Your website exists on your computer. Maybe it's a single index.html file, maybe it's a folder with a stylesheet and some images, maybe an AI tool just handed it to you. Opening it in your browser works, but the address starts with file:/// and nobody else can see it. To publish it, you upload those files to a server that is always on, and that server gives them a public address. On sofast, that means dragging the folder into your dashboard: the site is live at its own URL with an SSL certificate in about 15 seconds, with no build step and no command line.
What "publishing" actually means
Publishing a website means moving your files from your computer to a machine that is always connected to the internet, then pointing an address at them. Nothing about your files changes. The same HTML, the same CSS, the same images. What changes is who can reach them.
This is worth saying plainly because a lot of hosting guides make it sound like a conversion or a build. For a static website — HTML, CSS and JavaScript files with no database behind them — it is a copy. The files go up as they are and get served back exactly as they are.
What you need before you start
Three things, and you probably already have two of them.
Your files. Everything the page needs: the HTML, the stylesheet, the scripts, the images. If your page pulls in style.css, style.css has to travel with it.
An entry page named index.html. This is the one naming rule in web hosting. When a browser asks for the root of a site — yoursite.sofast.host with nothing after the slash — the server has to guess which file you meant. Every web server has agreed for decades that the answer is index.html. If your page is currently called portfolio.html or page.html, rename it now.
A place to put them. That's the host. This guide uses sofast, but the four steps below look similar anywhere that accepts a direct upload.
Publishing a website is copying your files to a computer that is always on, and giving them an address.
Publish your website in four steps
The whole path takes about a minute. There is no build step, no Git repository and no terminal at any point.
Put every file in one folder, with index.html at the top level. Not inside a sub-folder — at the top. If your folder contains index.html, style.css and an images folder, that is exactly right.
Compress the folder into a ZIP. On Mac, right-click the folder and choose Compress. On Windows, right-click, then Send to, then Compressed (zipped) folder. If your site is a single HTML file with nothing else, you can drop the file on its own — no ZIP needed.
Drag it onto your sofast dashboard. Drop the ZIP or the file into the upload zone. sofast unpacks it and serves the contents as a website.
Pick your address. Your site gets a free subdomain — something like yourname.sofast.host. It is live the moment you confirm it, with HTTPS already on. You can connect your own domain later without changing anything else.
That's the whole thing. Your link is shareable immediately.
Publishing a folder, not just one file
Most real pages are more than one file, and this is where first attempts usually go wrong. A page that looks perfect on your machine can arrive online with no styling and no images, because the files it depends on were left behind.
The fix is to keep the folder structure exactly as it is on your computer. If your HTML says <img src="images/logo.png">, then a folder called images containing logo.png has to be inside the folder you upload, in the same place. Relative paths keep working online precisely because the structure came along unchanged.
Zip the folder, not its contents. Some compression tools, if you select all the files inside a folder and compress them, produce a ZIP with no folder inside it — that also works, as long as index.html ends up at the top level either way.
Publishing something an AI tool built for you
If Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Lovable produced your site, the files are static HTML, CSS and JavaScript — exactly what this guide covers. The only part that differs is how you get the files out of the tool, and that varies quite a lot between them.
Claude lets you download an artifact directly. ChatGPT's behaviour depends on your plan. Gemini has no download button at all, so you copy the code out by hand. Lovable exports a full application source that needs a build step before anything is publishable.
What happens after it's live
Updating it. Drop a new ZIP. The address does not move, so every link and QR code you already shared keeps working and now points at the new version.
Adding your own domain. Your free subdomain is a real, permanent address, not a preview that expires. When you want yourname.com instead, you connect it from your dashboard — here is how to connect a custom domain.
Checking it on a phone. Open the link on your own phone before you send it to anyone. It takes ten seconds and catches most layout problems.
Common questions
The answers below cover cost, file naming, multi-page sites, JavaScript, and what happens to the address when you change your site.
No. If you already have the files — whether you wrote them, a designer gave them to you, or an AI tool generated them — publishing is an upload. There is no command line, no configuration file and no build step involved in getting a static site online through a drag-and-drop host.
Your home page does. Web servers look for index.html when someone requests the root of a site, so that name is what makes your base URL open your page. Every other file can be named whatever you like, as long as your links point to it correctly.
Yes. Put all the pages in one folder with index.html at the top level and upload the whole folder. Links between your pages keep working, because the folder structure travels with them.
Client-side JavaScript works normally — a .js file is just another file served to the visitor's browser. What will not work is code that needs a server of its own, like a database query or a PHP script, because a static host serves files and does not run code before sending them.
Upload the new version and it replaces the old one at the same address. Nothing you shared breaks. If you print a QR code pointing at your site, you can change what the page says as often as you like and the code keeps working.
Plans start at $5 a month billed yearly, which covers two sites with SSL and your own domain included. Billed monthly, the same plans are 20% more — see the plans.
Your files are ready. Drop them in and get a live link.