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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/ for dynamic content, but I haven't worked with those, yet.

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Neither of you explained in layman terms what they actually do.

it means you set it and forget it

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.

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.

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