16 ms·

Netlify raises $30M to replace webservers with Application Delivery Network

368 points by gk1 8y ago

desireco42 8y ago
Netlify is fantastic. It simplifies deployment and delivery of the websites dramatically. What Heroku did for app development, they did for websites. And even though they are nominally static websites, you can wire them with React or Vue and still have apps. They make my life easy.
- benmanns 8y ago
  Agreed. I've switched out my complicated GitHub+S3+CloudFront+Cloudflare for static hosting to Netlify. Netlify also handles some of the stuff you don't even think about - e.g. partial deploy failure. With my past scripts I might push `index.html`, lose network, error out, etc, and not push the updated `assets/blah.css`. They also have Functions https://www.netlify.com/features/functions/ https://www.netlify.com/features/functions/ for dynamic content, but I haven't worked with those, yet.
  - lowry 8y ago
    Neither of you explained in layman terms what they actually do.
    - mishingo 8y ago
      it means you set it and forget it
    - oddevan 8y ago
      They're a static site web host. You deploy using git, and they handle pulling your site from git and deploying it to a CDN. If you're using a static site engine like Hugo or Jekyll, they'll build the site for you as well. I think what people are excited about is deploying a JavaScript-based frontend (probably written in React or Vue.js) using Netlify, so the client-side code is quickly distributed and accessible.
      - ipsun4 8y ago
        Building Javascript-based frontends are already compiling to static assets, which Netlify could already host. JAMstack is about having the javascript front-end call APIs on the backend. This is about creating an environment for all the back-end functions to be in one place, possibly with the front-end deployment. Not sure how it is going to be implemented though.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
jypepin 8y ago
Ok, I'm a web dev and I hate having to deal with web servers, configs, CI, etc. The idea sounds great, but I can't understand how this works from this post. Can someone explain how this works exactly? Are they basically offering a way to prebuild apps to static assets and host them on CDNs? How do server-side only things will happen then?
- petercooper 8y ago
  Think Heroku but just for deploying static assets. You can do something as simple as have a git repo of assets, push it, and you're up and running with SSL, etc, straight away. How do you get dynamic? Well, they support a build process so static sites or assets can be built at their end, if that's how you roll. But if you want fully dynamic sites, well, no, you can use their AWS Lambda-powered functions service to help build this out, but you won't be deploying something like a PHP or Rails app to Netlify :-) This limitation opens up a lot of other opportunities to simplify deployment, however.
  - vorpalhex 8y ago
    And if your main dynamic features are things like handling forms or an occasional db call on the backend, this isn't a bad approach. It's cheaper and less maintenance generally for a lot of simple cases, but obviously won't apply to all cases equally well.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 8y ago
    Databases are, in general, the next obvious question for a dynamic app on Netlify. Some solutions can use lambdas, but since a straight-up database is always going to be necessary for certain things, it makes me wonder if they'd roll out a paid database at some point... though that sort of conflicts with their "JAM" "no backend! well somebody else's backend maybe?" selling point
    - freebs 8y ago
      Firebase Cloud Firestore is so nice and they've been working on it for a long time, this would likely not be a good use of their time.
ballsyballsman 8y ago
This is just marketing pitch. Could someone paste some technical architecture on how this is done? Also how you manage applications and data across different jurisdictions and countries?
- hamandcheese 8y ago
  It’s static hosting + CDN + ergonomic tooling.
pixelmonkey 8y ago
May not be widely known, but a startup named Divshot launched what feels to me now like an identical service to Netlify, just a few years earlier. Existed ~2012-2015. They were acquired by Google and their product was converted into Firebase Hosting. I haven't tried it, though: https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/ https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/
- brianfryer 8y ago
  I loved using Divshot, and was sad when their service was shuttered. I’ve been using Netlify ever since, though, and have launched 20+ web projects in the past 18 months. Easily my favorite hosting solution I’ve ever used.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - lappet 8y ago
    Is it free for personal projects?
    - hokumguru 8y ago
      It’s just free for most projects. You pay for lambdas and forms, etc.
- mbleigh 8y ago
  Founder of Divshot here, and engineering manager of the Firebase Hosting team. Thanks for the shoutout! :)
  - MrLeap 8y ago
    Your co-founder is one of my favorite people, we were good friends in high-school. I'm super proud of you guys whenever I see divshot mentioned. :)
  - sjroot 8y ago
learc83 8y ago
The pricing seems a bit weird. I'm dubious about hosting something semi-important on the free tier, but the first paid price point is $45, which seems too high for easier static hosting.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Wintamute 8y ago
  On the free tier you're just hosting static files on Netlify, so they can cache very effectively. Also since you're just hosting a set of static files you're hardly "locked in", so if for whatever reason the free tier stops being appealing you can just move on to a different provider.
- stusmall 8y ago
  I've had a site on the free tier for about a month now and have had zero issues. Page speed is great. It was easy to set up. I don't have a need for any of the paid features anytime soon and don't plan on upgrading. I've been recommending them to anyone who will listen. It almost seems too good to be true but as other people have pointed out when its just static content their costs are so low. Since I don't use anything special on their platform, if anything ever happens migrating away should be a breeze too.
deleted 8y ago
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tyingq 8y ago
I wonder if Cloudflare has plans to compete in this space. If they added it to the $20/month plan, it might push more conversion from the free plan.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  I asked them once, and they seemed pretty adamant about not hosting content. Then again, with the IPFS gateway they just added, you can pretty easily do that.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    Their (newish) cache API, and worker-kv API seem to be all the foundation you would need. Basically, it feels like they would need to make a nice UI and perhaps some connectors for github, etc.
- blocked_again 8y ago
  Why will someone use a paid plan of CLoudflare when Netlify is already free?
  - tyingq 8y ago
    To compete with Netlify's paid tiers.
calcsam 8y ago
Well-deserved -- congrats to Chris, Matt and the whole Netlify team!
tima101 8y ago
Question to Netlify's founders. Did you really have to raise from VCs? Was the company already profitable?
- bobfunk 8y ago
  We started out bootstrapping and were profitable before our first round of funding. However, we always strongly believed that the larger vision of what we wanted to build would be impossible to achieve without outside funding.
  - asprouse 8y ago
