Best platforms that provide free Django App Hosting

Trying to find free web hosting is hardly a problem, as there are plenty of options available for those who want to try remote environments for the first time. I am one of those people who love to work on a remote machine, rather than my own.

It’s not even the fact that there might be limitations, or it seems more difficult – it’s just the way I’m used to developing and doing testing. I’m sure there are a lot of other people who prefer to do it the same way.

I hope you’ll be able to find a free Django hosting platform that will suit your needs. They’re obviously not limited to Django only, and I’m only using the terminology so I can have the post rank for that keyword.

1. PythonAnywhere

This is a cloud-based platform – like most are – that allows you to have a server instance for all your Python development needs, and you can set up a fully functional web server within a couple of clicks. It currently supports one-click install for the following Python applications:

Head over to the ‘Batteries‘ page and see which libraries, frameworks, and other Python tools are available for easy importation and installation.

The free plan offers enough specifications for you to do some basic testing, and even host a portfolio site if you’d like. You can upgrade to a ‘Hacker Plan’ at $5 per month, and that will allow you to have up to 10k visits per day, depending on the source and type of traffic.

2. Amazon AWS – Free

The Amazon AWS free plan is pretty much a way of learning more about the services that AWS & EC2 provide to the world, and perhaps get you hooked on the way their instances and system works in order to become full-time customers. You’ll be able to do just about enough to get your feet wet with testing applications and deploying them. It’s, of course, good to learn more about such platforms, as you never know when it might come in handy, especially when working in the field of development.

Serdar, an author on InfoWorld has recently published a quick review of the Amazon AWS Free plan and I’d love to have you check it out, as it goes more in-depth about the service and what you can expect.

3. OpenShift

This is a project maintained by the original Red Hat board, and provides a free – and paid – cloud service to those who need it. OpenShift is very popular in the community, and fully supports hundreds of applications and types of programming languages for you to launch from their ‘gears’.

The official OpenShift blog is full of tutorials, guides and other juicy information that will help you get going quickly. Most importantly, yes, it does support free Django hosting!

4. Heroku

This platform is the perfect example of successful growth, over the last couple of years, Heroku has become the place to go to when someone is looking to launch a new startup or a business. It provides incredibly cloud facilities and the server performance is really great, especially when it’s free!

It has now grown and offers a ton of enterprise capabilities and plans for large companies that need infrastructure that can scale, we’re after Django hosting! You can head over to the Heroku’s own ‘Getting Started with Django‘ guide and learn how to set up a fully functional Django installation on your Heroku node.

Platforms for Free Django Hosting

I’m not sure if I was able to catch and list all of the good ones on this list. I’ll appreciate it if you help me out by sending in a tip to more platforms and hosting providers like this, as I’m always looking for something like that myself. I’ve played around with only Heroku, as far as this list goes – but I’ve heard good recommendations for the rest, and I’m sure you’ve too!

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