I used Netlify Platform for deploying my front-end applications, primarily React applications that I built for various firms and clients. My main use case involved deployment of these applications.
One of my biggest projects involved designing a news feed application for a client, and I deployed the front-end onto Netlify Platform. That project is still running and is earning my client a significant amount of revenue.
I have deployed three to four projects with Netlify Platform, but this was one of the major ones because I faced many challenges. I worked through all of them and successfully deployed the application.
The major valuable feature that Netlify Platform offers is the developer experience, which is very smooth. I could straightforwardly work on my front-end application logic and deploy it without difficulty.
Another major advantage is the edge functions that Netlify Platform provides. At that time I was using Deno, which was relatively new, and Netlify Platform provided edge functions for it, which helped me leverage the CDN capabilities. These two features are the major ones for me: the first is developer experience and ease of deployment, and the second is the serverless and edge functions, which helped me use the CDN capabilities.
When I talk about developer experience with Netlify Platform, it is really very easy. I can write the logic or if I am shipping a feature, I can push it to a branch and get a live review for local testing. The front-end teams doing code reviews also benefit significantly. I could give it to the testing team and once that is complete, we could very efficiently upgrade it to production with the preview changes we developed for the feature.
Regarding edge functions, they were very helpful for A/B testing. I could implement or roll out certain features for a specific number of users, and based on their analytics, I could use the A/B testing capabilities. The CDN also helped significantly, as CDN cache invalidations and related tasks are abstracted and taken care of behind the scenes.
When we shipped our front-end application with Netlify Platform, the process was very smooth. Since features could be shipped without much hassle and without thinking about how the architectures would work or how the infrastructure would be laid down, this smooth process was beneficial. Netlify Platform's CDN is very helpful, and our client's website could reach multiple geographical locations, which definitely helped their business.
I do not remember the actual metrics because it has been two years, but I would definitely say that Netlify Platform really helped us save time in feature delivery. The deliverables were quick, feature delivery was fast, CI changes and deployments were very quick, and we could easily deploy and test our features and roll them out to our end users. I do not have the numbers since I used it three years back, but I would say that it really helped us with very efficient and faster feature deliveries.
One thing I could recall from three years back is that I am not sure whether Netlify Platform has worked upon the infrastructure to get the build process faster, but I believe the build time was slower at that time compared to the deployment patterns and platforms I am using currently. I believe since it has been three years, they have definitely improved their infrastructure.
Regarding cold start, there was a problem at that time. The cold start latency of Netlify functions was somewhat lacking based on my experience. At that time, these two things—build time and cold start times—were areas for improvement when I initially used Netlify Platform three years back.
I believe Netlify Platform is doing a great job overall. Just one or two points, as I mentioned, about making build times faster and reducing the cold start times for their Netlify functions would be helpful improvements.
I have been working in my current field for around six years.
The setup was not done by me since I am an engineer; it was done by the higher officials who were there, such as the tech leads. I am not sure about the pricing and setup cost. Since I have also used it personally, I would say the free tier which Netlify Platform provides is a generous tier to host applications. Regarding licensing and setup cost, I am not very sure, but I am confident in that direction.
Previously, since it was in my organization, it was the first time we used Netlify Platform. My personal choice has since switched, and my current choice is Vercel. If I get the requirement, I will definitely use Netlify Platform again, but since Vercel nowadays is very famous and provides many capabilities, I have been using it.
Using Netlify Platform would improve your developer experience and provide certain advantages, such as using the CDN without thinking about cache invalidations. I would recommend going for it. I would rate this review seven out of ten.