    How did you decide when it was time to stop bootstrapping and raise a round? Was there a magic number traction-wise (total users, MRR, etc) or was it motivated by the desire to staff up a team and execute on your product vision?
tome 8y ago
This may be a naive question, but how many websites are actually static these days?
- pixelrevision 8y ago
  Not a ton. But the idea here is you use javascript to call an API for your dynamic content. This way your javascript/css/images are all setup on a CDN that you don't have to manage.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    But where does the API come from? Dynamic content needs don't go away with static sites and usually it's yet another service to worry about.
    - brbcoding 8y ago
      In our case, we moved a blog from WP to a static Gatsby.js site. It's hosted on Netlify and all content is driven by Contentful where updates trigger a webhook on Netlify to rebuild the blog (new posts are pulled during this build process).
      - manigandham 8y ago
        So now you're using 2 different services to host a site, instead of just using hosted Wordpress (or squarespace, wix, etc). Does Contentful provide the same content editing experience? What are the advantages here?
        fvdessen 8y ago
        The advantage is that the resulting website being just static pages will be much faster and secure that your hosted wordpress. And compared to wix etc, you have a lot more control on the appearance and structure of your website, because you can use wathever static website builder you choose
deleted 8y ago
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StavrosK 8y ago
I use Netlify for all my static sites and it's been amazing. All I have to do is push and they take care of everything else, I can't understate how much I love the product. If you want to check out a live deployment, my website https://www.stavros.io/ https://www.stavros.io/ is on Netlify. I especially like how they provide forms, lambdas and very easy testing by just pushing to another git branch. I don't see why anyone would use Github/Gitlab pages when Netlify exists.
- virgil_disgr4ce 8y ago
  Same. It's made my product design/prototyping/validation workflow insanely efficient. Really happy with it, and curious to explore some of the other features (like lambdas).
- bpye 8y ago
  I found Netlify a few months ago and use them just for my blog currently. They are great though and would recommend them to anyone. It was trivial to get something setup with https with a Let's Encrypt certificate on my own domain, pushing to GitHub to update the site.
- everdev 8y ago
  I don't like "+1" type comments, but this is a rare instance where I want to highly recommend Netlify. From support to performance, uptime and UI, they've been exceptional.
  - rishav_sharan 8y ago
    How does it compares against zeit now?
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  I’ve been using Netlify since at least 2015 and it’s invredible. I’ve put a few small paying clients on their platform. I hope they succeed!
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  I run destinysets.com, a companion site for the video game Destiny 2, and I cannot say how much of a life saver it has been for me. Not only are deploys as simple as a git push, but I also get next-level things like "preview environments" for pull requests _for free_. The PR preview environments are super important to me because there's a lot of curated data that powers the site, as JSON files in the repo, and I accept user contributions. The Preview environments means I can check what it looks like without having to pull down and run it locally - I even preview, merge and deploy from my phone sometimes. It's amazing.
mkrecny 8y ago
How does this compare to zeit (zeit.world)? I notice they support functions and identity.
jhabdas 8y ago
It's been a year since I last spoke with Netlify staff [^1]. They weren't super keen on the arguments I raised against using their service given you can host Websites that load in 100-200ms on S3 with CloudFront for pennies a month. If course S3 isn't as push-button as Netlify but it's certainly much more extensible and will probably be around longer. [^1]: https://habd.as/zero-to-http-2-aws-hugo/ https://habd.as/zero-to-http-2-aws-hugo/
- mr_toad 8y ago
  Can you push straight to S3 from git? I know you can wire up S3 sync with commit hooks or something similar, but that’s more work.
JBiserkov 8y ago
Also they developed a CMS: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms
JBiserkov 8y ago
Netlify doesn't even require Git - you can just zip some static files and drop it in their uploader.
heywot 8y ago
I've been looking for a service like this and I'm really interested. Too bad the site is choking a bit on extra traffic right now. I'll have to check back later.
philsnow 8y ago
Does Netlify support 2FA for paid tiers? Their settings page is really clear about some features being available in certain plans (and btw I love this, it's really clear and it's not very aggressive of an upsell / not obnoxious), but there is no such callout for 2FA. This is one critical feature that github pages has over Netlify. Github's 2FA is really nice, actually; you can add multiple U2F keys and you can also use TOTP and/or SMS if you want, all at the same time.
- _fool 8y ago
  I work for netlify. We support 2FA on any tier, since you can auth via git provider and require 2FA there. We presently don't support REQUIRED 2FA (you can also set a password) under the enterprise account level, since that's what enables SSO using a SAML-based identity provider and enforcing those limits there.
  - philsnow 8y ago
    Thanks for the answer from a direct source :) A core part of Netlify's offering (any SaaS's offering really) is some kind of guarantee that attackers can't get in and vandalize users' sites. When you delegate authentication to an identity provider (whether that's through OAuth2/OIDC or SAML), you're delegating that core feature to a third party. You've assuredly gone through the due diligence of asking them how they manage their own security and authentication, but it's still something that you don't control. Facebook, one of the most valuable public companies in the world, recently reported a breach where they had to reset any "log in with Facebook" authentications for millions of users. Github has roughly two orders of magnitude fewer employees than Facebook. Anyway in case you have an internal feature request for U2F on "email" logins, please consider this an external "+1" for it.
awill 8y ago
Netlify is great. I have 5 sites there. All for free. My only concern is that it's too good to be true. I hope nothing changes for the worse (i.e. they get bought and cripple the free tier).
- securityfreak 8y ago
  I knew nothing about Netlify before this post, so this is a purely generic, rational note: yes it will. You lure in customers with an attractive free tier and then change it so you can monetize at least some of them and be profitable. Choosing the right business model however, is what I think shows the true character of the company’s leadership. Unfortunately greed usually wins. But enjoy the product while it lasts. Might be a good amount of months, or even years before that happens.
  - thirdsun 8y ago
    On a sidenote: Please be aware that they didn't start free - I used them before their current pricing tiers and happily paid about about 25 € for their entry- or mid-level tier. Sometime after the new plans kicked in, I realized that I'd loose absolutely nothign by downgrading to the free plan. It still sounds to good to be true, but I just wanted to point out that they charged for their service when they were much smaller.
