Netlify Dev • Hacker News Board

Re: Netlify Dev

#31

Post by Touche » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

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 Netlify do special that these others don't? I'm not attempting to bash the service, I just want to understand what its killer features are.

Re: Netlify Dev

#32

Post by amrrs » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #27

Netlify service is ridiculously awesome. I host my site there for free and had some cert errors [1]. I messaged support and they had it fixed in less than 48 hrs. I seriously recommend others to use them rather than using Medium for their own content. [1] www.powu3.com

Lately, I've been thinking to Port my Medium posts to Netlify. Could you please suggest any reason why you specifically mentioned this case ?

Re: Netlify Dev

#33

Post by Kye » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #31

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 extremely easy if you're not a developer. You can drag a folder from your desktop and have it live with a CDN and SSL cert in seconds.

Re: Netlify Dev

#34

Post by samhh » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #31

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…

I chose to rewrite my portfolio site in Gatsby and deploy it to Netlify with my custom domain pointed to it. It's a big improvement in ease of use versus how I used to do it with a Node server hosted on DigitalOcean, as good as I found their service to be. Do those other services allow you to hook up a custom domain?

Re: Netlify Dev

#35

Post by hombre_fatal » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

kadendogthing wrote: post #23

I use netlify for about 6 out of 7 sites I manage for myself and family. The last one I have on linode purely out of laziness. Netlify absolutely kills it with their entire suite of offerings. I highly highly recommend people try it out if they haven't yet.

I was blown away by how polished it was once I finally tried it a few months ago. I set up auto-deploy on push to Github + build command in like two clicks for all of my projects and never looked back.

Their free tier is probably too generous though. I know someone running the biggest website in a massive niche and they are serving their SPA for free from Netlify.

Re: Netlify Dev

#36

Post by smithmayowa » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #31

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…

Netlify does the whole static thing better, by being extremely focused on all things static, which makes setting up a static site on netlify way less stressful than on github and amazon, there is also the market knowledge factor, I mean github is known for hosting code repos and S3 is known for hosting files(videos and pictures), netlify meanwhile is known for static pages.

Re: Netlify Dev

#37

Post by miles_matthias » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #31

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…

Both of those services you listed are generic tools.

Netlify is for one use case - front end developers deploying websites.

That means things like automatic asset compression and minification, feature support for things you’d normally need to setup a backend server for (login, form capture, etc), automatic SSL certs, CMS, etc.

Yes, most of their features can be replicated with other tools, but the point of Netlify is that you don’t need to with them, because they understand your perspective (hosting a static website as a front end developer) and they handle things for you.

Re: Netlify Dev

#38

Post by xyzzyz » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

smithmayowa wrote: post #36

Touche wrote: post #31

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…

Netlify does the whole static thing better, by being extremely focused on all things static, which makes setting up a static site on netlify way less stressful than on github and amazon, there is also the market knowledge factor, I mean github is known for hosting code repos and S3 is known for hosting files(videos and pictures), netlify meanwhile is known for static pages.

Can you point anything specific in which it is better, instead of vague things like them being more “focused”?

Re: Netlify Dev

#39

Post by imafish » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #31

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…

Netlify for me:

- I get free & automatic build, deploy and hosting of my JS app just by pushing to git.

Re: Netlify Dev

#40

Post by Xylakant » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #31

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…

> I just want to understand what its killer features are.

It's convenient. It understands a lot of static website generators, runs the build, makes a preview, manages domains, DNS, https via let's encrypt. All in a single package. Nothing in that package is impossible doing by yourself, but it's just well executed.