Adios Netlify!

I’m moving my website hosting from Netlify to Cloudflare Pages! If you can read this I was successful. If not… oh dear!

I first tried Netlify back in January 2020. I wrote some first impressions and experimented with Netlify functions. I initially planned to host projects on both Netlify and Cloudflare for a few weeks before settling on one. But then three years happened and I became too lazy to move. Until now.

Tipping Point

There are a few reasons to prefer Cloudflare but what pushed me was on September 1st Netlify quietly deprecated their “Large Media” Git LFS service. If they sent emails I never got one. That irked me a little but I never paid them a penny so who am I to complain.

I use Git LFS for my blog images; around 50MB. GitHub now offers large file storage so I decided to move there. Having no clue how LFS works, I made a right mess trying to move files. Ultimately I had to delete the entire repo and start again. Goodbye stars, and forks — always found it odd people forked my personal blog.

Builds

Another reason I ditched Netlify was builds. I found it easier to simply build locally or use a GitHub Action. Relying on Netlify just added an unnecessary step.

For this website, which is Markdown, Svelte templates, and a custom Deno build script (no fancy framework), my Netlify build times were 90% downloading the Deno runtime. Netlify still haven’t added Deno to their build image. I’m surprised considering their edge functions are backed by the Deno Deploy platform.

Anyway, even if I were to use Node it’d be quicker to build without Netlify.

Functions

Earlier this year I moved away from Netlify Functions to a Cloudflare Worker to PGP encrypt my contact form. Workers are much more powerful and on “the edge”. I have other workers to handle things like redirects.

Cloudflare

So in the end I was no longer using any of Netlify’s features. Literally just a static host. I’ve always used Cloudflare for DNS, TLS, and caching. Since I’m now using Workers too it made perfect sense to use Cloudflare Pages for hosting.

Cloudflare custom 404 pages are basically the same as Netlify. Controlling HTTP headers is similar too. Although it took me several commits because I failed to read the documentation carefully. You can also use a Worker to modify headers.

I still like Netlify but for my personal requirements it doesn’t make sense. So thanks for the free hosting! I’m sure I’ll be back.