mi_lk 8y ago
Could someone enlighten me how does Netlify differ from Github pages? If I want to put up a static website, what's the advantage of using Netlify over Github pages?
- waivek 8y ago
  I use Github pages. I'm not a professional web developer so my take is pretty non technical. The main difference for me seems to be netlify let's you have input forms and do POST requests whereas github pages is more static and only serves static pages via GET.
herbst 8y ago
So much praising so little talk about its limits. I consider myself to be kinda stick in a Rails way of thinking. But most projects I touch heavily depend on a backend, database, or raw computing power. Everything that doesn't fall in those categories is something I create static (ex nanoc.) i just build out locally push to my git and let a post-commit hook do the Copy pasta. My static Web server runs without attention for 5 plus years now. I see it makes stuff easier, but i fail to see why it would be so much better than any other git deployment method.
- lotyrin 8y ago
  A traditional MVC app process has a start up time and a memory cost so you either have a bad experience while a user waits for it to start up, or you have to rent (or own) some amount of RAM 24/7. Static site + API Gateway + async processing by a Function-as-a-service type pattern (or its abstracted productified form) allows for something between your two categories here -- mostly content that is pre-rendered but supporting some write-type features where people can still post comments or subscribe to newsletters or something like that.
- chrstphrknwtn 8y ago
  Well all deployment aspects equal, I suppose it's the performance. ~200ms to first paint in the browser is pretty hard to beat.
- blairanderson 8y ago
  They're basically giving you: - the "static webserver" - the sandbox for commit hooks - instant CDN & cache-busting - 1-click domain setup - 1-click SSL setup - git-branch powered a/b testing - git-branch powered deploy previews - Functions-as-a-service deployment and routing and that's the free tier
the_other_guy 8y ago
>“This is where the web is going,” commented Chris Coyier, CSS expert are you kidding me?
- kaishiro 8y ago
  About which part?
  - the_other_guy 8y ago
    CSS """expert"""
    - kaishiro 8y ago
      Chris Coyier is pretty well known in the front end community. He created CSS-Tricks and co-founded CodePen. If anyone can claim to be an expert it's him. But if you're just trying to have a laugh at CSS - well, that's fine too I guess.
      - the_other_guy 8y ago
        I didn't mean to belittle they guy at all, but the title "CSS expert" looks ironic to me, just like "SEO expert"
        danr4 8y ago
        What's so wrong with an "Expert" title suffix?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
adamiscool8 8y ago
Maybe I've just reached curmudgeon age, but how exactly is this an improvement on: FTP to server, upload files?
- chvid 8y ago
  I suppose you get a cdn and easier configuration (?) of ssl. Now the question is do I need a cdn to host my blog made of static files? No. But I will take it if it is free.
jpincheira 8y ago
These guys are absolutely great. Well deserve and super glad they will be able to keep growing. We're running Standups.io frontend ReactJS app with them, and for $0 / mo, which sounds nuts. Sometimes I wish they'd even charge us.
kolderman 8y ago
Replace y with x and shuffle some letters and you have Netflix.
- ukyrgf 8y ago
  Did I type "netfl" and hit enter a million times the first few months I used it? Probably.
panda427 8y ago
Built vote by mail website for Florida (https://www.stampthevote.com https://www.stampthevote.com) using a single JSON file with 1500 zip codes and Gatsby.js and deployed with Netlify. Great to be in the future and not have to worry about hosting a server for such a simple site.
- tyingq 8y ago
  Nice work. I did see a small issue...you're getting the string "(undefined)" in some of the page titles: <title data-react-helmet="true">How to Vote in Clay County (undefined)</title>
  - panda427 8y ago
    Thank you
Ajedi32 8y ago
How is an "Application Delivery Network" different from a CDN (which AFAIK is what Netlify currently is)? Netlify still only handles static content, right?
- detaro 8y ago
  They run the buildprocess for your static content for you, and have a functions as a service thing integrated, which I think wraps Amazon Lambda.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
Imagine that I set up/rent a server with apache or nginx pre-configured for mass virtual hosting. For instance, servicea.org and service.org are placed into two separate directories with the same names, respectively. As soon as web pages are uploaded the pages are served. What is the difference between that method and Netlify, aside from the forms function?
- mr_toad 8y ago
  The CDN, and the fact that your server is a single point of failure.
xrd 8y ago
Having spent the last few days trying to get Cloudfront with Lambda@Edge working, I'm excited to see this. Cloudfront is a mess and clearly Lambda@Edge is "cutting edge" at AWS (where cutting edge means "full of bugs")
- zackbloom 8y ago
  You might want to try Cloudflare Workers instead. (disclaimer: I work at Cloudflare)
  - xrd 8y ago
    I assumed they were for service workers with SPAs. Not the case? The AWS landscape is so massive it's hard to understand what everything does. I'll check out CloudFlare workers, thank you.
    - xrd 8y ago
      Funny, I keep getting confused between CloudFront and CloudFlare and assumed this was another AWS product but it obviously isn't. Do workers somehow operate inside your AWS stack via distributions of CloudFront? If not, that's probably not going to work, we have so much in S3, etc. But, if that assumption is incorrect, can you point me to a document that suggests a transition path?
      - zackbloom 8y ago
        Cloudflare is actually a totally different company, yes! Here is more info about Workers: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/about/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/about/
drawkbox 8y ago
Not seeing any bandwidth, storage or other costs so I wonder what their soft/hard limits are for those things. I see their forms have really low limits for the price 1000 submissions and 1GB file upload limits, 2m functions on the $45 plan [1]. [1] https://www.netlify.com/pricing/ https://www.netlify.com/pricing/
- cupar 8y ago
  They can be found in the TOS (see Quota & Limits section) https://www.netlify.com/tos/ https://www.netlify.com/tos/
  - drawkbox 8y ago
    Thanks, strange it is in the ToS. For paid accounts: - Network bandwidth: 1TB/month - Soft - Storage: 1TB - Soft - API requests: 500 requests/minute, 3 deploys/minute* - Hard For free accounts: - Network Bandwidth: 100GB/month - Soft - Storage: 100GB - Soft - API requests: 500 requests/minute, 3 deploys/minute* - Hard I wonder if they do overages, or just a hard cut-off, no mention. They probably nudge users that go over soft limits to the enterprise column.
    - _fool 8y ago
      I work for netlify, and yes, we ask you to upgrade, don't just turn you off if you go over.
      - mkasu 8y ago
        My concern was that there is no clear upgrade path for static websites, if running out of free bandwidth. All per-site addons focus on different kinds of dynamic features (Forms, Identity, Functions, ...) I suppose a Team account would work, but that also seems like paying for unneeded features. The support team just linked me to the pricing page.
      - tacticus 8y ago
