i’ve used xmit.co, carrd.co, and mmm.page before!
for xmit.co:
setup was a little confusing. i got tripped up on the team numbers and the cli documentation.
for my experience, i had a password manager installed in my browser (bitwarden), so clicking on the link for signing up triggered bitwarden’s passkey creation window. i created a passkey and got to the dashboard easily.
from there, there was a prebuilt “team” already on the dashboard. from reading the docs, i thought that the first team listed was where you created a site - in actuality, it’s just your “member” team, not your “site” team.
you need to create a “site” team through some small buttons in the center of the dashboard labeled “new team”, or “join team” if you have an invite. (unsure how the invite works, haven’t tested it yet.) i clicked on “new team”, and the new team showed up instantaneously on my dashboard.
EDIT: totally forgot a crucial step!! you need to generate an api key to authorize your system for uploading stuff to xmit.co - you can do so under your site team and clicking “create” next to the “api keys” header. then click “copy” (the actual key won’t show up at all in the dashboard) and run npx @xmit.co/xmit set-key [your api key here] in your terminal to get set up.
you need to take note of your site team number, then run npx @xmit.co/xmit [domain.xmit.co|domain.madethis.site]@[team number] [(optional) folder] in the terminal to actually upload the site. for example, for example in my current site, i use this command to upload: npx @xmit.co/xmit haetae.madethis.site@140 _site since 11ty outputs the build into the _site folder.
it requires a little technical know-how, and some terms are a little confusing, but otherwise it Just Works™️. i believe setting up a custom domain is also free. if you don’t have one otherwise, you have two choices for free subdomains: [name].xmit.co or [name].madethis.site with no config.
docs are readily available even before you sign up so you have a clear idea of how uploading will work on xmit.co.
for carrd.co:
it’s a very popular choice among writers, artists, roleplayers, and fans for good reason. signing up isn’t immediately visible on the landing page - you need to click on login, then you can click on sign up to actually create an account and get started.
out from the gate, you get a fairly intuitive site builder that has a fair amount of features, such as video and audio embeds, simple galleries, cute transitions, plethora of custom fonts (courtesy of google fonts), and built-in responsiveness (unless you use custom code). there’s a few downsides for this service tho, because you can’t use custom code in the free tier afaik. you’re also limited to 3 sites, 100 elements, no custom domain, and can’t get rid of carrd’s branding on the free tier.
in their pricing plans, you can get more features for $9 per year at its cheapest, and $49 at its most expensive tier. you’re limited to making single page applications tho, which could make your website unusable on browsers without javascript for any number of reasons. filtering does not exist on carrd so making really content-heavy websites thru carrd isn’t feasible.
for domains, you get only one choice for subdomain, [name].carrd.co, but you get more choices for subdomains on paid plans:
[name].crd.co[name].drr.ac[name].ju.mp[name].uwu.ai
… but you can’t have custom domains unless you’re on any tier above the cheapest one.
for mmm.page:
it’s a really fun digital scrapbooking tool, imo! signing up is a breeze, it only requires an email address and you click on the link in the email sent to you in order to log in.
the user interface feels fun because there are little sound effects when you click on buttons, boxes, etc. it feels fairly intuitive and fun to play with, it was not hard to slap together something in a short amount of time. it supports audio and video embeds, designs are responsive by default (you can drag the very subtle lines on the canvas to change how big or small your website would look in desktop, but it’s not intuitive at first glance), and has little automatic guides that make it super easy to align blocks.
however, it has drawbacks. uploaded images are not optimized and they can get in the way of highlighting text. you have a limited choice of custom fonts via google fonts, i think you get a max of 20 fonts? it’s also in active development, so there are some features that aren’t implemented. there are even more limits than carrd.co - you’re limited to 5 “pages” and each page can only have 40 blocks, and limited to 5 mb for uploading images, and no support for custom code unless you upgrade.
each plan is charged by month, and the cheapest starts at $6 per month, and the most expensive plan is at $30 per month. you don’t get a whole lot from the cheapest plan from what i can infer. furthermore, publishing is not immediately obvious - you have to click “share” to get your page public. there’s an option to make your page “private”, but you need to pay for a subscription to do so.
for domains, you only have [name].mmm.page on the free tier. you do not get a custom domain unless you pay the tier above the cheapest tier at $12 per month, though you do get free domains at the following tlds:
[name].space[name].land[name].page[name].me[name].place
and apparently 50% off other tlds, but it doesn’t explicitly state which ones on the pricing modal.
i hope this gives some insight into what each host is like, lmk if you have any questions or if there’s any more i can try to add!