It's not pricey if you are a serious business making good money. It's a huge price if you are say a part time artist just wanting somewhere to store a price list, gallery and contact form.

I'm just surprised there is nothing that fills the gap between github pages and a full hosted solution with a ton of junk you don't need. All it really needs is maybe a locally running app that can handle generating the static pages and uploading them for you.

Macs used to come with iWeb. https://www.apple.com/welcomescreen/ilife/iweb-3/

These days you can buy paid software to do this:

- $110 https://blocsapp.com

- $90 https://realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver-classic/

- $80 https://sitely.app

- $30 https://bootstrapstudio.io

- $0 https://www.silex.me

- $0 https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/

- $0 until recently, https://web.archive.org/web/20240410200646/https://grapesjs....

RapidWeaver Classic calls itself a subscription and sets up autopay, but you can immediately cancel and keep that version forever, like Jetbrains.

iWeb was an utter monstrosity. Worse than MS Front Page, which I didn't think was possible.

The barrier to create a website using Astro + a Template + telling an LLM like Gemini what you want is very low nowadays. So still, if you work with code some technical knowledge is required, but it will only get easier, probably.

Yeah, with Statue the barrier is literally just running one terminal command. And funny you mention the LLM part, we're actually working on integrating that directly into the workflow so you won't even need to copy-paste between tools. Check it out: https://statue.dev/

There is very little chance a non developer would make it through that. The current options are Instagram/Facebook page which is free and easy. Or a website which is either expensive or requires you to be a developer.

What about tools like lovable/base44 etc?

I'm a developer (so I prefer Astro and all) but was thinking of the barrier of entry for creating new websites is very low now.

If you can't afford $20 per month, you are not in business.

nope, been there as an entrepreneur where you have NO available funds when the Squarespace renewal hits.

It's a lot.

Let's be honest -- at that point you don't have a business anymore and aren't an "entrepreneur".

Let's be more honest: if the power is on, the sheriff isn't locking your doors, but customers can't reach your web presence, the problem isn't really "the entrepreneur".