Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Knative VS Netlify

Compare Knative VS Netlify and see what are their differences

Knative logo Knative

Knative provides a set of components for building modern, source-centric, and container-based applications that can run anywhere.

Netlify logo Netlify

Build, deploy and host your static site or app with a drag and drop interface and automatic delpoys from GitHub or Bitbucket
  • Knative Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-27
  • Netlify Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23

Knative features and specs

  • Serverless Capabilities
    Knative provides powerful serverless capabilities, allowing developers to deploy and manage applications without the need to manage infrastructure. This enables automatic scaling based on demand.
  • Kubernetes Integration
    Because Knative is built on top of Kubernetes, it integrates seamlessly with existing Kubernetes clusters, leveraging Kubernetes features and security policies.
  • Event-Driven Architecture
    Knative offers a robust event-driven architecture that enables applications to efficiently react to events, increasing responsiveness and reducing resource consumption.
  • Flexibility
    Knative provides developers with flexibility to use any programming language, runtime, or framework, allowing diverse applications to be deployed and managed.
  • Open Source Community
    Knative has a strong open-source community, offering extensive resources, continuous development, and a wealth of shared knowledge.

Possible disadvantages of Knative

  • Complexity
    Deploying and managing Knative can introduce complexity, especially for teams unfamiliar with Kubernetes or serverless paradigms.
  • Learning Curve
    There is a significant learning curve associated with Knative, which can be daunting for new users or teams without Kubernetes experience.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running Knative on Kubernetes requires considerable resources, which might not be cost-effective for small-scale applications or organizations.
  • Maturity
    As a relatively new technology, Knative may encounter issues related to maturity, stability, and support compared to more established platforms.
  • Limited Ecosystem
    Although growing, Knative's ecosystem is still limited compared to other serverless solutions, which might restrict available plugins and integrations.

Netlify features and specs

  • Deployment Speed
    Netlify offers very fast and easy deployment processes, often requiring just a push to a Git repository.
  • Built-in CDN
    Netlify includes a global Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up the delivery of websites and applications.
  • Serverless Functions
    Netlify provides serverless functions allowing developers to run backend code without managing servers.
  • Automated Builds
    Automated build processes are integrated, supporting continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD).
  • Custom Domains and SSL
    Easily manage custom domains and automatically provision and renew SSL certificates.
  • Integrated Form Handling
    Netlify offers form handling capabilities out-of-the-box, simplifying the process of collecting form data.
  • Plugins and Integrations
    Extensible with a wide range of plugins and integrations including analytics, CMS, and other third-party services.
  • Developer-Friendly
    Offers a wide range of developer-friendly features, such as split testing, instant rollbacks, and APIs for customization.
  • Free Tier
    Generous free tier that allows for hosting of personal projects and small websites at no cost.

Possible disadvantages of Netlify

  • Pricing
    While there's a free tier, more advanced features and higher usage can become expensive on a paid plan.
  • Function Limits
    Serverless functions have execution and duration limits, which may not be suitable for all applications.
  • Platform-Specific
    Deployment and feature configurations can be platform-specific, which may require learning new processes that differ from other providers.
  • Build Minutes
    The free tier includes limited build minutes, which can be a constraint for projects that require frequent deployments.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Using Netlify-specific features (like certain build plugins) can make it harder to migrate to another hosting provider.
  • Limited Backend Services
    Primarily designed for frontend applications, so it may not be as robust for extensive backend services compared to traditional servers.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Some advanced features may have a steep learning curve for beginners.
  • Build Times
    Build times can be slow for very large sites or monorepos, impacting continuous deployment speed.
  • Support
    Customer support responses can be slow on the lower-tier plans.

Analysis of Netlify

Overall verdict

  • Netlify is considered a good option for many developers and businesses looking for a platform to deploy and manage static websites or Jamstack applications.

Why this product is good

  • Netlify offers a seamless and easy-to-use platform for deploying static sites and modern web applications.
  • It provides developers with a variety of powerful features like continuous deployment, built-in HTTPS, DNS management, and serverless functions.
  • The platform supports server-side rendering and dynamic functions, which is advantageous for modern web development needs.
  • Netlify's workflow optimizes for Git, allowing developers to connect their repositories directly and automate deployment processes.
  • The platform's collaboration tools make it easy for teams to work together on website development.

Recommended for

  • Developers building static sites or Jamstack applications.
  • Teams looking for streamlined deployment workflows integrated with Git providers.
  • Businesses seeking a robust hosting solution with minimal server management overhead.
  • Projects requiring custom domains with automatic HTTPS.

Knative videos

What is Knative?

More videos:

  • Review - Introduction to Knative | Cloud Academy
  • Review - Knative a Year Later: Serverless, Kubernetes and You (Cloud Next '19)

Netlify videos

Netlify Platform Tutorial Review

More videos:

  • Review - Deploy Websites In Seconds With Netlify
  • Review - Deploy Your Website In Minutes With Netlify

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Knative and Netlify)
Cloud Computing
17 17%
83% 83
Cloud Hosting
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
12 12%
88% 88
CDN
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Knative and Netlify

Knative Reviews

We have no reviews of Knative yet.
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Netlify Reviews

  1. Eleanor Bennett
    · Digital Marketing Specialist at Logit.io ·
    Useful previews

    As someone who is often creating new pages, Netlify's preview makes the review process easier. You can also use the generated URL from Netlify's preview to run an SEO audit prior to going live. This is very useful for spotting bugs or broken redirects.


