Why I choose Hashnode over hosting my own blog

Welcome to my first blog post on this new platform! After some reflection and a bit of technical housekeeping, I’ve decided to move away from self-hosting my blog and embrace Hashnode as my new home for sharing ideas. In this post, I’ll walk you through my journey—why I made this shift, the steps I took to get here, and what I’m excited about moving forward.

My previous setup: Hugo + AWS Amplify Hosting

For the past four years, I’ve been running a blog built with Hugo, a static site generator, hosted on AWS Amplify Hosting on my own AWS account. The content was written in Markdown, and the infrastructure was defined using CloudFormation, with everything stored in AWS CodeCommit. It worked well enough at the time, but that blog has since gone completely dormant. Managing my own setup was rewarding, but it came with overhead I no longer wanted to deal with.

Recently in 2024, AWS announced that CodeCommit is being discontinued, which forced me to rethink my approach. I didn’t want to lose the old content or the CloudFormation code I’d written, even if I had no plans to republish those ancient posts. This sparked my first step: migrating everything to a new home.

First : Migrating from AWS CodeCommit to GitHub

Since CodeCommit is on its way out, I decided to archive my blog content and infrastructure code on GitHub. It’s a widely used platform, and I figured it’d be a great place to keep everything for reference. Thankfully, AWS provides an excellent guide for this process: How to Migrate Your AWS CodeCommit Repository to Another Git Provider.

For my specific case, I also relied on GitHub’s own documentation: About GitHub Importer and the detailed steps in Importing a Repository with GitHub Importer.

Before starting the migration, I had one prerequisite: setting up static credentials for CodeCommit. The instructions for this are straightforward and can be found in the AWS CodeCommit User Guide. Once the import was complete, I made sure to delete those credentials to keep things secure. With my repositories safely migrated to GitHub, I could now focus on choosing my new blogging platform.

Why Hashnode ?

After some research, I landed on Hashnode—and I couldn’t be happier with the decision. So why did I choose Hashnode over continuing to host my own blog? It boils down to a few key reasons:

• Simplicity: I no longer want to manage infrastructure—I want to focus on writing. Hashnode handles all the hosting and technical details, letting me pour my energy into creating content.

• Cost: Hashnode offers a robust free tier, which aligns with my goal of keeping expenses low (ideally zero) while still having a professional platform.

• Community: Hashnode’s built-in community of developers and writers is a huge draw. I love the idea of connecting with like-minded people and getting instant feedback on my posts.

Five advantages of using Hashnode over self-hosting my blog

Here’s why Hashnode stands out for me compared to rolling my own solution:

1. Zero maintenance: With self-hosting, I was constantly tweaking servers, updating dependencies, and troubleshooting downtime. Hashnode eliminates all of that, giving me a fully managed platform that just works.

2. Built-in audience: Unlike a standalone blog where I’d need to hustle for traffic, Hashnode connects me to a ready-made community of readers and tech enthusiasts who can discover my work organically.

3. Custom domains : Hashnode lets me use a custom domain if I want, but without the headache of configuring DNS, SSL certificates, or hosting services myself.

4. Markdown support: As a fan of Markdown from my Hugo days, I appreciate that Hashnode supports it natively—making it easy to repurpose my old content if I ever choose to.

5. Analytics and insights: Hashnode provides built-in analytics to track how my posts perform, something I’d have to cobble together separately with a self-hosted setup.

Looking ahead

With my content archived on GitHub and my new home established on Hashnode, I’m excited to start fresh. This platform feels like the perfect balance of simplicity, community, and functionality—everything I need to focus on writing without the distractions of managing a blog from scratch.

Thanks for joining me on this journey!