        Hey Sorry to jump on something unrelated but i have a super tiny personal site on netlify and would love a smaller plan so i can actually pay you. I know it's probably not worth it for you to do such a thing but an optional pay money for nothing extra compared to the free hosting option would be great
alexcabrera 8y ago
Our studio, Marquee (https://www.marquee.studio https://www.marquee.studio), has an in-house publishing platform called Proof (https://www.proof.pub https://www.proof.pub) that we started back in 2012 which couples fully customizable editorial tools and content model, a headless CMS, and React/Serverless based SDK to compile static websites specifically for editorial and content marketing teams. An example that was designed by our team and managed through Proof that HN is probably familiar with is The First Round Review (http://firstround.com/review/ http://firstround.com/review/). It's a similar approach that Netlify has put together and works great. Can't advocate for it strongly enough.
xmly 8y ago
it is like firebase?
matt2000 8y ago
I don't quite get this. I'm a long time Heroku user and this seems to be much more limited and not much better in any dimension, why is this so popular? This is an honest question, I just don't quite get why there's so much excitement in the comments. Thanks!
- dean177 8y ago
  It has a generous free tier.
- andrei_says_ 8y ago
  Many brochureware websites can be deployed as static sites. There are many sophisticated static site generators which allow creating and maintaining large complex sites. There are static site generator CMS apps which provide viable front-ends so that non-technical people can manage content. See netlify CMS. All content is kept in git with all benefits derived from it. Netlify hosting is free, simple to set up, secure by default, and provides lightning fast access in a “set it and forget it” manner. To update your site, push to your github/gitlab/bitbucket repo. To create a preview of changes, push to a branch. Form processing, logins etc. are inexpensive easy to set up add-ons. Static websites are a magnitude faster, less hack-able and worry-free. It’s a really sweet spot. Heroku could be used for this but the free tier is limited.
- seanwilson 8y ago
  Compared to hosting a static site on Heroku, Netlify deal with the CDN setup, cache invalidation on deploys and efficient delivery of static assets, with minimal configuration and a generous free tier. Heroku is much more flexible but you have more to configure yourself. Ease of use vs flexibility. Right now, I push for static site solutions over dynamic ones where possible because hosting is an order of magnitude simpler and there's way less that can go wrong.
- mwilcox 8y ago
  Really easy to use, I personally don't need anything more than they offer
browsercoin 8y ago
i dont get why i should use netlify over aws? what is the advantage here, i might give it a try.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  What part or AWS? Lightsail? S3 pages? Cloudfront? Lambda?
  - browsercoin 8y ago
    you can do it with cloudformation, although the SSL stuff might need automation but nothing impossible. where does netlify host my site? with git hooks you can trigger CI and automation on AWS, perhaps even AWS SWF
danr4 8y ago
I'm in love with Netlify. The product is spot on. The support team is fast and knowledgeable. Things are simple and they just work, and it doesn't feel like it's holding you back.
mjsweet 8y ago
One of the things I love about Netlify is that I have never asked my clients to flush their cache after updating their sites... everything is invalidated and refreshed almost by magic. I suddenly realised this after months of using it, sometimes multiple pushes to live each day and it never skipped a beat, no issues with clients getting edgy because their site hasn’t been updated or because something doesn’t look right (css not refreshed but html has) etc. It just works. Every time.
jhu247 8y ago
Netlify has a free plan for hosting personal sites. Though I could do things manually, the continuous integration, free SSL, and Hugo integration make deploying my personal site as easy as anything I've ever seen. Plug for my site: https://www.joshuahu.io/ https://www.joshuahu.io/
acdanger 8y ago
I've started using Netlify for a lot of my freelance work which lately is mostly static sites. It's been a real treat using it from all aspects. I almost wish their lowest paid tier wasn't so high as I gladly fork over some dollars. Recent site I built hosted on Netlify: https://www.magnoliasmill.com https://www.magnoliasmill.com
moeamaya 8y ago
I have a few popular HN-launched static sites on Netlify including https://servicelist.io/ https://servicelist.io/. Not only do they provide a seamless hosting and CDN (cache-expiring) experience but they also have a wonderful multi-user CMS that eliminates about half of my Rails sites! I'll reiterate a few other sentiments in this thread, it feels a bit too good to be true. Even with 300k monthly traffic, not paying a dime seems like a precarious situation to be in for a free service.
- blocked_again 8y ago
  Is 300k monthly traffic even a big deal when all you are doing is serving static files?
  - moeamaya 8y ago
    With images it can definitely add up. On S3 + Cloudfront, I was paying about $85/mo for coolbackgrounds.io
ybv 8y ago
Netlify has been a great help in building https://localgov.fyi/ https://localgov.fyi/ Kudos!
h43k3r 8y ago
Any tips on moving a Node.js based Ghost blog to Netlify. I am open to moving to static blog generators.
gorbypark 8y ago
I've been tinkering with Netlify for a year or two now and have two production sites on it for the last ~6 months, and it's amazing. If you have a site built with Vue/React/Angular, there really is no reason to not use Netlify! I've even been playing around with some API endpoints using Netlify Functions (which is AWS Lambda) and it's pretty neat, you can develop the front end and back end in the same repo and have it all automagically deploy with a git push.
rkagerer 8y ago
The documentation says it supports NodeJS, Ruby and Python for static site generation. Any other languages/tools supported?
tobilg 8y ago
I love Netlify! In my opinion, it’s not „just“ a great way to host static sites, but also probably the easiest (and cheapest) way to get started with functions as a service/serverless. You don‘t need your own AWS account to use Lambda functions. I compiled a landing page example with Mailchimp mailing list signup a while ago: https://github.com/tobilg/netlify-functions-landingpage https://github.com/tobilg/netlify-functions-landingpage
thetaclear 8y ago
Sorry if this is a little offtopic but I use pfSense DNS Resolver (1.1.1.1 over TLS) with DNSSEC support and every Netlify page I check fails on DNSSEC. Is this a problem on my side or is the Netlify DNSSEC configuration wrong? It seems like CNAME records at the domain root might be the problem.
yannovitch 8y ago
Netlify has been very tempting these last years, and it looks like they're constantly upping their game, but still, I think will pass. Why ? Because it's a US company. I am trying very hard to give the least data I can to companies under the Patriot Act, and by subscribing to Netlify, which afaik have their main datacenter in the US, I would be "offering" it all my most precious content. So even if it is more work, I will host my static websites on my personal Gitlab instance (which has lots of workers based on Docker to automatically deploy your Hugo/Jekyll/... website). Or do you think I am being too paranoid ?
yannovitch 8y ago
By the way, does someone know if Netlify offer their webserver code with an open source license ? I can't find such a repository on their github profile ...

