July 8th, 2024 Previous / Next

Costs & Limitations

A list of the major services behind the pinniped.page, what they provide at what price, and what I think of them. Visit the Status page for a list of all services used by my website.

1 — DOMAIN — Google Domains (now Squarespace Domains)

This is where the “pinniped.page” in the URL comes from. All this does is make it so you don’t have to go to the-pinniped-page.web.app or the-pinniped-page.firebaseapp.com to access my website. It also provides some other management features.

Although I was not happy that Google Domains was acquired by Squarespace, the migration was seamless and I actually think the Squarespace dashboard looks nicer. I don’t think I have ever had any problems with my domain, the service does what it’s supposed to.

2 — HOSTING — Firebase Hosting

This is the most important service used by my website, as it would not exist without it. Firebase Hosting stores my code and serves it to people who want to view it.

I am limited to 10 GB of storage and 360 MB/day of data transfer, which I still cannot believe is free, because that’s more than enough (for now at least). I recently had a major issue with this service (that turned out to be a bug in their code), and even as a non-paying customer I was able to access wonderful human customer service. Just phenomenal.

3 — DATABASE — Firebase Realtime Database

This provides an easily accessible database to store information in. At the moment, it saves the current wordlelele word, ratings for Think Four puzzles, games of TicTacToe, blog post view counts, and more!

As with the previous, even though I am limited to 100 simultaneous connections, 1 GB of storage, 10 GB/month of downloaded data, and only one database, this is fantastic for a free service.

4 — ICONS — Font Awesome

Beautiful icons. That’s it. I use them as decorations, buttons, arrows, dots, rating indicators, and all kinds of other things.

I’ve been using Font Awesome since I started working on this website, but I only started paying for the icons in 2024 when the Web Awesome Kickstarter offered a permanent discount on Font Awesome (to USD$68/year) as one of the rewards. I had thought that maybe I would cancel the subscription, especially considering all Font Awesome subscriptions come with a perpetual license, meaning I wouldn’t lose the icons. However, this year Font Awesome announced Font Awesome 7, new icon packs, and the associated Pro+ plans. I knew I had to upgrade, and I got a 34% discount by preordering. Font Awesome is one of my favourite companies — they like my random Font Awesome icon generator — so I’m glad to continue supporting them. Nearly every page on my website uses these icons, including this one, so you don’t have to go far to find them.

5 — FONTS — Google Fonts

You do not want to look at your computer’s default fonts all day, or ever really. Trust me. At the time of writing, the Google Fonts library contains 1705 font families, all of which can be imported at no cost.

Another example of Google doing something that really makes you wonder where they get all their money and resources. It’s amazing that all of these fonts are 100% free.

6 — FONTS — Adobe Fonts

However vast the Google Fonts library may appear, there are some more...unique fonts that can be only found elsewhere. Adobe Fonts has, at the time of writing, 4353 font families. These can be imported into a website very easily.

It’s a good service, but if I had to pay for it, I wouldn’t. If fonts suddenly disappear from my website, blame Adobe.

Well, there you go. All the services that, combined, provide the complete pinniped.page experience. Hopefully I didn’t forget anything.

You know, this might be the first blog post of actual substance. Wow!

LAST UPDATED: July 23rd, 2025