Used For

• +**Your React portfolio shows a blank page on GoDaddy hosting** → Netlify handles JavaScript rendering and serves files from a fast global network
• +**You're spending 3 hours every release doing manual FTP uploads and testing** → Git push automatically builds and deploys worldwide in under a minute
• +**Clients want to see changes before they go live** → Every branch gets its own preview URL for feedback before merging
• +Built-in form handling - no PHP scripts needed to capture contact form submissions
• +Serverless functions let you add APIs without managing actual servers

Best For

• >Your weekend side project keeps breaking on shared hosting and you're tired of debugging Apache configs
• >Manual deployments take 2 hours and you're shipping updates weekly
• >You need client preview links that don't involve "here's the staging password again"

Not For

• -Heavy backend apps with databases and long-running processes — functions timeout after 10 seconds on free tier
• -High-traffic sites burning through 100GB bandwidth monthly — you'll hit the free limit fast
• -Teams who don't use Git — the entire workflow assumes you're pushing code to GitHub or similar

Pairs With

• *GitHub (where your code lives and triggers automatic deployments)
• *Contentful (headless CMS that feeds content to your static site without a traditional backend)
• *Stripe (for payments since you can't run a full e-commerce backend)
• *Zapier (to connect form submissions to your email marketing tool)
• *Figma (where designers handoff assets that developers deploy as static sites)
• *Google Analytics (because Netlify's built-in analytics cost extra)

The Catch

• !The free tier sounds generous until your image-heavy portfolio hits 100GB bandwidth in two weeks
• !Build minutes disappear fast with large projects — Next.js sites can eat 20+ minutes per deploy
• !"Zero config" is marketing speak — custom build setups still take trial and error to get right

Bottom Line

Turns Git pushes into live websites in 30 seconds instead of spending your weekend wrestling with servers.