Netlify raises $30M to replace webservers with Application Delivery Network
netlify.com
netlify.com
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.
I’ve put a few small paying clients on their platform.
I hope they succeed!
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.
I'm also a very happy Netlify user. Their product seems years ahead of other tools. My favorite thing is that you can now manage DNS and generate SSL for all domains with a single click. Perfect for static sites, SPAs, etc.
I can see how people would use Netlify over GitLab. By the way, in GitLab we allow you to test a branch with a review app. In fact for 11.5 we're planning to show you a direct link to the page that changes https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/33418 and someone contributed the option to make the static site that is generate with pages private https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/33422
Maybe a JAMS template?
Basically, if you have a repository with your Jekyll (or whatever) site, just add it to Netlify and that's it. It's served, and will automatically update when you push.
I think the commenter is referring to this infamous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
That's funny, but as someone who still does not use drop box, NFS shares seem a lot easier to me than setting up drop box. I think I tried drop box once but I found it more onerous to log in than to type mount /mnt/nfs , so.... I guess I'm not the target market (and that's okay!).
This is critical for me since I edit using my Android Jekyll-optimized tool Teddy Hyde (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.EditorHyde...).
Netlify connects to GitHub and rebuilds your site automatically when a change is made in the master branch. There's no technical setup – you just connect to your GitHub account with their UI.
I used to use GitHub Pages to host my blog, but Netlify provides more features and it's also free.
Netlify is one of those few products that feels like it Just Works(TM) which is rare to find!
Git push done.
Now I use a combo or netlify plus aws lambda for functionality. Interested to see what they deliver next.
stavros.io is FAST. I'm sure Netlify deserves some credit but much of it belongs to your static approach and the decision not to load the page with 200 JS calls.
The ability to be able to publish using a simple `git push` and let them do all the work (including assets minification and bundling) is nothing short but amazing. Their dashboard is also really cool. Having the possibility to test a merge request without disrupting the live site, lock a deploy to a specific commit, or see the deployment live. It's simply amazing.
And their customer support is also great. Just yesterday I had a problem with Hugo not compiling my SCSS on their hand and I had two people trying to help me super quickly.
Netlify is a service I can't stop praising because they're just great on all fronts.
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.
My biggest concern with Firebase is if it's still going to be around in a year or two. That's why I'd be reluctant to use it for DB and auth stuff. I narrowly avoided jumping into Parse back in the day before that was shuttered so I'm wary.
That's interesting , why Firebase would go away ?
It's just back end on top of GCloud.
Actually , everytime you do something in Firebase , it create a ressources in your GCloud account.
Firebase may not be super popular for SaaS but for Mobile , it's the king and by far , you can use it with no doubt.
FYI to any readers: Firebase Hosting has nothing to do with the other Firebase stuff. In fact, I personally dislike their live database quite a bit.
If you want to host a simple static site with HTTPS, Firebase Hosting really makes it incredibly easy. My only complaint is that they don't let you view access logs. Here's the official response [0] from the Firebase team as to why that's the case.
Once you have to do anything more complex I think it's better to use a different service. If you don't want to host anything yourself I've heard positive things about Zeit [1], although I haven't personally used it.
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29669725/can-i-access-w3...
[1] https://zeit.co/
I certainly hope that you don't feel the need to move to something else when your application scales / gets more complex -- our whole mission is to make it so you don't have to. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter (@mbleigh) if you have specific questions/concerns.
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.
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.
- 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
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?
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.
Then they have myriad other value added features, one of which is cloud functions. You can use that for your server side requirements, or you can use your own server.
It’s not what they do that’s special, it’s how easy/magical they make the process (as well as the very generous free tier).
Yes. Pretty much. They're a more dev friendly CloudFront. Supports deploying from a git repo out-of-the-box, where there's a separate service for this with CloudFront. More expensive than CloudFront, though.
> How do server-side only things will happen then?
This isn't the main problem they're solving. They expect that you'll have an API somewhere to talk to. But they do have a "functions" feature, which is based on AWS Lambda, so you could use that for things that would otherwise fall under server-side. They also have a simple "forms" feature for basic data collection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_delivery_network
You can keep a static site with something like Hugo in a git repo and have Netlify automatically build it and make it available on changes. You can also just toss an HTML and CSS file in (like I do on https://unstuckdev.com/) and their robots put it up.
