Netlify

Netlify hosts static sites. You connect a repository, tell it the build command and the output folder, and every push to the main branch becomes the live site. Forms, redirects and headers are handled from files in the repo. It is the host I think about least.

How I use it

A handful of static sites live here, including an older blog built with a static generator. One of them gets a new post every morning: a small scheduled script on a machine at home writes a markdown file, commits, pushes, and Netlify rebuilds. I have not logged in to that site's dashboard in months, which is exactly the point. The form handling is the second thing I lean on: add one attribute to a form tag and submissions land in the dashboard and in my inbox, with no backend and no spam service to wire up.

What surprised me is how long a site can run here untouched. A build from 2024 still deploys the same way. What annoys me is the build-minute budget on the free plan. A daily rebuild of a mid-size site eats through it before the month is over, and the error is easy to miss until a post silently fails to appear. The newer features, edge functions and the like, also feel a step behind what other hosts ship, and a few settings still live only in the UI where a config file would be better.

Who it is for

Anyone with a static site, a blog, a landing page or documentation, who wants to set it up once and forget it. The free plan covers a personal site comfortably. If your site is a Next.js app with server features, look elsewhere; this is a static host first and the dynamic parts are an add-on. Skip it if you rebuild many times a day, or budget the minutes before you commit.