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Projects/Platform-Research/DocumentationHosting.md

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+# Hosting Thoth Tech Documentation
+
+## A comprehensive Guide by Quinn Curtis
+
+Company operations has made great strides in developing the documentation website this trimester,
+which means that it is time for deploying the website is our main priority before we can launch.
+
+## The options
+
+currently, the best options for hosting the starlight-based documentation website are as follows:
+
+- Github Pages
+- CloudFlare Pages
+- Netlify
+- Vercel
+
+while each of these tools is great in their own way, it is important to consider the context of our
+website.
+
+- The documentation website is a static website. We will not need dynamic web hosting.
+- It is a very simple Astro application, meaning that there is no real need for SSR, but it would be
+  nice to have the option for it, should we want to expand the UI or functionality in the future.
+- Being a website specific to Thoth Tech, it is unlikely the website will need a ton of bandwidth,
+  ram, or storage.
+
+Let's look at our options in a bit more depth.
+
+### Github Pages
+
+- Pros
+  - Github pages is completely free.
+  - It can be quickly and easily be updated from an existing repo.
+  - Reliable. Github has an excellent reputation for uptime and stability.
+- Cons
+  - Limited to Github URLs
+  - Cap on bandwidth per month: 100GB
+  - Does not support SSR
+
+### Cloudflare Pages
+
+- Pros
+
+  - An extremely secure platform backed by one of the most recognizable names in networking.
+  - It comes with a very strong and compelling free tier. for free you can build a site 500 times
+    per month, and there is unlimited static requests and bandwidth.
+
+- Cons
+  - The most expensive paid option of the bunch. While it is $20/mo at its most basic paid tier, and
+    that's if you bill it annually. When billed monthly, it comes out to a whopping $25 per month.
+  - It is also the newest of the bunch, meaning that there is a little less documentation and
+    support available.
+
+### Netlify
+
+- Pros
+  - Netlify has free (and automated) SSL configuration out of the box.
+  - It has its own form submission system and user authentication system should we need it down the
+    line
+  - Cheapest paid tier.
+- Cons
+  - Paid. There is a free option but it is very limited in scope. The next tier costs 19$ USD per
+    month to keep running.
+  - Deployment times are based on payment tier.
+
+### Vercel
+
+- Pros
+  - Also has SSL configuration, but it is a bit more involved.
+  - Very reliable, and has the quickest deployment time at a free level.
+- Cons
+  - Pushes Next.js integration, not that that's a bad thing, but our project does not use it, so
+    it's a bit of a waste.
+  - No form submission or user control built in.
+
+## Comparing the bunch
+
+Okay, so now that we have a basic idea of each product, how do they hold up against each other?
+
+|                               | Github Pages | Cloudflare Pages | Netlify | Vercel |
+| ----------------------------- | ------------ | ---------------- | ------- | ------ |
+| Github integration            | ✔️           | ✔️               | ✔️      | ✔️     |
+| Free tier                     | ✔️           | ✔️               | ✔️      | ✔️     |
+| Viable Paid Tier              | N/A          |                  | ✔️      | ✔️     |
+| Custom URLs                   |              | ✔️               | ✔️      | ✔️     |
+| SSR Support                   |              | ✔️               | ✔️      | ✔️     |
+| Forms and User Authentication |              |                  | ✔️      |        |
+
+## Conclusions
+
+While all of these deployment options would fit our needs in one way or another, Netlify stands out
+as the winner. Allowing for custom URLs and being able to deploy straight from the company Github
+are things that are invaluable to the operations team. The other options just do not keep up when
+comparing price to features. Netlify has a great inbuilt system for forms and user control if the
+company ever needed them in the future. Given the comparison above and the pros and cons listed, the
+operations team will be going with Netlify.