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Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

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Re: Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

#11

Post by sytse »

calavera wrote: post #6
StavrosK wrote: post #4

I think I'm not understanding what it does, but why does it cost $9/mo/site to serve some static content? Isn't that basically free nowadays? I guess my question is "what does Netlify do that GitHub pages doesn't"?

Netlify CTO here (so I'm very biased). These are some things that you can do with our Pages tier FREE , that you cannot do with GH Pages: - We don't restrict people to only one static site generator, like Jekyll. You have use whatever with our Continuous Deployment. - Automatic rollbacks at the CDN level. If you push a broken site, you don't need to stress about fixing the issue, pushing again, and waiting until the…

Impressive features. I think there is room for multiple static site solutions and there is a lot more to do. Sites likes https://www.penflip.com/ are also based on git but make it easier to use, something I'm sure Netlify is also looking at.

Re: Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

#12

Post by marcc »

Pretty cool. We were recently discussing how a service like this could exist. Excited to try it out.

One suggestion - on the Signup page, you ask for a lot of permissions right away from Github. I think it would be better if you just collected profile/email address and then when I started exploring a little more and working to get my first site deployed, only then ask for the additional permissions.

Re: Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

#13

Post by calavera »

marcc wrote: post #12

Pretty cool. We were recently discussing how a service like this could exist. Excited to try it out. One suggestion - on the Signup page, you ask for a lot of permissions right away from Github. I think it would be better if you just collected profile/email address and then when I started exploring a little more and working to get my first site deployed, only then ask for the additional permissions.

Thanks!

Signup permissions is definitely something we need to work on more. We optimized them at the beginning to give people the best experience possible, but we'll definitely iterate to allow using Netlify with less permissions. We just need to find the right workflow to still keep it as simple and powerful as possible.

Re: Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

#15

Post by brianllamar »

atoko wrote: post #7
welanes wrote: post #5

Doesn't Firebase hosting do this already - SSL, CDN, push from the command-line - for free? Pubstorm, too.

Don't forget https://zeit.co/now The biggest difference seems to be the caching

Zeit is an awesome product that I use as well for my node APIs in tandem with my Static stuff on Netlify. I wish the deploy limits were a bit higher in the free plan, 20 is so low :(

however Netlify has no limits on builds :)

Re: Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

#16

Post by Denzel »

At first I didn't understand the difference between Netlify vs. Jekyll / Hugo + s3_website [1] + S3/CloudFront + git. Admittedly, (1) the OP does a terrible job differentiating the two, and (2) there's significant overlap. Netlify is built for "dynamic" static websites, or rather JavaScript applications (whether they be single-page or not, it doesn't matter). It serves up a static page, and the JS and APIs do the rest.

So, for anyone who wants a basic breakdown between Netlify's features, and Jekyll + s3_website + S3/CloudFront + git/GitHub, here's the list of things BOTH support:

- Continuous Deployment

- Custom Domains / Domain Redirects / Domain Aliases

- Domain Redirects

- SSL (letsencrypt-s3front helps here [2])

- Redirects / Reverse Proxying (s3_website helps here with x-amz-redirect-location header [3])

- Headers / Custom Headers / Basic Auth

- Versioning and Rollbacks (handled with git)

Here's the list of things ONLY Netlify supports:

- GeoIP / language-based redirects (on their Enterprise Plan for $1,000/month)

- Form submissions [4]

- Analytics snippet injection [5] (albeit a little unnecessary for most developers)

- Atomic deploys [6]

- Prerending [7] (one of the most important and useful features)

Please, correct anything that's wrong.

Netlify's killer feature, for me, looks like prerending: rendering JS pages with a headless browser to help with SEO, with no work on the developer's end, is awesome! However, Netlify strikes me as far too expensive at $9/$49/$399/$1k per month. Especially with developers as their target market. That's too much for what little extra features it does offer.

Here's to hoping they can continue to differentiate themselves more.

[1]: https://github.com/laurilehmijoki/s3_website

[2]: https://github.com/dlapiduz/letsencrypt-s3front

[3]: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/how-to-page-r...

[4]: https://www.netlify.com/docs/form-handling

[5]: https://www.netlify.com/docs/inject-analytics-snippets

[6]: https://www.netlify.com/docs/versioning-and-rollbacks

[7]: https://www.netlify.com/docs/prerendering

EDIT: formatting

Re: Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

#17

Post by bobfunk »

Denzel wrote: post #16

At first I didn't understand the difference between Netlify vs. Jekyll / Hugo + s3_website [1] + S3/CloudFront + git. Admittedly, (1) the OP does a terrible job differentiating the two, and (2) there's significant overlap. Netlify is built for "dynamic" static websites, or rather JavaScript applications (whether they be single-page or not, it doesn't matter). It serves up a static page, and the JS and APIs do the res…

We have a pretty extensive comparison here of S3 vs Netlify:

https://www.netlify.com/blog/2015/03/06/comparing-netlify-an...

