Bunny.net (formerly BunnyCDN) is a low-cost, high-performance CDN provider that can be used to host static sites. This post will walk through the steps to hosting a static site using it.

Creating a Storage Zone

The first step is to create a storage zone. The storage zone is where the static site will be stored. To do this, log into the Bunny.net dashboard, click the Storage Zones tab, and follow the steps to create a new storage zone. The storage zone can be named anything, but it’s best to name something that will allow you to identify it later and associate it with your site quickly. You can select the regions you would like your content replicated to, and the more regions you have, the faster your site will be in those regions. Be careful; the more regions you select, the more it will cost you.

Now that you have a storage zone, please navigate to the FTP credentials page, and have them ready for later.

Creating a Pull Zone

The next step is to create a pull zone. The pull zone is what will be used to serve the static site. To do this, log into the Bunny.net dashboard, click the Pull Zones tab, and follow the steps to create a new pull zone. As with the storage zone, you should name it something memorable. You can also select the regions from which the CDN serves your data. The pull zone must be configured to use the storage zone you created earlier as the “origin”. You can also enable a custom domain for your site. If you do, you will need to add a CNAME record to your DNS provider that points to the Bunny.net pull zone and add it to the pull zone in the Bunny.net dashboard.

Uploading the Site

Now that you have a storage zone and a pull zone, you can upload your site to the storage zone. You can do this using the FTP credentials you created earlier. Here is an example of how to do this using Gitea Actions, but you can use any CI system you like.

# .gitea/workflows/hugo-build.yml
name: Build and Deploy to BunnyCDN

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  bunnycdn:
    name: bunnycdn-publish
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          submodules: true  # Fetch Hugo themes (true OR recursive)
          fetch-depth: 0    # Fetch all history for .GitInfo and .Lastmod

      - name: Setup Hugo
        uses: https://github.com/peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2
        with:
          hugo-version: '0.111.3'
          extended: true

      - name: Build
        run: hugo --minify

      - name: Deploy to BunnyCDN
        run: |
          apt-get update
          apt-get install -y lftp
          lftp -e "
            set ftp:ssl-allow true;
            set ftp:ssl-protect-data true;
            set ssl:verify-certificate no;
            open ${{ secrets.BUNNYCDN_FTP_HOST }};
            user ${{ secrets.BUNNYCDN_FTP_USER }} ${{ secrets.BUNNYCDN_FTP_PASSWORD }};
            mirror -R -v public/ .;
            bye;
          "          

You’ll need to set the BUNNYCDN_FTP_HOST and BUNNYCDN_FTP_USER secrets, they are the FTP host and user from the storage zone’s FTP credentials page. The BUNNYCDN_FTP_PASSWORD is the password from the same page. The public/ directory is the directory that Hugo builds the site into. The / is the root of the storage zone. The -R flag tells lftp to mirror the directory recursively, and the -v flag tells lftp to be verbose.

Conclusion

That’s it! You should now have a static site hosted on Bunny.net. You can now use the pull zone’s URL to access your site. If you enabled a custom domain, you can use that instead. You can also further configure the pull zone to enable caching, compression, and other features such as auto-https.

Notes: Bunny.net is rebuilding its dashboard, so the steps in this post may not match the current dashboard, although the process should remain largely the same.