Netlify isn’t as bad as I thought it would be

When I wrote, that I switched from a Ghost-based blog to a static site generated by Hugo, I made the following statement:

I don’t use a service like GitHub pages or Netlify, because using my own server really guarantees me full control. But it would be a good alternative, if you don’t want to manage your own server. Netlify can also cover the automatic deploy process.

Since then I switched all my blogs from Ghost to Hugo, but also started using Netlify for the hosting of my static sites.

It is still true what I wrote there, using Netlify, GitHub Pages or even Gitlab Pages limits your full control over your website. But do you have full control if you don’t host your website on a server at home, but on a rented VPS? No you aren’t. It’s more a question of who you trust and that you have some kind of backup in case circumstances change.

I used to host the code for my websites on my private Gitea-instance and have a Docker setup that automatically rebuilds the website when I do any changes. It worked. And it will work again, if Netlify decides to go bankrupt or doing bad things.

But in the mean time Netlify really simplifies a lot of things. It offers easy rollback in case something should break your site, CDN, previews etc. Lot’s of nice tools that aren’t really necessary, but make your life easier and are also beneficial for your site’s visitors. If you want you can also use their other (freemium) features like form submissions etc. I don’t do this, because I built my own more customized solution and of course I stay more independent.

So currently Netlify isn’t generating any money from me, but I would be willing to pay for my use, which isn’t really possible at the moment, due to their business model. They try to keep their basic service for free but charge for the extra features or more professional use (teams etc.).

If you want to check out Netlify, go to netlify.com.

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