Host Grav without installing anything
A site whose content is a folder of Markdown files: you back it up by copying it, version it in Git, and there is no database to break.
Starting at €4.99/month
Introduction
Grav installed, updated and backed up by us, on a machine in France. A content manager with no database: everything lives in Markdown files. Extremely fast, easy to back up and to version — ideal for a brochure site or documentation. You install nothing and configure no server: the application is online a few minutes after you order, under your own name.
The plan that suits it is App Essentiel at €4.99/month incl. VAT — 2 GB of memory. The absence of a database changes things: there is no second service to run, and a page is a file read from disk. Grav then compiles its Twig templates and caches the result, so a visitor almost always receives a page that is already prepared. Memory goes to the building moments — the first visit after an edit, rebuilding the search index, resizing uploaded images — and to the system. It is little, and that is why this kind of site answers quickly.
People come here from a WordPress that has become heavy for five pages, or from a static site generator whose lack of a writing interface they regret. Grav holds both ends: the content stays as text in a tree — one folder per page, a Markdown file inside, the ordering written into the folder name — and an optional administration interface lets you write in the browser. The Git synchronisation extension ties it all to a repository: an edit made online lands in the history, and a file pushed from an editor appears on the site.
What managed hosting changes
No database, so nothing to repair
Every page is a Markdown file with its metadata at the top, in a folder whose name carries the display order. Backing up means copying a folder, moving means dropping it elsewhere, and there is no corrupted database to restore on a Sunday evening.
A site you version like code
Since the content is text, it goes into a Git repository: you see who changed what, roll back, and review an edit before publishing it. The synchronisation extension moves changes both ways between the site and the repository automatically.
Fast with no optimisation work
Grav caches the compiled pages, and a page served from cache executes almost nothing. Where a classic site needs a caching plugin and a set of settings, here speed is the default behaviour — which matters for search ranking as much as for the visitor.
Twig templates and targeted extensions
Themes are written in Twig, a readable templating language, and the package manager adds what is missing: forms, email sending, full-text search, RSS feeds, sitemap. You install three extensions, not thirty.
Why hand it over rather than install it
A tradesperson's brochure site
Six pages, photographs of completed work, a contact form. A database-driven content manager would be oversized; here the site is fast, backs up as one folder and asks for no monthly maintenance.
Technical documentation
The text is already Markdown in the team's habits, and edits go through the Git repository like the rest of the project. The published site follows automatically, with no generation step to trigger by hand.
A site you want to be able to take with you
An association changing provider, a consultant delivering a site to a client: you hand over a folder. No database export, no prefixed tables, no dependency on one precise engine version.
A developer who wants to write the templates
Twig, readable configuration files, and the option of working entirely outside the admin interface. You build a bespoke theme without dismantling a block system designed for somebody else.
A site in two languages
The translation of a page is a neighbouring file, named with the language code. That is immediately understandable and maintainable, where database-driven systems need a plugin and a mapping table.
Hosted in France
In our own infrastructure in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, which we operate ourselves. Your site answers from France, which shows in loading time for French visitors, and the person on the phone speaks your language.
Frequently asked questions
There is no one-click import, and it is better to know that before starting. The workable route is this: export the WordPress content as XML, convert it to Markdown files with a conversion tool, then drop the resulting tree into the pages folder. Text and headings come across well; images have to be copied and their paths reviewed, and layouts built with a block builder have to be redone. On a site of ten to thirty pages that is a day well spent; beyond a hundred pages, the question deserves asking again.
No. The administration interface installs as an extension and gives you an editor in the browser, with media handling and preview. The difference from other systems is that it is optional: what it writes remains files, and you can at any moment open those same files in a text editor, change them and push them to the repository. Both ways of working coexist.
The lack of a database has a price: anything dynamic needs an extension or an outside service — comments, user accounts, a shop. It is not the right tool for selling online. The extension ecosystem is far smaller than that of the big systems: you find the essentials, rarely the exotic. And a site of several thousand pages eventually suffers, because walking the tree has a cost: Grav is built for sites of a few dozen to a few hundred pages.
App Essentiel, at €4.99/month incl. VAT. It provides 2 GB of memory where the application asks for 768 MB at minimum: the headroom serves the system, not the decor. You can change plan later without reinstalling.
Yes, and here it is particularly tangible: your site is a folder of text files and images. Grav is free software, we host it, we do not own it, and leaving amounts to taking that folder with you.