368 points by gk1 8y ago

Netlify is fantastic. It simplifies deployment and delivery of the websites dramatically. What Heroku did for app development, they did for websites. And even though they are nominally static websites, you can wire them with React or Vue and still have apps. They make my life easy.

benmanns 8y ago
Agreed. I've switched out my complicated GitHub+S3+CloudFront+Cloudflare for static hosting to Netlify. Netlify also handles some of the stuff you don't even think about - e.g. partial deploy failure. With my past scripts I might push `index.html`, lose network, error out, etc, and not push the updated `assets/blah.css`. They also have Functions https://www.netlify.com/features/functions/ https://www.netlify.com/features/functions/ for dynamic content, but I haven't worked with those, yet.
- lowry 8y ago
  Neither of you explained in layman terms what they actually do.
  - mishingo 8y ago
    it means you set it and forget it
  - oddevan 8y ago
    They're a static site web host. You deploy using git, and they handle pulling your site from git and deploying it to a CDN. If you're using a static site engine like Hugo or Jekyll, they'll build the site for you as well. I think what people are excited about is deploying a JavaScript-based frontend (probably written in React or Vue.js) using Netlify, so the client-side code is quickly distributed and accessible.
    - ipsun4 8y ago
      Building Javascript-based frontends are already compiling to static assets, which Netlify could already host. JAMstack is about having the javascript front-end call APIs on the backend. This is about creating an environment for all the back-end functions to be in one place, possibly with the front-end deployment. Not sure how it is going to be implemented though.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

jypepin 8y ago

Ok, I'm a web dev and I hate having to deal with web servers, configs, CI, etc. The idea sounds great, but I can't understand how this works from this post. Can someone explain how this works exactly? Are they basically offering a way to prebuild apps to static assets and host them on CDNs? How do server-side only things will happen then?

petercooper 8y ago
Think Heroku but just for deploying static assets. You can do something as simple as have a git repo of assets, push it, and you're up and running with SSL, etc, straight away. How do you get dynamic? Well, they support a build process so static sites or assets can be built at their end, if that's how you roll. But if you want fully dynamic sites, well, no, you can use their AWS Lambda-powered functions service to help build this out, but you won't be deploying something like a PHP or Rails app to Netlify :-) This limitation opens up a lot of other opportunities to simplify deployment, however.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  And if your main dynamic features are things like handling forms or an occasional db call on the backend, this isn't a bad approach. It's cheaper and less maintenance generally for a lot of simple cases, but obviously won't apply to all cases equally well.
- virgil_disgr4ce 8y ago
  Databases are, in general, the next obvious question for a dynamic app on Netlify. Some solutions can use lambdas, but since a straight-up database is always going to be necessary for certain things, it makes me wonder if they'd roll out a paid database at some point... though that sort of conflicts with their "JAM" "no backend! well somebody else's backend maybe?" selling point
  - freebs 8y ago
    Firebase Cloud Firestore is so nice and they've been working on it for a long time, this would likely not be a good use of their time.

ballsyballsman 8y ago

This is just marketing pitch. Could someone paste some technical architecture on how this is done? Also how you manage applications and data across different jurisdictions and countries?

hamandcheese 8y ago
It’s static hosting + CDN + ergonomic tooling.

pixelmonkey 8y ago

May not be widely known, but a startup named Divshot launched what feels to me now like an identical service to Netlify, just a few years earlier. Existed ~2012-2015. They were acquired by Google and their product was converted into Firebase Hosting. I haven't tried it, though: https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/ https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/

brianfryer 8y ago
I loved using Divshot, and was sad when their service was shuttered. I’ve been using Netlify ever since, though, and have launched 20+ web projects in the past 18 months. Easily my favorite hosting solution I’ve ever used.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- lappet 8y ago
  Is it free for personal projects?
  - hokumguru 8y ago
    It’s just free for most projects. You pay for lambdas and forms, etc.
mbleigh 8y ago
Founder of Divshot here, and engineering manager of the Firebase Hosting team. Thanks for the shoutout! :)
- MrLeap 8y ago
  Your co-founder is one of my favorite people, we were good friends in high-school. I'm super proud of you guys whenever I see divshot mentioned. :)
- sjroot 8y ago

learc83 8y ago

The pricing seems a bit weird. I'm dubious about hosting something semi-important on the free tier, but the first paid price point is $45, which seems too high for easier static hosting.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Wintamute 8y ago
On the free tier you're just hosting static files on Netlify, so they can cache very effectively. Also since you're just hosting a set of static files you're hardly "locked in", so if for whatever reason the free tier stops being appealing you can just move on to a different provider.
stusmall 8y ago
I've had a site on the free tier for about a month now and have had zero issues. Page speed is great. It was easy to set up. I don't have a need for any of the paid features anytime soon and don't plan on upgrading. I've been recommending them to anyone who will listen. It almost seems too good to be true but as other people have pointed out when its just static content their costs are so low. Since I don't use anything special on their platform, if anything ever happens migrating away should be a breeze too.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tyingq 8y ago

I wonder if Cloudflare has plans to compete in this space. If they added it to the $20/month plan, it might push more conversion from the free plan.

StavrosK 8y ago
I asked them once, and they seemed pretty adamant about not hosting content. Then again, with the IPFS gateway they just added, you can pretty easily do that.
- tyingq 8y ago
  Their (newish) cache API, and worker-kv API seem to be all the foundation you would need. Basically, it feels like they would need to make a nice UI and perhaps some connectors for github, etc.
blocked_again 8y ago
Why will someone use a paid plan of CLoudflare when Netlify is already free?
- tyingq 8y ago
  To compete with Netlify's paid tiers.

calcsam 8y ago

Well-deserved -- congrats to Chris, Matt and the whole Netlify team!

tima101 8y ago

Question to Netlify's founders. Did you really have to raise from VCs? Was the company already profitable?

bobfunk 8y ago
We started out bootstrapping and were profitable before our first round of funding. However, we always strongly believed that the larger vision of what we wanted to build would be impossible to achieve without outside funding.
- asprouse 8y ago
  How did you decide when it was time to stop bootstrapping and raise a round? Was there a magic number traction-wise (total users, MRR, etc) or was it motivated by the desire to staff up a team and execute on your product vision?

tome 8y ago

This may be a naive question, but how many websites are actually static these days?

