# Neocities

34 Hacker News commenters recommended Neocities and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free personal sites with custom domains and full HTML, valued for its creative community. Caveat: hard to justify if you already pay for hosting elsewhere.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy for beginners to start (3 comments): "All I did was tell him about Neocities (and allow him to sign up) and he figured out the rest." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48885014)) "the best way for a non-tech person would be to just dump the files on Neocities" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46616507)) "It’s a small fun site to practice with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47422149))
- Healthy creative community to browse (2 comments): "It's a genuine treat to see what people are building over there." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49230452)) "it's the healthiest online creative community I've come across" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48885182))
- Custom domains and decent bandwidth (2 comments): "They allow custom domains, offer decent bandwidth and put a lot of effort into open source" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49010416)) "It's fairly straightforward and gives you the full power of HTML and a free subdomain." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230950))
- Fast loading, open source (2 comments): "They allow custom domains, offer decent bandwidth and put a lot of effort into open source" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49010416)) "God damn those featured pages load so fast." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47424988))

## What people warn about

- Feels like nostalgia roleplay (3 comments): "from a brief glance Neocities looks to be a place for Mastodon techies to roleplay an internet they never participated in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46011983)) "Attempts to force it like neocities have a hyperreal quality to them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47417982)) "Neocities unfortunately does not really capture that old spirit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46011400))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [NearlyFreeSpeech.net](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nearlyfreespeech-net.md): 29 recommend
- [DreamHost web hosting](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dreamhost.md): 16 recommend
- [Mythic Beasts hosting](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mythic-beasts.md): 8 recommend
- [WP Engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wp-engine.md): 6 recommend
- [pico.sh](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pico-sh.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://neocities.org/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Neocities", https://hackerapproved.com/p/neocities/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).