You're completely forgetting Continuous deployment in your comparison, which is a pretty big part of the modern static workflow. This includes things like pushing branches to different URLs, having a way to previewing pull requests, caching dependencies between runs, etc, etc... It's a huge part of our service.

Apart from that, if you ever work with static publishing and a CDN, and actually tried making the CDN cache your HTML assets, you'll instantly run into problems with instant cache invalidation and atomic deploys. You'll never run into these issues with netlify.

Rollbacks are possible with git, but previewing any version you've any deployed at any time are not something you can do.

Even basic things, like getting both your naked domain and the wwww domain to work correctly will often take developer time on that platform (how much do you bill your time at? Hopefully more than $49/month).

As for cost - our free plan is super generous and cover pretty much every thing you'll get with the alternative setup you mention. And for personal projects or open source projects we even give away our Pro plan for free!

The people that pay for our plans are typically not developers but their clients or employers who care about the best performance, highest uptime, and fastest speed of development.

Re: Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

#18

Post by marcc »

calavera wrote: post #13
marcc wrote: post #12

Pretty cool. We were recently discussing how a service like this could exist. Excited to try it out. One suggestion - on the Signup page, you ask for a lot of permissions right away from Github. I think it would be better if you just collected profile/email address and then when I started exploring a little more and working to get my first site deployed, only then ask for the additional permissions.

Thanks! Signup permissions is definitely something we need to work on more. We optimized them at the beginning to give people the best experience possible, but we'll definitely iterate to allow using Netlify with less permissions. We just need to find the right workflow to still keep it as simple and powerful as possible.

Just to follow up. I have a hugo site that has a pretty custom directory layout. I managed to sign up and get it provisioned with letsencrypt already. Definitely cool.

Re: Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

#19

Post by tvalentius »

calavera wrote: post #6
StavrosK wrote: post #4

I think I'm not understanding what it does, but why does it cost $9/mo/site to serve some static content? Isn't that basically free nowadays? I guess my question is "what does Netlify do that GitHub pages doesn't"?

Netlify CTO here (so I'm very biased). These are some things that you can do with our Pages tier FREE , that you cannot do with GH Pages: - We don't restrict people to only one static site generator, like Jekyll. You have use whatever with our Continuous Deployment. - Automatic rollbacks at the CDN level. If you push a broken site, you don't need to stress about fixing the issue, pushing again, and waiting until the…

Custom domain for GH Pages actually allowed even if you don't have a paid subscription.

https://help.github.com/articles/using-a-custom-domain-with-...

Re: Netlify, a sevice for quickly rolling out static websites, raises $2.1M

#20

Post by Denzel »

bobfunk wrote: post #17
Denzel wrote: post #16

At first I didn't understand the difference between Netlify vs. Jekyll / Hugo + s3_website [1] + S3/CloudFront + git. Admittedly, (1) the OP does a terrible job differentiating the two, and (2) there's significant overlap. Netlify is built for "dynamic" static websites, or rather JavaScript applications (whether they be single-page or not, it doesn't matter). It serves up a static page, and the JS and APIs do the res…

We have a pretty extensive comparison here of S3 vs Netlify: https://www.netlify.com/blog/2015/03/06/comparing-netlify-an... You're completely forgetting Continuous deployment in your comparison, which is a pretty big part of the modern static workflow. This includes things like pushing branches to different URLs, having a way to previewing pull requests, caching dependencies between runs, etc, etc... It's a huge par…

Appreciate you taking the time to respond. It seems like you're targeting two different markets (developers & their clients/employers), and having to construct two different product stories. Of course, what appeals to the developer market doesn't necessarily appeal to their client/employers and vice versa.

I'm speaking as a freelance developer that's firmly in your target market, charging well in excess of $49/month, and delivering three static websites in the past month for clients, one being the University of Leiden. I understand very well what you're trying to solve, and pointed out the places where your product is superior.

Right now, it feels like your product is heavily slanted towards developers. And it feels like that's who you're asking to pay for the service. My clients couldn't careless about API proxying, deeper Git integration, or auto-building any branch to unique deploy URLs, even if that makes sense to me as a developer. They're not going to be working with those things. They wouldn't accept me saddling a $49/month charge upon them AFTER I've delivered the project and all they want to do is run a one-off script to deploy the website for minor updates to content over the next 3-5 years.

What I'm saying is, yes, Netlify makes it easier and eliminates servers for pre-rendering and form submissions. That fits the SaaS model. But I think you're missing out on another part of the market: the people willing to pay a one-off license per site for your deployment software, i.e., setup S3/CloudFront, SSL with Let's Encrypt, domain handling, a nice deployment pre-processing pipeline, preview past versions locally in browser, etc. in an automated fashion and then allow them to push updates with one command. That's what my clients want, and that's what I deliver to them. They'd be willing to pay $49, once, for that script (folded into their invoice).

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