Netlify

• Git-driven deploys: push to a branch, get a live HTTPS URL in under a minute.
• Unlimited deploy previews — every PR gets a shareable URL, even on the free tier.
• Free tier hosts most personal sites and side projects indefinitely, no card.
• Edge + serverless functions, Forms, Identity and an Image CDN built in.
• First-class zero-config support for Astro, Next.js, Remix, Nuxt, SvelteKit and more.

Netlify spec sheet

Deploy a site to Netlify in five steps

The reason developers reach for Netlify reflexively is that the happy path is genuinely this short:

1. Push your project to Git

   GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Azure DevOps. Netlify reads the repo directly — no manual upload step.

2. Connect the repo in Netlify

   Pick the repo and branch. Netlify auto-detects your framework (Astro, Next, Remix…) and pre-fills the build command and publish directory via a zero-config preset.

3. Trigger the first build

   Netlify runs your build in the cloud, deploys the output to its global CDN, and provisions HTTPS automatically. You get a live URL within about a minute.

4. Open a PR and get a preview

   Every pull request gets its own deploy-preview URL with HTTPS — share it with a designer or client instead of "deploy to staging and ping me".

5. Add a custom domain

   Point your domain (or use Netlify DNS), and branch subdomains plus automatic HTTPS handle the rest. Merges to your production branch redeploy automatically.

What you actually get

Netlify vs Vercel vs Cloudflare Pages

The three platforms most frontend teams cross-shop are close enough that the "right" answer is usually about framework allegiance and pricing comfort rather than raw capability. Here's the honest landscape:

The practical read: if you live in Next.js with heavy SSR, Vercel's first-party integration is slightly tighter — Next.js was born there. If you're cost-obsessed and comfortable in the Workers model, Cloudflare Pages is hard to beat on bandwidth economics. For everything else — and especially mixed-framework teams who value the cleanest deploy-preview workflow — Netlify is the most polished, least opinionated default.

Netlify pricing in 2026

The Jamstack idea Netlify popularised — and why it still wins

Netlify did not just build a host; it helped define a way of building for the web. The Jamstack model — pre-render what you can, serve it from a CDN, and reach for serverless or edge compute only where you genuinely need dynamic behaviour — inverts the old "everything runs on an always-on server" assumption. The payoff is concrete: pages load fast because they are static assets sitting on an edge node near the user, the attack surface shrinks because there is no perpetually-running application server to compromise, and scaling is something the CDN handles rather than something you provision. Netlify's entire developer experience is shaped around making that model the path of least resistance, which is why so many modern frameworks ship a literal "Deploy to Netlify" button.

The part that converts skeptics is the deploy-preview workflow. On a traditional setup, getting feedback on a work-in-progress means deploying to a shared staging environment, hoping nobody else overwrites it, and pinging a reviewer. On Netlify, every pull request automatically produces its own isolated, fully-built preview at a unique HTTPS URL. A designer can click a link and see the exact branch; a product manager can review three competing approaches side by side because each branch has its own preview; a client can sign off on the real thing rather than a screenshot. That single capability collapses entire review cycles, and it is available on every plan including the free tier.

Where it goes beyond static is the compute layer. Netlify Functions give you serverless endpoints for things like form handling, payment webhooks or API proxies, while Edge Functions run Deno-based code at the CDN node itself — ideal for low-latency work such as auth checks, geolocation-based personalisation, or A/B routing decisions that need to happen before the page is served. Combined with Netlify Blobs and the built-in database for application data and Netlify Identity for authentication, you can ship a genuinely full-stack application without ever provisioning, patching or paying for a server that sits idle most of the day. For a small team that is a meaningful reduction in operational burden.

When the free tier stops being enough

Most personal sites, portfolios and indie SaaS landing pages live on the free tier indefinitely, and you should not pay until you have a concrete reason to. The two reasons that usually trigger an upgrade are build credits and collaboration. A larger site with many contributors committing frequently will burn through the 300 monthly build credits, at which point Personal ($9/mo, 1,000 credits) or Pro ($20/mo per member, 3,000 credits) makes sense. Pro is also the tier teams move to for unlimited members, private organisation repos and concurrent builds so that one person's deploy does not block everyone else's. The trap to avoid is a viral traffic spike on the free tier pushing you past included bandwidth unexpectedly — if you are about to launch something with real reach, upgrade pre-emptively and cache aggressively rather than discovering the limit mid-spike. Enterprise, with unlimited credits, a 99.99% SLA, 24/7 support and SSO/SCIM, is for organisations where downtime and compliance are board-level concerns rather than personal-project annoyances.

Why the free tier carries most projects

See Netlify in action

Netlify review & pricing — FAQs

Start building on Netlify — June 2026