How to share an HTML file as a link that opens on any phone

You made a page with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Codex, or by hand, and it looks right on your computer. Now someone else has to see it, most likely on their phone. Sending the .html file is the obvious move, but the other person gets a file, not the page.

Why the file doesn't open on their phone

An HTML file is a set of instructions for a browser, not a picture of the page. Whatever app receives it has to read those instructions, and most of the places you'd send it from don't hand it to a browser:

• A company's mail server can block it. Gmail's blocked file types don't include .html. Neither does Outlook's blocked attachments list, though it blocks .mht, .mhtml, and .hta. A company's mail admin can add more: Microsoft 365's common attachments filter lists htm and html among the types an admin can block, and by default a blocked message goes back to the sender as undeliverable.
• Google Drive and Dropbox share the file, not the page. Google stopped serving web pages from Drive on August 31, 2016, according to its announcement. Dropbox stopped rendering HTML from Public folder links on October 3, 2016 for free accounts and on September 1, 2017 for paid ones (Dropbox help). A Drive or Dropbox link gets the other person the file, not a working website.
• WhatsApp sends it as a document. An .html file goes through the Document option, so the other person gets a file to open, not a page.
• A phone's file preview isn't a browser. On an iPhone, tapping a saved .html file in the Files app opens a preview. In a test on iOS 26.3, that preview ran none of the page's JavaScript and loaded nothing from the web: no images, no Google Fonts, and no Tailwind from a CDN. The phone section below has the details.
• Images saved on your computer don't travel with the file. A path like hero.png points to a file on your own disk, so the image is broken everywhere else.

4 ways to share an HTML file

1. Attach the file. This works when the other person is at a computer and opens it in a browser. On an iPhone, opening it from the Files app gives the preview described above, without scripts or images from the web.
2. Zip it with its images. A zip keeps the page and its image files together. The other person still has to unzip it and open the page from their files, so it has the same limits as an attachment.
3. Send a PDF or screenshots. Open the page in your browser and print it to PDF, or take screenshots. Any phone opens these. They keep how the page looks, not what it does: menus, forms, animations, and anything else its scripts do are gone.
4. Send a link. Upload the file to a host, which gives it a web address. The other person taps the link, and the page opens in their phone's browser. On most hosts its scripts run too. Convika's no-signup preview is the exception: it turns them off, as step 3 below explains.

If the other person only has to look, a PDF can be enough. If they have to tap, scroll a menu, or fill in a form, send a link.

Attachment, Drive, or a host: the options compared

Checked against each service's own pages and docs on October 6, 2026. A dash means the column doesn't apply.

Pick by what has to happen after they open it. For a one-off look within a week, a 7-day link with no account is enough: Convika's upload box or Pagelive. If the page has to keep working, or you want to know it was opened, use a host with an account. The hosts are compared in more detail in Tiiny Host alternatives.

Share an HTML file as a link in 4 steps

1. Check that the page is one file

Convika takes one .html or .htm file, up to 2 MB, or the same code pasted in. Images need full https:// links. If ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Codex made the page, ask it: “Give me the whole page as one HTML file, with the CSS inline and full https:// links for images.” For a page in Gemini Canvas, the Gemini guide shows where to copy the code. If Claude made the file, the Claude guide shows how to get it out of each Claude app.

2. Drop the file or paste the code

Drop the file in the box above, or switch to Paste code and paste it. Click Get my preview link. You don't need an account or an email address, and each network can make 10 previews a day. If the page points to images on your computer, the box lists those files so you can fix their links first. The same box is on the free HTML publishing tool page.

3. Open the preview on your own phone

When you see “Your preview is ready,” click Copy link and open the link on your phone before anyone else does. A bar at the top says someone uploaded the page to Convika's free tool and that its scripts and forms are off. A small “Powered by Convika” bar sits at the bottom. Check that the layout holds and the images load. Buttons and menus that rely on scripts won't respond in this preview; they run once you keep the page. To keep form entries, click Add a form to my page on the page's dashboard screen after you keep it.

4. Send the link

Paste the link into an email, WhatsApp, or any chat. It opens in one tap in the phone's browser, with no app or account. Anyone with the link can view it for 7 days, and search engines are told not to index it. After that, the page is deleted unless you keep it.

Keep the page and see whether it was opened

The preview is enough for a quick look. If the page has to stay up, its scripts have to run, or you want to know whether anyone opened it, click Keep this page — free, no card under the preview link. You sign up, and the page moves into your account as you uploaded it. It gets a new preview link where scripts run, and the first link stops working. Click Publish, and the page goes live at an address like yourpage.convika.com, where it stays until you unpublish it.

