There are many web hosting companies to choose from if you're taking the plunge into making your own website with a comic content management system (CMS) like ComicControl or Grawlix, a Wordpress comic theme like Toocheke or ComicPress, or a HTML template to cut/paste code like Rarebit. While these solutions are generally free, finding a home for them is... generally not. It can be hard to choose what's best for your webcomic AND your budget!

We took a look at a few of the top hosting services used by webcomics creators using webcomic CMSes, and we put out a poll to ask your feedback about your hosts!

This post may be updated as time goes on as new services enter the hosting arena, or other important updates come to light.

hello hello, I would like recommendations for where to host the salad squad comic! I'll definitely be posting it here, but I'd really welcome some recommendations from comic readers and writers for where to publish in addition to tumblr.

it may be a while yet before I can get anything up and running (the house we moved into in May is. awful. and we're probably moving again soon bc it's leaking and moldy and gross, and the landlord only sorta fixes things and the fixes are always temporary and cheap.) but! I want ideas, bc boy howdy do I got the itch to do this comic!

for artists/writers: what kind of work goes into publishing on the sites you use? for comic readers: what comic hosting sites have been the best user experience?

Hello friends! Today we want to discuss a question we've been seeing pop up a lot more often as of late. The internet is changing, and has been shifting and morphing for a long while, but that poses the question; Where do I post my comic?

The answer to that is pretty simple; Anywhere you want!

While that answer does feel a bit lackluster it's 100% true! There are still lots of places to post your work even if it doesn't feel like there is. We've seen plenty of storytellers share their comics on social media, blogs, and even video formats! It's interesting to think that now we have more places to tell the world our stories than ever before. A great example of a storyteller using all of their platforms to share their story is Zesketches. She utilizes all her social platforms to tell her stories, engaging with audiences by allowing them to help tell the story!

You're probably at the point where you just want to know good places to share your comic in an already established format; Page-to-page, scrolling toon, 4-panel, narrative illustration. There are still tons of places to share your comic with readers, established or independent.

Here are a short list of sites where you can post your comic. We would like to also mention that some of these sites do not give you control over how your comic will look and the content you may be able to post on the platform.

Tumblr***

Comicfury+/***

Webtoons Canvas*

Tapas*

The Duck/Drunkduck+

GlobalComix*

Neocities***

Wordpress***

Comicgenesis+/***

NamiComi*

* : These comic hosts do not give you control over the look of your comics profile or site.

+ : These hosts are similar in that you have access to built in themes for your comic. If you're familiar with a bit of html and css coding, you can really make a great custom site that fits exactly what you need. It does have its limitations and benefits, a quick and easy upload system but a bit limiting to the tags/genres you can select.

*** : These hosts are also website or blog hosts, meaning that you will need to know some level of coding in html/css/bootstrap to get the full spectrum of use out of them.

NOTE: As we did research for this short article, we would like to address something else we've seen across different posts and articles from others. Hiveworks Comics and Spiderforest are NOT webcomic hosts. Hiveworks, est. 2016, is a LGBTQIA+ led agency and publisher. They do not host comics themselves. Read about what they do here. Spiderforest, est. 2004, is a creator-run webcomic collective! They also do not host comics themselves. Read their about page here.

My FOUR cents on the webcomic hosting site Tapastic.

Huh.

I don't follow that many webcomics, but I noticed a lot of creators I know use blog engines to upload their stories. I've been doing it for a while myself. First I had this html-based site on a free hosting service.

Later I started using wordpress with the comicpress extension. This has been pretty much the default for a lot of online comics I know. Comicpress was relatively low maintenace. And, at the time, at least as far as I know, there were not many alternatives. There have been some portals designed specifically for webcomic hosting, like Smack Jeeves. I've never used it, so I don't have much of an opinion about it.

So, at some point I lost my website as I couldn't afford it (this was a different, paid one, not the first one, which was free, but not very reliable). So, at that point, I moved to blogger. Not a good place for a webcomic. I suspect tumblr is probably a little better (as it won't stop working all of a sudden because you don't have the latest browser version, or compress your pictures while changing their contrast completely).

But at some point I asked myself: if I was looking to read a new comic, would I go to tumblr? I mean, tumblr is a great place, full of awesome artists, but it is neither designed for webcomics to be uploaded, or to be easily searched for by category/genre.

So, I'm not really sure if this is going to be helpful/useful to anyone, but I'd like to share a little information about the places I upload my comics nowadays (that would be August 2014, so if you're reading this while flying your anti-gravitational skateboard through the busy streets of human colonies on Mars, this post may possibly be a little out of date). Ok, let's get to the point.

Amilova is a website, but also a comic available on said website. I would say the main focus, or the most distinctive feature of this website is that it has a system for translation of comics, by the community, into various languages, all online.

Features:

the navigation of the comic is pretty standard, the system remembers what page you stopped reading

has a built in ebook system, though I haven't really used it, and it doesn't seem super intuitive

the admins/moderators are cool, helpful with solving issues, no complaints from me there

uses virtual currency that can be bought with PayPal, credit card or through sms

the translation system - you need to upload your pages, then upload same pages with empty word baloons, then in a special window create text areas for where the dialogues or whatever are supposed to go. Then people can put words in there. So it's kind of like translation wikipedia style (which doesn't necessarily guarantee accuracy)

you can customize your comic page with your own background

basic statistics of the views available

You can learn more here and here and here. And here's their fb.

Inkblazers, formerly known as Manga Magazine. It has a broader set of features, I would say it's like deviantART for webcomics. Now, I have to admit, I haven't used it for a while, and there have been many changes to it, so I'm not sure about how some of the features work:

It has a clean layout, with an intuitive, but still traditional, navigation. When you're reading a comic, you have the usual prev/next buttons on the sides of the page, but there's also a Youtube-like slider below the page that lets you navigate quickly inside of an episode

notifies you about updates, but you have to remember where you stopped reading

I think you can change the header of the comic (where it says "comics to love" in the picture), though it's not visible while reading anyway

it has a marketplace, though I'm not sure if it's available for everyone or just select authors

it has a preview program, basically the last two months updates of your comic become available only to premium users, you get paid based on the number of readers you have or something (with my 28 subscribers I didn't bother to pay attention when I got that e-mail, my bad)

you can upload illustrations there too

Inkblazers FAQ. Inkblazers tumblr.

Tapastic is a website I joined most recently. It's designed in a minimalistic aesthetic, presumably with tablet devices and all that in mind.

Features:

very simple, intuitive navigation, based on infinite scrolling

you can upload each page as a separate episode, or up to 40 pages into a single episode

as a reader you get notifications for every new episode of a comic you follow, and the system automatically remembers what page you read last and takes you there

they have plans for their own creator support system (something Patreon-like), which is now in a closed beta version, requires credit card and uses Stripe, which is a service I'm not familiar with at all

not much customization, but you can add a header to your comic, also each episode requires a thumbnail (for the menu on the left, and rss feeds, and some other things), but you can really just upload the same one each time (a logo or something)

Tapastic FAQ, Tapastic on tumblr.

Now, I'm not going to say which one is my favourite, it's more about personal preference at this point. I think there's a dedicated group of people behind each project. I'm also not the one to ask about "how to get an audience". No fucking idea.