Hostish

Host a website from your own PC with a tunnel. No port forwarding.

Hostish serves your PC through a VPS tunnel. Visitors connect to the VPS over HTTPS, and the VPS forwards requests to your PC while your agent is running.

Nerd: your agent opens an outbound WebSocket to the VPS, and the VPS forwards HTTP requests to your agent and returns the responses back to visitors. This works behind NAT without inbound router ports.

Dumb
Nerd Dumb
Dashboard Create account + download agent Your site URL https://USERNAME.hostish.site/
Tip: If your site is not loading, check the Dashboard first to verify your agent is online.
Quick steps
  • Create an account.
  • Download agent.py.
  • Edit the top settings.
  • Run: python agent.py
  • Create an account at /create/.
  • Download agent.py.
  • Edit the settings at the top:
    USERNAME, PASSWORD, WEBSITE_DIR
  • Run python agent.py on the PC that contains the website folder.
  • Visitors open your site at https://USERNAME.hostish.site/.
  • Hostish is live hosting. The VPS does not store your normal hosted site files.
  • If the agent stops, visitors see an offline page.
  • Because it is a tunnel, your router does not need port forwarding.
  • The agent can check for newer agent versions and warn if yours is outdated.
Static hosting examples
  • https://tester.hostish.site/ → your homepage
  • https://tester.hostish.site/image.png → an image
  • https://tester.hostish.site/ loads your folder’s homepage.
  • https://tester.hostish.site/blog can redirect to /blog/ when a folder exists.
  • https://tester.hostish.site/blog/ loads blog/index.html.
  • https://tester.hostish.site/assets/app.js loads assets/app.js.
  • Root-relative URLs like src="/image.png" work correctly because each user has their own subdomain root.
  • Cross-user linking works:
    Example: <img src="https://otheruser.hostish.site/files/img.png">
  • Hostish now protects control paths on user subdomains, so user routes like /dashboard/ are forwarded to the hoster site instead of the Hostish dashboard.
  • Relative URLs like src="image.png" are still easiest for portable folders.
  • Nice URL helpers are in place for index.html and missing trailing slashes.
Backend / API hosting
Agent modes: static / proxy / hybrid
  • Static: only files
  • Proxy: everything goes to your local server
  • Hybrid: files + an API prefix (example: api/)
  • Static mode serves files from WEBSITE_DIR.
  • Proxy mode forwards all requests to your local backend server at UPSTREAM_BASE.
  • Hybrid mode serves files, but forwards specific prefixes (like api/) to your local backend.
  • That means you can have:
    Frontend = files in a folder
    Backend = Python/Node/AI server on 127.0.0.1
  • Proxy mode is a reverse-proxy tunnel. Your backend stays in RAM and responds normally.
  • Your backend should bind to 127.0.0.1 only. Do not bind to 0.0.0.0 unless you know why.
  • Hybrid routing is done by the agent. The VPS forwards the raw path, method, headers, and body to the agent.
  • Hostish provides the tunnel and routing. Authentication and authorization for your backend app are still your responsibility.
Backend examples
  • API URL: https://tester.hostish.site/api/hello
  • Hybrid example (recommended):
    Set MODE = "hybrid", PROXY_PREFIXES = ["api/"]
  • Run your backend locally on your PC:
    Example: http://127.0.0.1:5000
  • Then a visitor calling:
    https://tester.hostish.site/api/generate
    gets forwarded to your PC backend at:
    http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/generate
  • Frontend JS example:
    fetch("/api/generate", { method:"POST", body: ... })
  • Proxy-only: Set MODE="proxy" and run a full web app locally (React/Flask/FastAPI/etc).
  • Static-only: Set MODE="static" if you only want files.
  • Hostish forwards HTTP methods and bodies, so POST APIs work.
  • Agent v5 supports optional custom 404 behavior and can redirect missing pages to https://hostish.site/404/ if hosters choose.
Important
  • Agent must stay running.
  • Do not host secrets in your folder.
  • Online only: if your PC is off, disconnected, or the agent is closed, visitors see offline.
  • Security: only share folders in the website folder you are okay with the public reading.
  • Backend security: if you host APIs or cloud tools, your app must enforce its own login and permissions.
  • Performance depends on your upload speed and latency.
  • Hosting large files (videos) will be slower and can use a lot of your bandwidth.
Get started
  • Click “Create account + download agent”.
  • Go to /create/, make an account, download agent.py, edit the top settings, then run it.
  • If you want APIs or AI, run your backend locally on 127.0.0.1 and set agent mode.
  • If something fails, check /dashboard/ to confirm your agent is online and receiving requests.
  • If you want always-on hosting, run the agent on a machine that stays online (home server or old PC).
  • Use the dashboard to monitor activity, top paths, maintenance mode, and agent version status.