pixelrevision 8y ago
Not a ton. But the idea here is you use javascript to call an API for your dynamic content. This way your javascript/css/images are all setup on a CDN that you don't have to manage.
- manigandham 8y ago
  But where does the API come from? Dynamic content needs don't go away with static sites and usually it's yet another service to worry about.
  - brbcoding 8y ago
    In our case, we moved a blog from WP to a static Gatsby.js site. It's hosted on Netlify and all content is driven by Contentful where updates trigger a webhook on Netlify to rebuild the blog (new posts are pulled during this build process).
    - manigandham 8y ago
      So now you're using 2 different services to host a site, instead of just using hosted Wordpress (or squarespace, wix, etc). Does Contentful provide the same content editing experience? What are the advantages here?
      - fvdessen 8y ago
        The advantage is that the resulting website being just static pages will be much faster and secure that your hosted wordpress. And compared to wix etc, you have a lot more control on the appearance and structure of your website, because you can use wathever static website builder you choose

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

StavrosK 8y ago

I use Netlify for all my static sites and it's been amazing. All I have to do is push and they take care of everything else, I can't understate how much I love the product. If you want to check out a live deployment, my website https://www.stavros.io/ https://www.stavros.io/ is on Netlify. I especially like how they provide forms, lambdas and very easy testing by just pushing to another git branch. I don't see why anyone would use Github/Gitlab pages when Netlify exists.

virgil_disgr4ce 8y ago
Same. It's made my product design/prototyping/validation workflow insanely efficient. Really happy with it, and curious to explore some of the other features (like lambdas).
bpye 8y ago
I found Netlify a few months ago and use them just for my blog currently. They are great though and would recommend them to anyone. It was trivial to get something setup with https with a Let's Encrypt certificate on my own domain, pushing to GitHub to update the site.
everdev 8y ago
I don't like "+1" type comments, but this is a rare instance where I want to highly recommend Netlify. From support to performance, uptime and UI, they've been exceptional.
- rishav_sharan 8y ago
  How does it compares against zeit now?
godzillabrennus 8y ago
I’ve been using Netlify since at least 2015 and it’s invredible. I’ve put a few small paying clients on their platform. I hope they succeed!
madeofpalk 8y ago
I run destinysets.com, a companion site for the video game Destiny 2, and I cannot say how much of a life saver it has been for me. Not only are deploys as simple as a git push, but I also get next-level things like "preview environments" for pull requests _for free_. The PR preview environments are super important to me because there's a lot of curated data that powers the site, as JSON files in the repo, and I accept user contributions. The Preview environments means I can check what it looks like without having to pull down and run it locally - I even preview, merge and deploy from my phone sometimes. It's amazing.

mkrecny 8y ago

How does this compare to zeit (zeit.world)? I notice they support functions and identity.

jhabdas 8y ago

It's been a year since I last spoke with Netlify staff [^1]. They weren't super keen on the arguments I raised against using their service given you can host Websites that load in 100-200ms on S3 with CloudFront for pennies a month. If course S3 isn't as push-button as Netlify but it's certainly much more extensible and will probably be around longer. [^1]: https://habd.as/zero-to-http-2-aws-hugo/ https://habd.as/zero-to-http-2-aws-hugo/

mr_toad 8y ago
Can you push straight to S3 from git? I know you can wire up S3 sync with commit hooks or something similar, but that’s more work.

JBiserkov 8y ago

Also they developed a CMS: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms

JBiserkov 8y ago

Netlify doesn't even require Git - you can just zip some static files and drop it in their uploader.

heywot 8y ago

I've been looking for a service like this and I'm really interested. Too bad the site is choking a bit on extra traffic right now. I'll have to check back later.

philsnow 8y ago

Does Netlify support 2FA for paid tiers? Their settings page is really clear about some features being available in certain plans (and btw I love this, it's really clear and it's not very aggressive of an upsell / not obnoxious), but there is no such callout for 2FA. This is one critical feature that github pages has over Netlify. Github's 2FA is really nice, actually; you can add multiple U2F keys and you can also use TOTP and/or SMS if you want, all at the same time.

_fool 8y ago
I work for netlify. We support 2FA on any tier, since you can auth via git provider and require 2FA there. We presently don't support REQUIRED 2FA (you can also set a password) under the enterprise account level, since that's what enables SSO using a SAML-based identity provider and enforcing those limits there.
- philsnow 8y ago
  Thanks for the answer from a direct source :) A core part of Netlify's offering (any SaaS's offering really) is some kind of guarantee that attackers can't get in and vandalize users' sites. When you delegate authentication to an identity provider (whether that's through OAuth2/OIDC or SAML), you're delegating that core feature to a third party. You've assuredly gone through the due diligence of asking them how they manage their own security and authentication, but it's still something that you don't control. Facebook, one of the most valuable public companies in the world, recently reported a breach where they had to reset any "log in with Facebook" authentications for millions of users. Github has roughly two orders of magnitude fewer employees than Facebook. Anyway in case you have an internal feature request for U2F on "email" logins, please consider this an external "+1" for it.

awill 8y ago

Netlify is great. I have 5 sites there. All for free. My only concern is that it's too good to be true. I hope nothing changes for the worse (i.e. they get bought and cripple the free tier).

securityfreak 8y ago
I knew nothing about Netlify before this post, so this is a purely generic, rational note: yes it will. You lure in customers with an attractive free tier and then change it so you can monetize at least some of them and be profitable. Choosing the right business model however, is what I think shows the true character of the company’s leadership. Unfortunately greed usually wins. But enjoy the product while it lasts. Might be a good amount of months, or even years before that happens.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  On a sidenote: Please be aware that they didn't start free - I used them before their current pricing tiers and happily paid about about 25 € for their entry- or mid-level tier. Sometime after the new plans kicked in, I realized that I'd loose absolutely nothign by downgrading to the free plan. It still sounds to good to be true, but I just wanted to point out that they charged for their service when they were much smaller.

mi_lk 8y ago

Could someone enlighten me how does Netlify differ from Github pages? If I want to put up a static website, what's the advantage of using Netlify over Github pages?

waivek 8y ago
I use Github pages. I'm not a professional web developer so my take is pretty non technical. The main difference for me seems to be netlify let's you have input forms and do POST requests whereas github pages is more static and only serves static pages via GET.

