Fun Links 2016-05-20

I know I’ve written about static sites before. I’ve linked to some site generators and some complementary services, and now I’m going to add simple, CDN-based hosting to that list.

All of these services allow you publish a static site with a simple command, and all offer free plans.

Netlify
https://www.netlify.com
Netlify seems like the most full featured of this batch, but that may or may not be a good thing. In addition to hosting static files, it will also build your site from the source material, integrating with your git repository if desired. It can generate Jekyll, Roots, and Hugo sites as well as run any build tools like Grunt or Gulp. They also offer API proxying, support for client-side routing and the ability to hook into third party OAuth2 providers. SSL is managed for you and included in all plans. The free plan allows a custom domain but adds a small callout to the bottom corner of your site/app.

Surge
https://surge.sh/
Surge takes the approach of lowering the barrier to get something “out there” as quickly and simply as possible. Just type surge and hit enter in your project directory and Surge will publish it under a surge.sh subdomain. You can add your custom domain for free. However, Surge just hosts your static site; it won’t build it or do any proxying, etc. You can, of course, integrate the surge NPM package into your existing CI process and have it publish your site once built. The free plan doesn’t allow SSL on custom domains, but it does on their subdomains so that you could use it as a simple static asset CDN for a site hosted elsewhere.

PubStorm
https://www.pubstorm.com/
PubStorm is the new kid on this block. It is an offering from Nitrous, the creators the online IDE, presumably to create the whole farm-to-table type of experience. They only have a free plan at the moment, which allows you to host up to 10 separate sites with custom domains and SSL. They support version rollback and simple pushState support to allow client-side routing. It looks like their future premium offering will add more features. They also work primarily through a command line interface and allow you to add collaborators so that other people can publish or rollback if that is how you work.