The simplest self-hosted Linktree alternative is one HTML file
You might not need software at all. The simplest self-hosted Linktree alternative is one static HTML file on your own domain: your photo, your links, your projects, about 8 KB, hosted free on GitHub Pages or Netlify. No database, no Docker, no monthly fee, and Google can actually read it.
What are the options, honestly?
There are three tiers. Hosted services like Linktree, Bento, or Carrd are the easy path: sign up, drag links in, done. The costs are a subdomain you don’t own on the free tier, their branding, and a page that lives on their servers under their terms. Self-hosted apps like LinkStack or LittleLink give you ownership, but they’re real software: LinkStack wants a PHP server, the popular alternatives on GitHub often assume Docker or a Node build step, and now you maintain infrastructure to display five links. The third tier is the one almost nobody mentions because there’s no product to sell: a single HTML file. Everything a link-in-bio page does is static content, which is exactly what HTML has been for since 1991.
Why does one file beat an app for this?
Because the job is tiny and the failure modes of software are not. A static file has no server to patch, no dependencies to update, nothing to get hacked, and it loads in one round trip. It’s also better for search: your name, your projects, and their descriptions sit in plain markup on your own domain, so this page can rank for your name, and every link on it is a real link. Hosted link pages mostly rank for the service’s brand, not yours.
What do you give up?
Two real things. Click analytics, unless you add a lightweight script or read your host’s logs. And the drag-and-drop editor: changing a static page means editing a file. Five years ago that second one was a genuine reason to pay Linktree. Now it isn’t, because the AI assistant you already use edits HTML faster than you can drag tiles. Tell it “add my new project above the others” and you’re done before the Linktree dashboard would have loaded.
How do you set one up in practice?
Two routes. By hand: write a page with your photo, a line about you, and your links, then push it to a GitHub repo with Pages enabled or drag it into Netlify. Free, ten minutes if you know HTML. Or let the machine do it: the BuiltByBadge skill runs the whole thing as one conversation inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor. It asks where the page should live, takes your links and projects, shows you the page before anything ships, and sets up the free hosting in your name if you don’t have a domain. The result is exactly the one file described above, called a hub, and it comes with a matching three-line badge for the corner of every site you ship, so all your projects point at it. The badge mechanics are in the three-line badge post.
Which should you actually pick?
If you want click analytics dashboards and A/B tested button colors, a hosted service is fine; that’s what it’s for. If you enjoy running servers, LinkStack is solid software. For everyone else, especially anyone who ships their own projects: one file, your domain, free hosting. It’s the only option on the list that will still work, unchanged, in ten years.
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