← Blog Ship July 15, 2026 · The ReDock team

Free hosting that's actually your Mac: local sites + Cloudflare tunnels

Your Mac can host real HTTPS websites for free: run sites locally with ReDock, expose them through Cloudflare tunnels, and pay nobody.

The cheapest web host you’ll ever find is the computer you already own. ReDock runs real websites — WordPress, Astro, Next.js, Node.js, and more — directly on your Mac, each at https://name.test, then exposes them to the internet through Cloudflare tunnels with a public HTTPS URL. No monthly bill, no VPS, no credit card: the tunnels ride Cloudflare’s free infrastructure and ReDock itself is free.

How a Mac becomes a host

A web host is just a machine that runs your site’s stack and answers HTTP requests. Your Mac can do both; the friction has always been setup — installing PHP, MySQL, Node versions, and SSL certificates by hand.

ReDock removes that layer. It’s a native macOS app (macOS 12+, built on Tauri and Rust) that runs each site with the right runtime automatically: WordPress gets PHP and MySQL, an Astro project gets Node, a Bun app gets Bun. Every site gets a https://name.test address with a locally trusted certificate, so you develop against real HTTPS from the first minute. No terminal required — the install guide is genuinely short.

At this point you have local hosting. The next step makes it public.

Cloudflare tunnels: the part that makes it real hosting

A Cloudflare tunnel is an outbound connection from your Mac to Cloudflare’s edge. Visitors hit a public Cloudflare URL; Cloudflare forwards the request down the tunnel to the site running on your machine. Because the connection is outbound, you don’t open ports, touch your router, or expose your home IP.

ReDock manages tunnels for you in two flavors:

  • QuickShare — one click produces a random, unlisted something.redock.xyz URL. Unlimited on the free tier. Stop sharing and the URL goes dark immediately.
  • Named subdomains — pick a memorable name like myproject.redock.xyz. The free tier includes three of these.

The lifecycle is honest: if you stop the site, the tunnel parks with it and resumes when the site comes back. ReDock shows you the true state — running, parked, dark — rather than a green dot that means nothing. The sharing docs cover the mechanics.

What this model is good for — and what it isn’t

Hosting from your Mac has a defining property: the site is up when your Mac is up. That makes it excellent for some jobs and wrong for others.

Good fits:

  • Client previews and design reviews — send a link, get feedback, kill the link. More on this in showing clients work-in-progress sites.
  • Webhook development — Stripe, GitHub, or Shopify can reach your local code through the tunnel.
  • Demos, hackathon projects, internal tools you use during the workday.
  • Staging environments you’d otherwise pay for — see free staging environments.

Wrong fits:

  • A production site that must survive your laptop sleeping. For that, use ReDock’s one-click deploy to Cloudflare Workers static assets (also on the free tier) — the zero-budget deploy guide covers it. Deploy for permanence, tunnel for liveness.

The two combine well: develop and share via tunnel, then deploy the static build when it’s ready to live on its own.

Security and privacy, plainly

Reasonable questions, direct answers:

  • Is my home IP exposed? No. Visitors only ever see Cloudflare’s edge. The tunnel is outbound from your Mac.
  • Can strangers find my QuickShare URL? The URLs are random and unlisted — not indexed, not guessable in practice. Unlisted is not the same as authenticated, though: anyone holding the link can open it, so treat the link itself as the key.
  • What happens when I stop sharing? The URL goes dark. Not a cached copy, not a soft redirect — dark.

Everything is inspectable in the app. ReDock’s design principle is honest state: what the UI says is running is what’s actually running.

FAQ

Is this really free, or free-with-an-asterisk?

Two literal facts: Cloudflare tunnels here ride free Cloudflare infrastructure, and ReDock is free. The sharing limits are the same on every plan: unlimited random QuickShare URLs, three named redock.xyz subdomains, and one custom domain attached at a time on deploys.

Does my Mac need to stay awake?

Yes — the site is served by your Mac, so it’s reachable while your Mac is on and ReDock is running the site. For always-on hosting, deploy the static build to Cloudflare Workers instead.

Can I do this on Windows?

No. ReDock is a native macOS app, macOS 12 or newer. There is no Windows version.

Your Mac is a better host than you’ve been giving it credit for. Download ReDock and put it to work.