Top 15 Cloudflare Alternatives: A Complete Guide
Netlify is a CDN service that also offers edge computing, web security, and VPN solutions. Netlify allows you to deploy and run your web content and applications on its edge network, which has over 70 edge locations in 35 countries. Netlify also provides security features, such as SSL, DDoS protection, WAF, and firewall, to protect your web content and applications.
Exploring alternatives to Vercel: A guide for web developers
Netlify is one of the most popular alternatives to Vercel, offering a comprehensive platform for deploying static sites and modern web applications. With a strong focus on developer experience, Netlify provides powerful features such as serverless functions, continuous deployment, and advanced analytics.
Source: fleek.xyz
Choosing the best Next.js hosting platform
Where Netlify is superior to Vercel is the list of add-ons they offer. Among them, Netlify Forms allow developers to manage forms and submission without extra code. It even integrates with third-party applications such as MailChimp, Zendesk, and more.
Top 10 Netlify Alternatives
Although Netlify is a credible static app hosting and deployment platform for all sizes of businesses. But if you still want alternatives, then you should consider our suggested Netlify alternatives. This guide displays all these alternatives to Netlify in detail with pricing structure and core properties. Hopefully, you will pick a suitable option for your project.
3 best alternatives to the big cloud providers
Very interesting topic! I’m not sure if things like Netlify or Vercel could replace something like Kubernetes on GCP but I believe in the power of Netlify for hosting websites!
Source: dev.to

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Netlify should be more popular than Knative. It has been mentiond 109 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Knative mentions (16)

  • Building Microservices Using Knative
    As described above, Knative provides a rich ecosystem for managing and executing microservices that can be developed in a variety of programming languages. Any language that can be crafted into a web service and packaged as a kubernetes container is a viable execution candidate for a Knative service. Since 2018, Knative has evolved as a viable microservices platform and in 2022 was accepted by the CNCF at the... - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • A Brief History Of Serverless
    In 2018, Google announced an OSS project called Knative. Knative was meant to be executed on top of Kubernetes and streamline the deployment of applications on the platform. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Rethinking Serverless with Flame
    Https://knative.dev/ - (CloudRun API is based on this OSS project). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Running Serverless Functions on Kubernetes
    Serverless functions are pieces of code that take an HTTP request object and provide a response. With serverless functions, your application is composed of modular functions that respond to events and can be scaled independently. In this article, you learned about Knative and how to run serverless functions on Kubernetes using Knative and the func CLI. You can learn more about Knative on knative.dev, and a cheat... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • DevOpsCon Munich 2022 - Human Interactions that Matter
    That night Sebastian Meyen - the chief content officer at S&S Media took the speakers out and I had a great, deep conversation with Zbynek Roubalik - one of the maintainers of both Knative and KEDA. He got me all excited about the GPTchat. I even tried to play with it that same night when I came back to the hotel. But I got bored after 20 minutes. It still feels like talking to a machine... I don't see the threat... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

Netlify mentions (109)

  • Build a Personal Portfolio Website (2-Minute Tutorial)
    Upload your folder to Netlify, GitHub Pages, or Vercel — and boom, your portfolio is online! - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • Deploy Your Full-Stack App for Free: Host Backend on Render and Frontend on Netlify in Minutes
    Deploy on Netlify Go to https://netlify.com and log in. Click "Add new site" → "Import an existing project". Connect your GitHub and choose your frontend repo. Fill in the deploy settings: Build Command: npm run build (or flutter build web) Publish Directory: build (for React) or build/web (for Flutter) Add your environment variables (e.g., your backend URL). Click Deploy Site. You’ll get a public frontend URL like:. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How Bun can help to revive a Gridsome project
    Starting from this year, builds for this website's code through my Netlify account began failing. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • I'm Joining Sentry
    As much as this is exciting news, it does mean that sadly I'm moving on from Netlify. Netlify which has been my home for the last 2 years and who believed in us(and me) before anyone else did. Their support is what made SolidStart possible. I've learned so much about deployment and infrastructure working closely with the Frameworks and Primitives team. I've traveled the world giving talks alongside the Developer... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Join us for the Netlify Dynamic Site Challenge: $3,000 in Prizes!
    We are so excited to team up with Netlify to bring you our next DEV challenge. This Challenge is all about dynamic and high-performance digital experiences, across any framework! - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Knative and Netlify, you can also consider the following products

Fission.io - Fission.io is a serverless framework for Kubernetes that supports many concepts such as event triggers, parallel execution, and statelessness.

Vercel - Vercel is the platform for frontend developers, providing the speed and reliability innovators need to create at the moment of inspiration.

Nuclio - Nuclio is an open source serverless platform.

CloudFlare - Cloudflare is a global network designed to make everything you connect to the Internet secure, private, fast, and reliable.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Heroku - Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.