herbst 8y ago

So much praising so little talk about its limits. I consider myself to be kinda stick in a Rails way of thinking. But most projects I touch heavily depend on a backend, database, or raw computing power. Everything that doesn't fall in those categories is something I create static (ex nanoc.) i just build out locally push to my git and let a post-commit hook do the Copy pasta. My static Web server runs without attention for 5 plus years now. I see it makes stuff easier, but i fail to see why it would be so much better than any other git deployment method.

lotyrin 8y ago
A traditional MVC app process has a start up time and a memory cost so you either have a bad experience while a user waits for it to start up, or you have to rent (or own) some amount of RAM 24/7. Static site + API Gateway + async processing by a Function-as-a-service type pattern (or its abstracted productified form) allows for something between your two categories here -- mostly content that is pre-rendered but supporting some write-type features where people can still post comments or subscribe to newsletters or something like that.
chrstphrknwtn 8y ago
Well all deployment aspects equal, I suppose it's the performance. ~200ms to first paint in the browser is pretty hard to beat.
blairanderson 8y ago
They're basically giving you: - the "static webserver" - the sandbox for commit hooks - instant CDN & cache-busting - 1-click domain setup - 1-click SSL setup - git-branch powered a/b testing - git-branch powered deploy previews - Functions-as-a-service deployment and routing and that's the free tier

the_other_guy 8y ago

>“This is where the web is going,” commented Chris Coyier, CSS expert are you kidding me?

kaishiro 8y ago
About which part?
- the_other_guy 8y ago
  CSS """expert"""
  - kaishiro 8y ago
    Chris Coyier is pretty well known in the front end community. He created CSS-Tricks and co-founded CodePen. If anyone can claim to be an expert it's him. But if you're just trying to have a laugh at CSS - well, that's fine too I guess.
    - the_other_guy 8y ago
      I didn't mean to belittle they guy at all, but the title "CSS expert" looks ironic to me, just like "SEO expert"
      - danr4 8y ago
        What's so wrong with an "Expert" title suffix?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

adamiscool8 8y ago

Maybe I've just reached curmudgeon age, but how exactly is this an improvement on: FTP to server, upload files?

chvid 8y ago
I suppose you get a cdn and easier configuration (?) of ssl. Now the question is do I need a cdn to host my blog made of static files? No. But I will take it if it is free.

jpincheira 8y ago

These guys are absolutely great. Well deserve and super glad they will be able to keep growing. We're running Standups.io frontend ReactJS app with them, and for $0 / mo, which sounds nuts. Sometimes I wish they'd even charge us.

kolderman 8y ago

Replace y with x and shuffle some letters and you have Netflix.

ukyrgf 8y ago
Did I type "netfl" and hit enter a million times the first few months I used it? Probably.

panda427 8y ago

Built vote by mail website for Florida (https://www.stampthevote.com https://www.stampthevote.com) using a single JSON file with 1500 zip codes and Gatsby.js and deployed with Netlify. Great to be in the future and not have to worry about hosting a server for such a simple site.

tyingq 8y ago
Nice work. I did see a small issue...you're getting the string "(undefined)" in some of the page titles: <title data-react-helmet="true">How to Vote in Clay County (undefined)</title>
- panda427 8y ago
  Thank you

Ajedi32 8y ago

How is an "Application Delivery Network" different from a CDN (which AFAIK is what Netlify currently is)? Netlify still only handles static content, right?

detaro 8y ago
They run the buildprocess for your static content for you, and have a functions as a service thing integrated, which I think wraps Amazon Lambda.

patrickg_zill 8y ago

Imagine that I set up/rent a server with apache or nginx pre-configured for mass virtual hosting. For instance, servicea.org and service.org are placed into two separate directories with the same names, respectively. As soon as web pages are uploaded the pages are served. What is the difference between that method and Netlify, aside from the forms function?

mr_toad 8y ago
The CDN, and the fact that your server is a single point of failure.

xrd 8y ago

Having spent the last few days trying to get Cloudfront with Lambda@Edge working, I'm excited to see this. Cloudfront is a mess and clearly Lambda@Edge is "cutting edge" at AWS (where cutting edge means "full of bugs")

zackbloom 8y ago
You might want to try Cloudflare Workers instead. (disclaimer: I work at Cloudflare)
- xrd 8y ago
  I assumed they were for service workers with SPAs. Not the case? The AWS landscape is so massive it's hard to understand what everything does. I'll check out CloudFlare workers, thank you.
  - xrd 8y ago
    Funny, I keep getting confused between CloudFront and CloudFlare and assumed this was another AWS product but it obviously isn't. Do workers somehow operate inside your AWS stack via distributions of CloudFront? If not, that's probably not going to work, we have so much in S3, etc. But, if that assumption is incorrect, can you point me to a document that suggests a transition path?
    - zackbloom 8y ago
      Cloudflare is actually a totally different company, yes! Here is more info about Workers: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/about/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/about/

drawkbox 8y ago

Not seeing any bandwidth, storage or other costs so I wonder what their soft/hard limits are for those things. I see their forms have really low limits for the price 1000 submissions and 1GB file upload limits, 2m functions on the $45 plan [1]. [1] https://www.netlify.com/pricing/ https://www.netlify.com/pricing/

cupar 8y ago
They can be found in the TOS (see Quota & Limits section) https://www.netlify.com/tos/ https://www.netlify.com/tos/
- drawkbox 8y ago
  Thanks, strange it is in the ToS. For paid accounts: - Network bandwidth: 1TB/month - Soft - Storage: 1TB - Soft - API requests: 500 requests/minute, 3 deploys/minute* - Hard For free accounts: - Network Bandwidth: 100GB/month - Soft - Storage: 100GB - Soft - API requests: 500 requests/minute, 3 deploys/minute* - Hard I wonder if they do overages, or just a hard cut-off, no mention. They probably nudge users that go over soft limits to the enterprise column.
  - _fool 8y ago
    I work for netlify, and yes, we ask you to upgrade, don't just turn you off if you go over.
    - mkasu 8y ago
      My concern was that there is no clear upgrade path for static websites, if running out of free bandwidth. All per-site addons focus on different kinds of dynamic features (Forms, Identity, Functions, ...) I suppose a Team account would work, but that also seems like paying for unneeded features. The support team just linked me to the pricing page.
    - tacticus 8y ago
      Hey Sorry to jump on something unrelated but i have a super tiny personal site on netlify and would love a smaller plan so i can actually pay you. I know it's probably not worth it for you to do such a thing but an optional pay money for nothing extra compared to the free hosting option would be great

alexcabrera 8y ago

Our studio, Marquee (https://www.marquee.studio https://www.marquee.studio), has an in-house publishing platform called Proof (https://www.proof.pub https://www.proof.pub) that we started back in 2012 which couples fully customizable editorial tools and content model, a headless CMS, and React/Serverless based SDK to compile static websites specifically for editorial and content marketing teams. An example that was designed by our team and managed through Proof that HN is probably familiar with is The First Round Review (http://firstround.com/review/ http://firstround.com/review/). It's a similar approach that Netlify has put together and works great. Can't advocate for it strongly enough.

