01The key facts
Free is a real price. GitHub Pages costs nothing for public repositories, and for plenty of sites that settles the question on its own.
The gaps are operational. Pages serves files capably; what it hands back to you is rollback by revert commit, forms via a third party, and troubleshooting with only the documentation for company.
Private code changes the maths. Serving a private repository through Pages requires a paid GitHub plan. Managed hosting here treats private repositories as the normal case.
Location is a choice. Pages serves from a global CDN; LoomWeb serves from Australian infrastructure.
New here? The pillar page holds the full picture before the comparisons start.
02What Pages does well
Fairness first, because a comparison that skips it is just advertising. Pages is free. It publishes from a push, it runs on infrastructure you already have an account with, and it has carried documentation sites, portfolios and hobby projects for a decade without asking anything of their owners. If your site is public, static, and updated often enough that git feels natural but rarely enough that nothing ever breaks at speed, Pages is not a compromise; it is the correct answer.
The honest test is not traffic. It is what happens on the evening something goes wrong, and whether anyone is being paid to help.
03The same site, two homes
On Pages
You push, Pages publishes the branch. A deploy that breaks something is repaired by reverting the commit and waiting for the rebuild, which is fine when you are calm and unhurried. A contact form means bolting on a third-party service. When a certificate or a DNS record misbehaves, the documentation and the community forum are the support channel.
On LoomWeb
Every push becomes a numbered release and rollback is one click in the portal, so a wrong deploy costs minutes instead of an evening. The contact-form endpoint is included. Certificates for your custom domain are issued and renewed without a reminder. And when publishing misbehaves in a way the documentation does not cover, there is an inbox with a person on the other end.
04How to tell which one yours is
A hobby site with public code: Pages, happily, and this page has done its job if you leave now. A business site, client work, a private repository, a form, an owner who does not want to learn deploy plumbing, or a site whose visitors are mostly Australian: that is the managed column, and the fee is $39 a month after a 14-day trial.
We sell the second option, so weigh that as you read. The fair framing is that both columns are honest answers to different questions. If the deciding factor is a domain you already own, the custom domain comparison covers that specific tug of war.
05Questions at the crossover
Is Pages really free?
For public repositories, yes. Paid GitHub plans exist for private-repository publishing and other account features, not because Pages quietly charges hobby sites for traffic.
Can I start on Pages and move later?
Yes, and it is a small migration, because the site is the repository. Point the new host at the same repo and the content travels with it. The limits guide describes what usually forces the move.
Which one is faster for Australian visitors?
LoomWeb serves from Australian infrastructure; Pages serves from a global CDN. For a local audience that is a real difference, and we make no worldwide speed claims for either side.
What does $39 a month actually buy?
Versioned deploys with one-click rollback, the form endpoint, automatic certificates on any domain, private repositories as standard, Australian serving, and a human to email.
Build it with your AI. Host it here.
Deploys on every push, from Australia, with nothing to maintain.