Can anyone explain the elevator pitch of Netlify to me? I know it's become quite popular in the last couple of years and I can't figure out why. I don't doubt that it's good at what it does, but it seems to do the same thing as any number of services. For example, I see a lot of people talk about it for static sites. But you get free static sites through GitHub, nearly free static sites on Amazon S3. What does Netlif…
It's hard to explain. Unlike any other product I've ever used it just works. It's like hosting + CI/CD + CMS features all in one. Deploying just works, there's hardly any configuration you have to do. I used to put all of my static sites and simple applications on DO droplets, but Netlify just makes things much easier way easier (if you can believe it). It's like a PaaS for static sites on steroids.
It's coarse, rough, irritating and gets everywhere. It's the stuff that makes each tiny step that little bit more annoying. Checking how to set permissions on S3, looking up how to make sure things are redirecting to HTTPS properly, setting up a pre-live stage, etc. Each thing is pretty minor, each tiny interaction not a major deal, but together it's annoying. Netlify has not been annoying.