xmly 8y ago

it is like firebase?

matt2000 8y ago

I don't quite get this. I'm a long time Heroku user and this seems to be much more limited and not much better in any dimension, why is this so popular? This is an honest question, I just don't quite get why there's so much excitement in the comments. Thanks!

dean177 8y ago
It has a generous free tier.
andrei_says_ 8y ago
Many brochureware websites can be deployed as static sites. There are many sophisticated static site generators which allow creating and maintaining large complex sites. There are static site generator CMS apps which provide viable front-ends so that non-technical people can manage content. See netlify CMS. All content is kept in git with all benefits derived from it. Netlify hosting is free, simple to set up, secure by default, and provides lightning fast access in a “set it and forget it” manner. To update your site, push to your github/gitlab/bitbucket repo. To create a preview of changes, push to a branch. Form processing, logins etc. are inexpensive easy to set up add-ons. Static websites are a magnitude faster, less hack-able and worry-free. It’s a really sweet spot. Heroku could be used for this but the free tier is limited.
seanwilson 8y ago
Compared to hosting a static site on Heroku, Netlify deal with the CDN setup, cache invalidation on deploys and efficient delivery of static assets, with minimal configuration and a generous free tier. Heroku is much more flexible but you have more to configure yourself. Ease of use vs flexibility. Right now, I push for static site solutions over dynamic ones where possible because hosting is an order of magnitude simpler and there's way less that can go wrong.
mwilcox 8y ago
Really easy to use, I personally don't need anything more than they offer

browsercoin 8y ago

i dont get why i should use netlify over aws? what is the advantage here, i might give it a try.

mr_toad 8y ago
What part or AWS? Lightsail? S3 pages? Cloudfront? Lambda?
- browsercoin 8y ago
  you can do it with cloudformation, although the SSL stuff might need automation but nothing impossible. where does netlify host my site? with git hooks you can trigger CI and automation on AWS, perhaps even AWS SWF

danr4 8y ago

I'm in love with Netlify. The product is spot on. The support team is fast and knowledgeable. Things are simple and they just work, and it doesn't feel like it's holding you back.

mjsweet 8y ago

One of the things I love about Netlify is that I have never asked my clients to flush their cache after updating their sites... everything is invalidated and refreshed almost by magic. I suddenly realised this after months of using it, sometimes multiple pushes to live each day and it never skipped a beat, no issues with clients getting edgy because their site hasn’t been updated or because something doesn’t look right (css not refreshed but html has) etc. It just works. Every time.

jhu247 8y ago

Netlify has a free plan for hosting personal sites. Though I could do things manually, the continuous integration, free SSL, and Hugo integration make deploying my personal site as easy as anything I've ever seen. Plug for my site: https://www.joshuahu.io/ https://www.joshuahu.io/

acdanger 8y ago

I've started using Netlify for a lot of my freelance work which lately is mostly static sites. It's been a real treat using it from all aspects. I almost wish their lowest paid tier wasn't so high as I gladly fork over some dollars. Recent site I built hosted on Netlify: https://www.magnoliasmill.com https://www.magnoliasmill.com

moeamaya 8y ago

I have a few popular HN-launched static sites on Netlify including https://servicelist.io/ https://servicelist.io/. Not only do they provide a seamless hosting and CDN (cache-expiring) experience but they also have a wonderful multi-user CMS that eliminates about half of my Rails sites! I'll reiterate a few other sentiments in this thread, it feels a bit too good to be true. Even with 300k monthly traffic, not paying a dime seems like a precarious situation to be in for a free service.

blocked_again 8y ago
Is 300k monthly traffic even a big deal when all you are doing is serving static files?
- moeamaya 8y ago
  With images it can definitely add up. On S3 + Cloudfront, I was paying about $85/mo for coolbackgrounds.io

ybv 8y ago

Netlify has been a great help in building https://localgov.fyi/ https://localgov.fyi/ Kudos!

h43k3r 8y ago

Any tips on moving a Node.js based Ghost blog to Netlify. I am open to moving to static blog generators.

gorbypark 8y ago

I've been tinkering with Netlify for a year or two now and have two production sites on it for the last ~6 months, and it's amazing. If you have a site built with Vue/React/Angular, there really is no reason to not use Netlify! I've even been playing around with some API endpoints using Netlify Functions (which is AWS Lambda) and it's pretty neat, you can develop the front end and back end in the same repo and have it all automagically deploy with a git push.

rkagerer 8y ago

The documentation says it supports NodeJS, Ruby and Python for static site generation. Any other languages/tools supported?

tobilg 8y ago

I love Netlify! In my opinion, it’s not „just“ a great way to host static sites, but also probably the easiest (and cheapest) way to get started with functions as a service/serverless. You don‘t need your own AWS account to use Lambda functions. I compiled a landing page example with Mailchimp mailing list signup a while ago: https://github.com/tobilg/netlify-functions-landingpage https://github.com/tobilg/netlify-functions-landingpage

thetaclear 8y ago

Sorry if this is a little offtopic but I use pfSense DNS Resolver (1.1.1.1 over TLS) with DNSSEC support and every Netlify page I check fails on DNSSEC. Is this a problem on my side or is the Netlify DNSSEC configuration wrong? It seems like CNAME records at the domain root might be the problem.

yannovitch 8y ago

Netlify has been very tempting these last years, and it looks like they're constantly upping their game, but still, I think will pass. Why ? Because it's a US company. I am trying very hard to give the least data I can to companies under the Patriot Act, and by subscribing to Netlify, which afaik have their main datacenter in the US, I would be "offering" it all my most precious content. So even if it is more work, I will host my static websites on my personal Gitlab instance (which has lots of workers based on Docker to automatically deploy your Hugo/Jekyll/... website). Or do you think I am being too paranoid ?

yannovitch 8y ago

By the way, does someone know if Netlify offer their webserver code with an open source license ? I can't find such a repository on their github profile ...