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Genuinely curious, can someone clarify how these types of platforms(Netlify etc) are any different from something like an S3 bucket?

You can host a static website via an S3 bucket.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/WebsiteHosti...

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That's how I used to host my static sites but then I switched to Netlify because the UX for me as developer was just so much nicer.

Maybe there's a way to also setup git sync with S3 buckets, but with netlify this is the default. And it's just so comfy to deploy with every git push.

Also using any of the other netlify add-ons (forms, cloud functions) is super quick and simple. Something that I (admittedly an ops noob) can't say about AWS.

They offer features that you'd have to build yourself with S3, e.g.:

- HTTPS with automatic certificate provisioning

- CDN

- CI/CD integration

- Add-on features like CMS, identity management, functions, etc.

They also tend to offer those things for free, within certain usage limits. If you just need a plain HTTP site with no frills S3 is just fine.

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