $0 / Pro $7/mo 50 monitors x 1-min, 2yr logs, 20 SMS, $0.02/SMS over / Better Stack Free 10 monitors x 3-min / Team $24/mo 50 monitors x 30-sec, 100 on-call alerts, $1/SMS over / Checkly Free 10 API checks x 1-min, 50k runs / Team $29/mo 50 checks $0.0005/check over / Datadog Synthetics $5/test/mo, $0.001/test over / Pingdom $25/mo 10 monitors
Secrets Management
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsDoppler Free: 5 users, 100 secrets, 1k API calls/day Community / Team $10/user/mo - unlimited secrets, 10k calls/day incl / Enterprise $30/user/mo - HSM, audit 1yr, custom policies / Infisical Cloud Free: unlimited personal, 5 team users / Team $30/mo 10 users, SSO, $5/user over / AWS Secrets Manager $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls / HashiCorp Vault Cloud $0.03/hr cluster ~$21.90/mo + $1/50 secrets / Dedicated $0.16/hr ~$117/mo
Staging / Preview Environment Infrastructure
Stores API keys and credentials safely, separate from your code. Leaking secrets is one of the most common breaches.Pricing & free-tier limitsVercel Preview Deployments Free: unlimited previews Hobby, 10k edge req / Pro $20/seat/mo includes previews, 1M edge req, $0.15/100k over / Enterprise custom - unlimited, compliance, SSO, SLA / Netlify Deploy Previews Free 100GB bw shared / Cloudflare Pages Preview Free unlimited previews, 500 builds/mo / Render Preview Free 750 hrs/mo, $7/mo per preview beyond / Qovery Free 3 envs, $20/env over / Railway ephemeral free trial $5/mo
How this small scale portfolio checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a small scale portfolio build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.