How I Migrated My Father-in-Law's Website with Astro + Traefik + Oracle: €0 Hosting in 15 Minutes

The Problem with "Easy" Website Builders

For years, my father-in-law's architecture firm TENUR Arquitectura ran its website ( https://www.tenurarquitectura.com) on a popular drag-and-drop platform. Nice templates, SSL included. Set-it-and-forget-it simple.

But nobody tells you you're paying a premium for simplicity you might not need.

These services cost €25/month for a business site. That's €300/year. For a portfolio that gets a few hundred visitors a month and barely changes.

The site was basic:

• Homepage with company info
• Gallery of 16 architecture projects
• Contact page
• Legal pages

Static content only. No e-commerce. No logins. No complexity.

€300/year for what was basically a PDF.

The Real Costs of "Convenience"

Beyond the subscription:

Limited Control – Their editor, their rules. Custom tweaks? Nope.

Performance – Extra JavaScript and tracking slowed everything down.

Vendor Lock-in – Content trapped in their system.

Forever Fees – Miss a payment, site goes dark.

How I Fixed It

I took over and migrated everything to Astro + Traefik on Oracle Cloud Always Free. Took me 15 minutes total.

Result: €0/month forever.

Oracle's Always Free tier + Astro + Traefik = perfect combo:

• Very fast static site from Astro
• Traefik handling routing/SSL termination
• Free hosting/bandwidth/compute from Oracle
• Total control

The Docker Setup

Two containers. That's the entire production stack:

services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik:v3.6
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - ./traefik.yml:/etc/traefik/traefik.yml:ro
      - ./acme.json:/acme.json

  tenur:
    image: nginx:alpine
    volumes:
      - ../tenur-site:/usr/share/nginx/html:ro
    labels:
      - "traefik.http.routers.tenur.rule=Host(`www.tenurarquitectura.com`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.tenur.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"

Note: Astro only runs locally at build time - it generates static HTML/CSS/JS files that get copied to the server. No Node.js runtime on the server. Just nginx serving files.

Traefik grabs SSL certs from Let's Encrypt automatically. Nginx serves the static files. Total RAM usage: 38MB.

What Changed

Now it loads in milliseconds. Astro's clean HTML/CSS + Traefik efficiency. No platform bloat.

The Numbers

$ npm run build
✓ 23 page(s) built in 938ms

$ docker stats --no-stream
CONTAINER    MEM USAGE
tenur-site   4.17 MiB
traefik      34.13 MiB

The old platform shipped 400KB+ of JavaScript before your content loaded. This site ships 1.2KB total.

Want to change anything? Astro rebuilds instantly. Traefik auto-configures. Move elsewhere? Just copy files.

The 15-Minute Migration

1. Downloaded all content (images, text, pages)
2. Built new site with Astro (imported content, styled projects gallery)
3. Set up Traefik for routing/SSL on Oracle
4. Deployed to Oracle Cloud Always Free static hosting
5. Updated domain DNS
6. Tested live

Zero downtime.

Is This for You?

If you're not technical, stick with website builders. Your time is worth €300/year.

But if you:

• Know some tech (or know someone who does)
• Run a simple/low-traffic site
• Hate recurring hosting fees
• Want real control

Astro + Traefik + Oracle Always Free is your answer.

The Math

• 5 years website builder: €1,500
• 5 years Astro + Traefik + Oracle: €0

That's a nice camera lens. Weekend trip. Or just cash in your pocket.

The Takeaway

We think websites must cost money. Not true for simple portfolios.

Astro + Traefik + Oracle Cloud Always Free = free, fast, fully owned.

I spent 15 minutes migrating TENUR's site. Paid for itself instantly.

The TENUR Arquitectura site now runs on Astro + Traefik + Oracle Always Free. Same content, no monthly bill. You're welcome.