A few hours ago, I decided to see how cheaply I could spin up a professional, secure, fully functional website from scratch. I wanted something that looked modern, loaded instantly, and didn’t depend on a subscription platform or hosting plan, because even the $3/month adds up.
The total ended up being $2 per year. And it works beautifully.
The result is ScreenStacka.com, a clean, ad-free tool that lets you instantly compare TV or monitor sizes. It’s one static HTML file with some JavaScript logic, hosted entirely for free on GitHub Pages. No WordPress, no database, no plugins, no hidden fees, no updates—just a page that loads fast and does one simple thing perfectly.
The idea
I’d been frustrated by all the cluttered “TV size comparison” sites covered in affiliate ads and pop-ups. I wanted something minimalist — a utility that simply shows, side by side, how much bigger one screen is than another. A place where you can actually see that a 65-inch TV is about 41% larger in area than a 55-inch, not just 10 inches bigger on the diagonal.
So I asked GPT to help me code it. I described the layout, the math, and the aesthetic I wanted, and after a few refinements, it generated clean HTML/CSS/JS code that worked right out of the box. No frameworks, no dependencies — just copy, paste, complain when it doesn’t work, and eventually push to GitHub.
Hosting it for free on GitHub Pages
If you’re not familiar, GitHub Pages is a free static hosting service built into GitHub. You create a public repository, drop your files in, and GitHub serves them globally over its CDN. It even includes a free SSL certificates, so your site automatically loads securely over HTTPS and shows the padlock icon for trust.
It’s essentially enterprise-grade hosting for zero dollars. And because it’s just static files, there’s nothing to maintain or update. Every time I push a new commit, my site redeploys instantly.
The $2 domain deal
The only cost was the domain. IONOS Domains had a promotion — $2 for the first year of any .com domain — so I grabbed ScreenStacka.com. Never used them before, but it works just as good as NameCheap and all the other ones I’ve ever used.
I pointed the domain’s A records to GitHub’s servers (the four IP addresses they list in their documentation) and added a CNAME record for the www version. Within an hour, DNS propagated, and the domain was live.
GitHub automatically issued an SSL certificate, so now the site runs at https://screenstacka.com with the padlock icon and everything.
Total coding and setup time: about an hour.
Total cost: two bucks.
Adding privacy-friendly analytics
For simple metrics, I used Plausible Analytics— a privacy-first, cookie-free analytics platform.
They provide a tiny JavaScript snippet that doesn’t slow down your site and doesn’t track users personally. I just pasted their script into the <head> section, and now I can see real-time visits without selling anyone’s data or dealing with GDPR banners.
Why this matters
It’s wild how far the open web has come. Ten years ago, a secure custom domain with SSL and global CDN distribution would’ve cost at least $20–30/month. Now, you can have it for less than the price of one coffee per year.
Tools like GitHub Pages, Let’s Encrypt, and even GPT itself have completely flattened the barrier to entry. You don’t need to be a developer or pay for hosting, you just need curiosity and a few minutes of setup time.
And once you realize how lightweight most websites actually are (just text, images, and a bit of code) it feels almost ridiculous to pay for complex stacks that you don’t need.
The experiment
So far, ScreenStacka loads in under half a second and works perfectly on desktop and mobile. It uses zero cookies, zero tracking scripts beyond Plausible, and zero frameworks. Everything is self-contained.
It’s a neat experiment in digital minimalism to build a fast, functional web tool without depending on ads or venture-backed infrastructure.
Final thoughts
I have no idea if ScreenStacka will catch on. Maybe it’ll just be a fun side project or something I use personally. But I love that it exists, that it cost me almost nothing, and that it’s proof of how accessible modern web building has become.
If you’ve ever wanted to build something for yourself, you don’t need to overthink it.
You can literally:
- Buy a cheap domain
- Host it for free on GitHub Pages
- Use GPT to generate the initial code and slowly refine and learn
- Add Plausible for analytics
- And end up with a live, secure, beautiful site in around an hour.
If you want to play around with the tool, you can check it out here: ScreenStacka.com