When it comes to HTML and CSS site-hosting for beginners, Neocities has the market cornered. Since its creation in 2013, it is the only of its kind, and, for that reason, stands out against the crowd.

… until recently, of course, when Nekoweb burst onto the scene! A very recently-established webhost, Nekoweb is a very similar service — free HTML and CSS webhosting for beginners. It seems to have even been directly inspired by Neocities, with similar cat-themed branding and multiple mentions of it on the website. And I'm looking to compare and contrast exactly what makes these two services different, for anyone looking for where to host their site!

Both Neocities and Nekoweb have social aspects to their webhosting. Both give you the ability to follow sites you like and browse through sites hosted on their platform (sporting a thumbnail preview). But how do these social features stack up?

In terms of on-site features, Neocities currently has Nekoweb beat. Neocities gives you the ability to see the most recent updates from sites you follow through the feed on the homepage, and has site profiles where you can not only follow the sites you like, but also leave comments, tip, and view the site's stats.

Nekoweb has none of that. You can follow sites, but you can only view a list of the sites you like in your 'Follows' tab, with no indication of the site's most recent update, or if it's been updated at all. Nekoweb does allow you to customize your site's thumbnail preview with CSS, unlike Neocities, which is very cool! But there is no commenting feature, or profile feature. The fact that Nekoweb doesn't come with an RSS feed for all sites like Neocities does really doesn't help with this, either, as that's another way to keep up with your favorite sites that Nekoweb just doesn't offer. There is a way to chat to those who are online at the same time as you, but there's no way to seek out and comment on a specific site that you like, or chat with a specific site owner.

However, Nekoweb has what is either a benefit or a detriment, depending on who you are: an official Discord server! This server has the server developers in it, and is an easy way to get in touch with the community. Neocities has had many unofficial servers, but none with or run by the creator of the service.

Now, the subject of Discord servers as a replacement for public forums is…! Well, one for another day. Regardless of how one feels about Discord, you can't deny that it's the most popular chatting app nowadays, so this move more or less makes sense when it comes to fostering community, when it's unable to be done on the site itself.

Arguably the biggest perk for Nekoweb is that you can upload any type of file for free. MP3s, MP4s, WASM, ZIP and EXE files are not able to be uploaded to Neocities unless one upgrades to supporter. This is a bother to a lot of folks, because the ability to make the browser play music is a huge aspect of site creation for many, and, with this limitation, they have to host their MP3 files elsewhere. Nekoweb has no file type limits at all for its free plan, which gives it a huge leg up.

Additionally, Neocities has a file size limit of 100MB, while, to my knowledge, it seems that Nekoweb has no file size limit.

Additionally, Nekoweb's file editor is much better than Neocities' is (in my opinion), sporting a 'back', 'reset', and 'format' button, and toggles for autoformatting, wrapping, differing font sizes and font types, and a light/dark theme. Neocities', on the other hand, has only a 'save', 'view' and 'share' button (and nobody uses the 'share' button). They have more themes than Nekoweb does, but I don't really know anyone who uses them outside of the 'dark mode/light mode' feature.

Both Neocities and Nekoweb start at the low, low price of zero dollars! You can't get much better than that. That said, both come with an optional subscription service, with differing perks for each!

Neocities' subscription model offers one tier only: Supporter. For $5 USD a month, you get:

• 50GB of storage
• 3K GB of bandwidth
• no file upload type restrictions
• the ability to create multiple sites
• custom domain support
• remote filesystem support

Nekoweb, on the other hand, offers two tiers, and both of them manage to be cheaper than Neocities'. The Cat tier is $1 USD a month, and lets you have:

• one custom domain
• an additional subdomain
• twice as small rate limits
• a supporter Discord role

The Cute Kitty tier is $3 a month, and gives you:

• 20GB of storage
• 100,000 max files
• 5KB for site box CSS
• the ability to overflow your site box
• the ability to use FTP to manage your files
• access to Nekoweb's git server
• twice as small git rates
• 10 custom domains and the ability to route them into different folders (read: have different sites with one account)
• endless bandwidth
• a supporter Discord role

In terms of price, Nekoweb is obviously the cheapest one, with even the top tier being cheaper than Neocities' Supporter.

Comparing numbers, 20GB is less than Neocities' 50GB, but, to be honest, 50GB is more than most people need, anyway. Even 20GB is, arguably. It is much cheaper to use a custom domain with Nekoweb, with $1 USD a month instead of $5 USD. Nekoweb supports endless bandwidth instead of Neocities' 3k.

Neocities generally seems to have a 'no censorship' ruling, for better or worse. Neocities specifically states, "A site's offensiveness is not grounds (legally, or in our Terms of Service) for removal."

Things that are disallowed on Neocities, and would get your site removed, include:

• anything that breaks US law
• doxing
• cracking sites (DDoS, phishing, leaked private data)
• spam
• illegal content (the ToS specifically calls out child pornography and threats against individuals or organizations)
• copyright or trademark infringement (unless the material is fair use)
• scams
• impersonation or forgery
• harassment

Neocities explicitly allows pornography, and criticism of products, ideas, political parties or organizations.

Everything Neocities covers, Nekoweb's Terms of Service also does, but they go further. Things that are explicitly against Nekoweb's Terms of Service include:

• nothing against the law in Germany (as opposed to the US)
• no NSFW content without a warning beforehand, and no real-life porn
• no real-life gore or shock content
• no "lolicon", "shotacon", or sexual content of any kind regarding minors (as opposed to Neocities, which seems to only care about real-world CP, not fictionalized versions of it)

Those last three points especially could either draw people in or push them away, depending on their interest in the named content, and their moral standings on such.

Here are some other comparisons that might be useful, but didn't fit into any other category.

• Neocities has a shadowbanning feature if you're blocked by 25 or more users (previously 4), where you're suppressed from the global activity feed and can only comment on profile pages for those who follow you. Nekoweb has no blocking feature, and no shadowbanning feature.
• Neocities is a well-established host, existing for around a decade now as a trustworthy webhost. Nekoweb is much newer, so a lot of people are hesitant to trust it, especially considering that it's still in beta.
• In relation to the previous point: the sites on Neocities are much more complete for this reason, as well. Nekoweb is more or less a collection of sites that are just beginning, with not much content to offer. Both this and the previous statement will change with time, though.
• Neocities' owner, Kyle Drake, is famously not very active. In order to get him to increase the number of people who have to block you before you're shadowbanned from that ridiculous previous number of 4, a huge fuss had to be made by multiple users, including myself. However, the moderation team of Nekoweb is very much active, and able to be easily reached through Discord.
• Neocities is more or less complete, while Nekoweb is still in development. This means that some of Nekoweb's more lackluster aspects may be patched up with time, while Neocities' shortcomings are more or less here to stay.

I didn't come here with a thesis statement of which you should choose. After all, what is important to some may not be as important to others. If you're a musician who wants to host your music on your site, Nekoweb might be the easy pick because of its ability to upload MP3 files for free! But if you're a person who dislikes Discord looking for a community, Neocities is probably what is looking pretty good right now. Make your own decision with the information you've been given and what you want your site to be!

As for myself, I've been using Neocities for as long as my site has existed, and I love the community too much to leave. I have a redirect up on Nekoweb, if I ever want to up and switch, but Neocities is my home, for better or worse. However, I love to see more options for webhosting for beginners popping up. Websites having a functional monopoly on certain niches is a huge problem with the modern web (see: YouTube's monopoly on video-sharing), so I'm glad to see that steps are being taken to avoid that, should Neocities kick the bucket.

Plus… more personal websites is more personal websites! That's a huge win, no matter where they're hosted.