Exost is a crossword hosting service built and managed by me, Viresh Ratnakar. You can specify a crossword in puz, ipuz or exolve formats. The service is completely free and will never use ads or tracking or complicated sign-ups. All you need to host your own crosswords is an email address where you can receive your private password.

You can upload your crosswords from this page, or from Exolve Player (exolve.app, a crossword player web app that lets you load the above puzzle formats and has the additional ability to reconstruct a standard blocked cryptic from just the text of its clues), or from Exet (exet.app, a web app for crossword construction). You can learn more about all these projects (and about me) at gussalufz.com. You can email me about any issues with Exost at exost.exolve@gmail.com.

Exost is operated at a site that I had anyway being paying for (for xlufz, which is a web service to annotate certain crossword indicator sites for use in Exet). As of December 2025, I can use 1.5 GB of storage at this site. The crossword data is stored in Exolve format, which is at most 10K per puzzle, so I expect to be able to host 150,000 or so puzzles. The daily/monthly traffic limits are 5 GB / 50 GB. If I get a lot of usage, I will be willing to pay for some more storage/bandwidth.

Apart from this site, there are convenient interfaces in Exolve Player and Exet for uploading crosswords to Exost. From Exet, you have an additional option of uploading a crossword without its solutions. This can be useful if you want to first put up a crossword without solutions and then perhaps after some time replace it with a version that does provide solutions.

A few caveats and notes:

• All crosswords are converted to the exolve format when they are uploaded.
• Anything before or after the exolve data is stripped away, and then just the exolve data is embedded in some minimal HTML.
• Each crossword (after conversion to exolve format) can be at most 50 KB.
• You can have embedded HTML tags inside the exolve data (such as <i> tags for italics in clues), but data containing script, form, input, and body tags is rejected.
• You can update a previously uploaded crossword. You can modify anything—just the ID specified in "exolve-id" is used as the key, the rest can be modified. For crosswords converted from the puz/ipuz formats that do not already have a uinque ID, a unique signature of the specific grid and clues used in the crossword is used as the ID.

Terms and conditions

Ah. All I want to do is set up a simple, free, no-hassles crossword-hosting site. But that does mean that I'm (gosh!) creating a content-hosting platform! At some point, I might refine the following T&Cs into some more legally suitable language. But, I'll ensure that any changes I make to this section are fully transparent (i.e., I'll make the full revision history accessible).

Terms and conditions, version 0.0

• While I'll make every effort to ensure that the serving set-up is stable, and that no data is ever lost, I cannot offer ironclad guarantees (no one can). I would highly recommend that you retain your own backup copies of all your crosswords!
• I do reserve the right to delete any crossword. I'll only do that if there is some highly offensive or abusive or illegal content.
• I will not sell or give away any of your personal info (which anyway consists of just your email address). I'm law-abiding, so, in the unlikely scenario of the government legally demanding any data or demanding the deletion of any data, I will comply.
• You are responsible for the data that you upload. Please make sure that you own the data or have the rights to put it up on a hosting site.