While we do provide top-tier hosting, it is completely optional. CloudCannon is a Git-based CMS so all the content changes push back to your Git repository making it seamless to host on GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel, or wherever you’d like really.
We also have a feature called Outputs which makes it easy to host on your own infrastructure. With Outputs, when we build your Hugo site, we commit the static output to a branch in your repo. That means you don’t need to run the Hugo build again for your own server, you can just copy the static site straight from your repo.
As for vendor lock-in, we do everything we can to minimize this. Our goal is for you to use CloudCannon because it’s the best CMS rather than being forced to use it because you’re locked in:
- Configuration lives in a CloudCannon specific file which can be removed if switching to another CMS.
- Our component system, Bookshop is open-source and can be used independently of CloudCannon. It’s also not a requirement to use CloudCannon but it does enable a pretty cool editing experience.
- You own your content and website, it lives in your Git repository. You can stop using CloudCannon at any point without having to do any sort of export.