You can do more with it, and that's what costs money, but it takes a small but tedious hurdle out of putting some HTML on the web.
I've set up a landing page recently and it was flawless on Netlify. You provide a Git repo, connect it to their CI then give some build commands and they will handle the rest.
They still host it on regular servers obviously, but you don't have to do anything to manage it. They have a DNS server which is also pretty neat.
If you're a ruby guy, you can do Jekyll and Middleman for example.
So my toolchain (using middleman) for my company website is:
1. Make change locally
2. Push to Bitbucket
3. Netlify notices the change to the master branch
4. Netlify pulls it to it's container, builds it
5. Newly built files are put in a CDN and HTTPS...all for free
One of my favorite services right now.
EDIT: To give more context this is what I did before:
1. Did the build using middleman to create static assets
2. Uploaded those static assets via FTP to AWS S3
By calling a service from JavaScript. What you're probably getting at is, how do I dynamically generate web pages?
That's different. As a web developer you're probably used to generating the presentation tier on the server at least some of the time. You query a database and spit out some HTML. The so-called "static" approach here means:
1. Generate more stuff up front with build tools that you previously would do at request time. For example, why write server code to generate and cache a blog on every request when you can just build it whenever you write a new blog post?
2. In many cases this greatly narrows down the dynamic stuff that might need to happen. See if you can use JavaScript to fill in the rest. Instead of inserting that ad banner with server code, write a JavaScript function to fetch it from a service (like Lambda) and update the DOM.
3. You can be as dynamic as you want to be by expanding on what you do with JavaScript and services. This is sometimes called writing a single page app. It's maybe more complicated but on the plus side, it's how you write mobile apps and you may be able to share the same backend.
Setting up a few scripts and S3/Cloudfront to do this on your own takes a bit of work. With Netlify you just press the button it seems.
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.
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.
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
It just works. Every time.
Great to be in the future and not have to worry about hosting a server for such a simple site.
<title data-react-helmet="true">How to Vote in Clay County (undefined)</title>
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.
Also how you manage applications and data across different jurisdictions and countries?
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.
They make my life easy.
They also have Functions https://www.netlify.com/features/functions/ for dynamic content, but I haven't worked with those, yet.
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.
This is an honest question, I just don't quite get why there's so much excitement in the comments.
Thanks!
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.
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.
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.
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:
It's a similar approach that Netlify has put together and works great. Can't advocate for it strongly enough.
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?
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 ?
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.
A CDN is equally fast when the content is cached, and if you're building the entire site as static pages then it's not really a dynamic site in the first place and can also be done with HTML or markdown in the same repo.
The fine control seems the be the only real advantage, at the cost of more moving pieces.
The only 2 advantages of splitting this into separate systems is extra customization (even though hosted solutions are already very flexible) and compiling the entire site into static files. The 2nd seems to be more of a thing for devs to enjoy rather than something that makes a real difference to users, especially when you're already using a CDN.
It only accesses the API with a read-only token during the build process.
> it's not really a dynamic site in the first place and can also be done with HTML or markdown in the same repo
This is definitely true and was an option we considered, however colocating hundreds+ posts with code made the repo unnecessarily heavy and slowed our build time drastically. Our content creators also didn't want to use git to edit their content (they would have to learn git / or use the web UI which is a suboptimal editing experience), nor did I want content creators in our repos.
> The fine control seems the be the only real advantage, at the cost of more moving pieces.
Lots of other advantages that I won't outline here, but our data is completely decoupled from our frontend now, so we can do cool stuff like crossposting to different properties via webhook, data cleanup via API (I ran all the blog posts from WP through some remark tools so we have a more standard look and feel), etc... Might not be the right setup for you, but it works really well for us!
https://www.takeshape.io/articles/why-the-best-websites-are-...
Also check out https://jamstack.org/ for more info on tools and techniques for going static.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Recent site I built hosted on Netlify: https://www.magnoliasmill.com
Basically, it feels like they would need to make a nice UI and perhaps some connectors for github, etc.
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.
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?
are you kidding me?
where does netlify host my site? with git hooks you can trigger CI and automation on AWS, perhaps even AWS SWF
Plug for my site: https://www.joshuahu.io/