Netlify is the upgrade you’re looking for
If you are already using Git for version control, then GitHub’s built-in GitHub Pages is a great choice for hosting. Let’s compare it to what you can expect when you upgrade to deploying your site with Netlify.
Price | Free | Free |
Build Limits | 10 Builds per hour | 3 Builds per minute |
Custom Domains with HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
1-click Rollbacks | No | Yes |
Asset Optimizations | No | Yes |
Form Handling | No | Yes |
Deploy Previews | No | Yes |
Continuous Deployment | No | Yes |
Custom Rewrites & Redirects | No | Yes |
Compatible w/All Static Site Generators | No | Yes |
Prerendering | No | Yes |
Split Testing | No | Yes |
Lambda Functions Integration | No | Yes |
GitHub Pages |
|---|
| Price |
| Build Limits |
| Custom Domains with HTTPS |
| 1-click Rollbacks |
| Asset Optimizations |
| Form Handling |
| Deploy Previews |
| Continuous Deployment |
| Custom Rewrites & Redirects |
| Compatible w/All Static Site Generators |
| Prerendering |
| Split Testing |
| Lambda Functions Integration |
Netlify |
|
Price
Free |
|
Build Limits
3 Builds per minute |
|
Custom Domains with HTTPS
Yes |
|
1-click Rollbacks
Yes |
|
Asset Optimizations
Yes |
|
Form Handling
Yes |
|
Deploy Previews
Yes |
|
Continuous Deployment
Yes |
|
Custom Rewrites & Redirects
Yes |
|
Compatible w/All Static Site Generators
Yes |
|
Prerendering
Yes |
|
Split Testing
Yes |
|
Lambda Functions Integration
Yes |
Don’t let limitations hold you back.
Pricing
GitHub Pages has one pricing tier, and that is free. If you go beyond the limits of that tier, GitHub may ask you to move your site elsewhere.
Netlify also offers a generous free plan, along with other plans to unlock more collaboration as well. These plans focus not on usage limitations, but on features.
Deploy Methods
If you are hosting a site on GitHub Pages, then it’s easy to deploy your site. GitHub can watch either the master branch for your portfolio project or your gh-pages branch for projects. As soon as you push your changes to your branch, the process begins for deployment.
Netlify works out of the box with all static site generators and frontend JavaScript frameworks. Netlify accomplishes this by asking for your project’s build command and public directory when connecting your Git repo to Netlify.
Add your changes to your local repository, commit them, and push to your GitHub (or BitBucket, or GitLab) repository. Netlify watches the repository for changes and rebuilds as needed for all branches.
Netlify provides more options for deployment with drag and drop deploys. If you have a project stored in a directory on your production machine, you can sign in to Netlify, drag the directory onto the page, and the site will upload and deploy automatically.
Netlify’s command line tool allows you to deploy your site in three lines:
npm install netlify-cli -g cd my-site-folder netlify deploy
No matter how you’ve chosen to deploy your site, you can always manage it through our web UI, or via the command line. Do what makes you most comfortable!
And more
Netlify plans focus on features. The following features are not offered by GitHub Pages directly, and make upgrading to Netlify even better.
Deploy Previews
With Git integration, Netlify can deploy all branches, providing you a preview to share and review for pull requests and development branches.
Deploy Context
You can also provide separate build commands and rules using the Netlify deploy context feature. This can be helpful in providing different contexts for staging and production deploys.
1-click Rollbacks
Netlify also offers the ability to re-deploy previous versions of your site with one-click rollbacks. No need to revert commits to deploy an older version of your page.
Custom Rewrites & Redirects
Netlify provides an approachable way to create custom rewrite and redirect rules for your site. You can even test these rules using the Netlify Playground.
Form Handling
Using a third-party service can be overkill and sometimes painful, which is why Netlify builds this into their platform. You no longer need to pay to keep a PHP server running to capture form input—just log into the Netlify Dashboard to view the collected submissions.
Split Testing
Simple yet powerful split testing at the edge node. Just select two or more branches, how much traffic you would like to route to each branch, and start your test.
Lambda Functions
Add server-side functions to a folder in your repo, and Netlify will deploy them to AWS Lambda. No need to worry about CORS, service discovery, or navigating the AWS console.