The Free plan needs no credit card. It covers 10 pages, 50 form entries a month, and 1 custom subdomain, such as www.yourname.com, and shows the small “Powered by Convika” bar. Once the page is published, the dashboard counts its visits by day, with each visitor's country, device, and the site they came from, for the last 90 days. It doesn't show who visited: there are no names or email addresses. Your own visits count too, so note the number before you send the link. How to see who visits your page covers reading these numbers.

Send a draft to a client

For a client review, the no-signup preview has 3 useful properties: only people with the link can open it, search engines are told not to index it, and it's deleted after 7 days unless you keep it. Know 4 things before you send it:

• The client sees Convika's bar. The bar at the top says someone uploaded the page to Convika's free tool. Tell the client to expect it, or keep the page first. A kept page has no upload bar; on Free it shows the small “Powered by Convika” bar at the bottom, which Pro at $12 a month removes.
• Nothing interactive works in the preview. If the review is about a menu, a slider, or a form, keep the page and send its new preview link, where the scripts run. That link is also marked noindex.
• Published means public. A published page is an ordinary website, and search engines can index it. If a draft has to stay live for longer, add <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> to the page's <head> before you upload it, and click Unpublish when the review is done.
• There's no password. Convika can't put a page behind a password. For a confidential proposal, use a host that can: Tiiny Host from its Solo plan at $18 a month, or Pagelive from its Solo plan at $15 a month.

Open an HTML file on a phone without a host

Sometimes the file is already on the phone: someone emailed it to you, or you have to send the file anyway. Here's what to expect.

On an iPhone

In Mail, touch and hold the attachment and choose Save to Files, as Apple's iPhone guide describes. Then tap the file in the Files app to preview it. In a test on October 6, 2026, on iOS 26.3 in Apple's iPhone Simulator, the preview:

• showed the page's text, its layout, and the CSS written inside the file
• ran no JavaScript at all
• loaded nothing from the web: images with https:// links, Google Fonts, and Tailwind from a CDN all failed, so a Tailwind page showed up unstyled

A page made of plain HTML with its CSS inline reads fine this way. A page that relies on Tailwind's CDN, web fonts, images from the web, or scripts doesn't.

On Android

Which app opens an .html file depends on the phone and what's installed on it, so the result varies. Check on the phone you're sending to before you rely on it.

If the page needs its scripts or its images from the web, send a link instead.

Pages with images or several files

Convika hosts one HTML document per page, so the page has to be a single file:

• Images. Give each one a full https:// link, such as one from your own site or an image host. Images built into the code also show, but they count toward the 2 MB limit, so a page with large ones can go over it.
• Several pages, or a folder of files. Convika can't host them as one site. Ask the AI that made them to combine them into one page, or use a host that takes a folder or a zip: Netlify Drop takes either, and Tiiny Host takes a zip.
• Requests to other websites. A page on Convika can only fetch data from its own address, so a script that loads a feed or a spreadsheet from another site is blocked. Ask the AI to put that data in the page itself.

Frequently asked questions

How do I share an HTML file as a link for free?

Upload it to a host that gives it a web address, then send that address. With the upload box on this page, drop the .html file or paste the code and click Get my preview link. You get a private link in seconds, with no signup, that works for 7 days. Netlify Drop, Tiiny Host, Pagelive, and GitHub Pages also have free options, each with the trade-offs in the table above.

How do I send an HTML file to someone on WhatsApp?

Send a link instead of the file. WhatsApp sends an .html file as a document, so the other person gets the file and has to find a way to open it. Upload the file first, then paste the link into the chat. It opens in their phone's browser when they tap it.

How do I open an HTML file on my phone?

On an iPhone, save it to the Files app and tap it. The preview shows the text and the CSS inside the file, but in a test on iOS 26.3 it ran no scripts and loaded no images or fonts from the web. On Android, the result depends on which app opens the file. To see the page as it's meant to look, ask the sender for a link, or put the file online yourself with the upload box on this page.

Can I see if they opened it?

Not with the no-signup preview, which records no visits. Keep the page on the Free plan and publish it, and the dashboard counts visits by day, with the country, the device, and the site each visitor came from. It doesn't show names or email addresses, and your own visits count too. If an email on the first open is all you need, Pagelive's free account sends one.

Will my page show up on Google?

Not the preview. Convika tells search engines not to index preview links, and the preview is deleted after 7 days unless you keep the page. A published page is an ordinary public website, so search engines can find and index it. To keep a published page out of search results, add <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> to its <head> before you upload it.