How I built my blog/newsletter for €18/Year
It took longer to write this post than to deploy the full Ghost platform for https://carlosvillanua.com. VillaBytes is now live!
This is my spot to share thoughts on Kubernetes, cloud-native stuff, IoT experiments, Traefik setups, and whatever projects come up next. Been wanting a place like this for ages.
Costs just 18 euros a year for the domain. Everything else runs on Oracle Cloud Always Free tier. No hosting bills at all.
Using Squarespace since my domain was already there, Oracle Cloud for compute and NLB, Traefik for reverse proxying and cert management, Ghost for the blog and newsletter side, Brevo for user emails.
Cost Breakdown
- Domain carlosvillanua.com €18/year
- Compute (1 vCPU, 1GB RAM) OCI Always Free €0
- Load Balancer (10 Mbps)OCI Always Free €0
- Storage (50GB)OCI Always Free €0
- Data Transfer (10TB/month)
- OCI Always Free €
- Traefik 0SS Let's Encrypt €0
- Emails (300/day) Brevo Free €0
- Total€18/year
Quick Setup
Spun up an OCI VM on free tier with Docker.
Ghost CMS and Traefik reverse proxy handle the core. Traefik does auto HTTPS through Let's Encrypt. Traefik manages certs and HTTP redirects on its own. No renewing certificates by hand.
Put a Network Load Balancer in front for that production touch.
Brevo SMTP takes care of newsletters.
Squaerespace DNS points to the NLB IP
The whole thing live could take less 20 minutes using CLI scripts.
Why It Fits
OCI's free tier actually allows around (2 VMs, 50GB storage, 10TB transfer). Running stable, zero charges. Ghost editor feels like Medium, but everything is mine: content, subscribers, the works.
Setup gave me a good run at OCI CLI, Docker flows, proxy details. Useful beyond just blogging.
Check it at https://carlosvillanua.com.
Who's running similar free-tier setups?
Tried OCI for side projects?
Really, I am over the moon about this one, I have been looking to have a blog for a while.
