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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!



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.


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.


Really easy to use, I personally don't need anything more than they offer


It has a generous free tier.




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