Today we are delighted to announce the launch of Netlify Drop — the simplest way to get started hosting a site on the web.
Netlify Drop is the natural evolution of BitBalloon, which has been providing simple drag-and-drop website deployments for years.
Existing BitBalloon customers will enjoy the same ability to quickly get their sites live on the web, but will now also have access to the more powerful features and benefits of Netlify.
Why are things changing?
We are delighted by how many people have been able to deploy their sites with BitBalloon over the years, and we’re determined to keep that process as simple as it ever was.
But we are also committed to providing the best possible service and features to our customers. By bringing BitBalloon into the Netlify family we will be able to make better use of the infrastructure that builds and serves your sites, provide better service and support, and even help you make use of more advanced hosting features (if you decide later that you’d like that).
What will change?
A few things will look different. But we think you’re going to love the changes.
A new site and a new look
The bright and familiar BitBalloon site, with its drag-and-drop deployment page, will be replaced with a new page called Netlify Drop. Fear not, that simple process of dragging and dropping to deploy will not change, but things will look a little different. You’ll also notice that bitballoon.com will no longer be the address to visit — instead you’ll want to go to netlify.com/drop (and we’ll redirect you, if you forget).
No more fees to use a custom domain
Many BitBalloon customers have been paying a monthly fee to assign custom domains to their sites. We are very excited to announce that this feature will now be free for all new and existing customers. You’ll be able to point your own registered domains to your sites without paying us an additional fee.
You can even buy new domains directly from us and make the setup of new sites with custom domains easier than ever before.
Free HTTPS to secure your sites
A feature that Netlify users have been enjoying, and that we have been very keen to bring to all BitBalloon customers, is the provision of free digital certificates for serving your sites over HTTPS.
This is an important step towards securing your site and unlocking access to better performance and confidence for your users.
We have partnered with Let’s Encrypt to help us offer this automatically, and free for all customers.
Bills and contacts
You’ll start to see the name BitBalloon vanish from emails and bills that we send you. Instead, you’ll see the name Netlify. You won’t need to take any action. All of your existing account details will be maintained. But we think it’s nice to know why a different name starts appearing in your inbox.
It’s just us 👋
What will remain the same?
Change can be scary. But don’t worry. This is more of a power up! You can still depend on the same great features and capabilities you did before.
Site URLs
Any sites that you currently host with BitBalloon will continue to be accessible from their existing addresses. If you have a custom domain, nothing will change at all (except that you’ll no longer need to pay us to use a custom domain 🎉).
If your site is currently served on a free BitBalloon subdomain like my-snazzy-site.bitballoon.com, that will continue to work, automatically redirecting your visitors to your new address at my-snazzy-site.netlify.com.
Account details
We’ll be directing you from bitballoon.com over to the new admin page at netlify.com/drop, but if you already have an account, your account details will remain exactly the same. No need to worry about updating anything there.
Form handling
BitBalloon’s ability to handle your form submissions is as popular as it is powerful. And Netlify provides this same feature.
All existing forms on your sites moved from BitBalloon will continue to work with no changes needed. When you create new forms, you’ll need to add a netlify attribute to the form element. (You can find out more about this in the docs.)
All the submissions to your forms will be available in the Forms panel of your admin page, which you can find at app.netlify.com.
You can read more about this, along with some of the more powerful features that will now be available to you, in the Netlify Documentation.
What do I need to do?
You don’t need to take any action to keep your sites up and running. And you don’t need to change any login details or accounts.
When the time comes to deploy a new site, then you’ll want to delete that old bookmark to bitballoon.com, and replace it with one to netlify.com/drop instead.
Why not give it a try now? We’ve even created a simple example site that you can download and then drag and drop to Netlify Drop. It will give you a chance to see how easy it still is, and also explore your admin view in Netlify.
We think that you are going to love it. If you have questions, the support team is here for you at netlify.com/support/.
Happy dropping!
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