How I Built My Portfolio & Blog with Minimal Cost

I wanted a personal website where I could showcase my portfolio, highlight my work experience, and document what I’m learning. I also wanted a space to share notes from books, podcasts, and my own thoughts.

The challenge was simple: build all of this while keeping costs as low as possible.

Tech Stack

Here’s what I used:

• Cloudflare for managing my domain and DNS
• Astro for building the frontend
• Netlify for deploying the frontend
• Strapi as a headless CMS
• Railway for hosting the backend

Why This Stack?

I chose Astro because it’s fast and optimized for content-heavy websites. Strapi made it easy to manage blog content without hardcoding posts. Netlify and Railway both offer free tiers, which helped me keep costs minimal.

Final Thoughts

This setup allowed me to build a clean, scalable portfolio and blog without spending much. It’s a great option for developers who want full control over their content and stack.