Newsletter · Issue 001 · 2026-09-24
Six free hosts tested, and the crawlers vendors actually block
The first issue: our free-hosting benchmark, the voice-agent head to head, and the crawler matrix asking which AI vendors let answer engines read their sites.
In this issue
- Comparison
Best free web hosting for SPAs (tested)
Cloudflare Pages is the default free host for most SPAs: unlimited bandwidth, functions included, no trial clock. Vercel wins for non-commercial Next.js, Netlify for workflow extras.
- Original data
AI crawler access test: can answer engines read these vendors?
Six free hosts, probed on 2026-09-20: median TTFB, robots policy for AI crawlers, and who ships an llms.txt. GitHub Pages answered fastest at 21ms median.
- Head to head
Vapi vs Retell — raw control or a builder that ships
Raw API control or a builder that ships: which team shape fits Vapi, which fits Retell, judged on inbound and outbound calling, campaign dialing, and whether a no-code builder exists.
- Research note
Research: how AI companies treat each other's crawlers
Eight AI vendors against eight answer-engine crawlers, robots policy and live status per cell, from a datacenter vantage. OpenAI serves GPTBot a 200 while 403-challenging ChatGPT-User, its own fetcher.
Every claim on those pages carries the date it was last checked and its source. New issues land here and in the feed at /newsletter/rss.xml.