Hi,
I currently use Netlify to host a few sites on my domain, some are on my subdomains though, and I was wondering if people think Netlify is better or worse then Firebase hosting, or if you have any other better solutions for hosting my Hugo site. Please lemme know what you think. Thanks!
I currently host on amazon AWS S3 / cloudfront, webfaction, Github pages and even keybase pages. Deployment uses s3deploy or rsync either via a script on my dev machine, or some script in circle CI or sourcehut builds.
Come to think of it I have sites on digital ocean and heroku as well.
When I tested netlify it seemed super simple to use, but I have not yet had time to actually run something on it. It seems to be a nice solution for static sites, especially if you need some path based authentication. I have not got into Firebase.
1 Like
Okay,
I currently use Netlify and am trying to decide if it makes sense to switch to another service. I don’t think I want to use AWS because its a little more complicated, and I think it’s more expensive. Your thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks!
Am curious, is there anything Netlify isn’t doing now for your sites that you wish it did?
1 Like
No, I don’t have a big site, but I am just wondering if there are better options, if I ever need to purchase bandwidth, or ones that are faster, etc.
For the low traffic sites I have on S3, it’s super cheap, like less than USD 1 for S3 and Cloudfront. The AWS service that is the biggest slice of pie in the cost report at month end is, Route53 DNS, which would be USD 13 of a 15 dollar bill.
It is easy to “forget” about AWS stuff though, and companies get surprised by a big bill sometimes.
I mean, I’m currently on Netlify free, so I’m not paying for anything but the domain.
Is Firebase have any features that Netlify doesn’t? And is their price savings on big websites?
If you have a small site that’s working fine on Netlify and you like the service and the features and interface, I wouldn’t recommend leaving. To my knowledge, their CDN is actually an aggregate of much of the alternatives you mention above, so you’re golden. If you’re thinking about bigger sites in the future or the need for more centralized management, none of the services you mention above are going to necessarily consolidate your efforts or provide a lot of performance wins, at least as far as I can tell.
(Note: I do not work for Netlify nor have I received any money from Netlify, but I am still convinced it’s the best option out there for static sites.)
3 Likes
If you are wanting more than a popularity contest vote, you may want to list your requirements. Then place an importance weight to those requirements so a proper solution can be offered or compared.
I have a site on GCE which consists of a micro instance which costs $0.03 a month. DNS cost is only the registration fee of $12 a year for a .com address thru domains.google.com.
My requirements include having a server with full control to run apache or nginx or whatever, plus realtime log files to gather information on visitors and bots. I want to run a dynamic FW to deny any traffic with more than X- 404 errors, plus I want to run tcp dump so I need root access. I do not require any CDN since my page load times are small and not improved much using a CDN. Of course, if I need to, I can leverage all the resources GCE has to offer as a cloud provider if my needs change. I also have or have had WordPress, AWS ec2, S3, Github, raspberry Pi, IBM Z Series and other sites as well.
The solution which works best for you depends on what your needs are.
2 Likes
Thanks for your input.
Yes. 
2 Likes
Hi all, just wondering if there is a big difference between Netlify and Vercel (Zeit) and why someone would use one over the other.