I run three fan sites that have been online since 2000 and 2001. They predate Facebook, most of Wikipedia, and nearly everyone currently posting about their subjects. So understand that this page is not neutral: the fan site is my favorite kind of website, the purest thing the web ever produced, one person saying "I love this thing, here is everything about it" with no business model in sight. Here's how to build one in 2026.
What makes fan sites special (and what they need)
A fan site wins by being complete and current where the official presence is corporate and stale: the full discography or filmography, the tour history, the interview archive, the news the fandom actually cares about. That means the builder question is really a maintenance question: the right tool is whichever one you'll still enjoy updating in year three. Cost matters too, because a fan site should cost as close to nothing as possible; it's a labor of love, and the fastest way to kill the love is a $200 annual bill for a hobby.
One more thing separates fan sites from every other kind of site on this site, and it drives the whole recommendation below: fan sites get big. An episode guide, a discography, a tour archive, a gallery: these are page counts, not paragraphs. Most builders price by page, and that is where the labor of love meets the invoice.
The picks
The spiritual home: Neocities
If you want the true old-web experience, hand-coded pages, web rings, a guestbook aesthetic, Neocities is the direct descendant of GeoCities and costs nothing. You'll be writing HTML, which in 2026 means asking an AI to write it with you, and honestly that's how my own sites run. No affiliate link here because there's nothing to sell; it's just the right answer for a certain kind of fan.
The modern-looking free option, with a ceiling: Framer
Framer's free tier is the best-looking $0 site available: real editor, real galleries, on a framer.website subdomain. The catch a fan site will hit sooner than most is the page cap, which is 30 pages on the free tier and still 30 on the $10 Basic plan. Thirty pages is a fine home for a focused fan site and nowhere near enough for an episode guide. Past that it's Pro at $30 a month, at which point the static-files path below starts looking very sensible. See the full review. Free tier here.
My actual stack, and the honest recommendation for a big fan site: static files on free hosting
All three of my fan sites are plain HTML on free static hosting, total cost one domain renewal a year each. It's the cockroach of web stacks: nothing to hack, nothing to renew except the domain, no page limit to ever collide with, and it survives decades of platform churn, which fan sites uniquely need to do. In 2026 the old objection to it (you have to write the HTML) has mostly evaporated, because an AI assistant will write it while you make the decisions. The path is in the main guide.
The two rules that keep you out of trouble
Be unmistakably unofficial: say "fan site" plainly in the header or footer, don't use official logos as your own branding, and never impersonate the subject or sell merch with their name on it. And credit your sources: scans, photos, and quotes came from somewhere, and the fandoms with long memories are the ones you're publishing for. Respect both rules and fan sites are the friendliest corner of the web; ignore them and you're one cease-and-desist from losing years of work.
Got the itch? A fan site is the perfect weekend project.
Use the launch checklist