Hosting

Whether you’re a bootstrapped startup that needs a brochureware website or a corporation that needs a high-performing web app, this post is for you. In it, Toptal Software Engineer Amin Shah Gilani teaches you how to setup a static, SSL-secure website for the very low cost of free, using Github Pages and Cloudflare.

Boring. That’s a word many people use to describe the server industry, although unexciting and uneventful would be a better fit. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because when something “exciting” happens to a server, it usually involves blue smoke and downtime. Luckily, the server space is about to get a bit more exciting, thanks to the introduction of servers based on ARM processors. In this post, Toptal Technical Editor and resident chip geek Nermin Hajdarbegovic explains why ARM processors could end up powering a server near you, and what this means for the software industry. The potential implications of ARM servers are huge, but there is no cause for alarm. This industry segment does not tend to evolve fast, and developers will have plenty of time to get ready.

Whether you’re creating a virtual storefront, deploying an app, or simply doing some third-party testing and development, chances are you need some server muscle. The good news is that there is _a lot_ to choose from. The hosting industry may not be loud or exciting, but it never sleeps; it’s a dog eat dog world, with cutthroat pricing, a lot of innovation behind the scenes, and cyclical hardware updates. In this article, we take a look at hosting options for freelance software engineers: PaaS, Cloud, VPS, dedicated, and more.