Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Serverless VS Netlify

Compare Serverless VS Netlify and see what are their differences

Serverless logo Serverless

Toolkit for building serverless applications

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
  • Serverless Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-06
  • Netlify Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23

Serverless features and specs

  • Scalability
    Serverless architectures can automatically scale up or down based on the traffic, without the need for manual intervention.
  • Cost Efficiency
    You only pay for what you use. There are no expenses for idle times because billing is based on the actual amount of resources consumed by your application.
  • Reduced Maintenance
    No need to manage, patch, update, or monitor servers. This allows focus on writing code and deploying features.
  • Speed of Development
    Serverless platforms provide built-in integration with other services, which makes it quicker to develop and deploy applications.
  • High Availability
    Serverless platforms typically offer high availability and fault tolerance out of the box, reducing the risk of downtime.

Possible disadvantages of Serverless

  • Cold Start Latency
    Serverless functions can suffer from higher latency during initial invocation or when they haven’t been used for a while.
  • Limited Execution Time
    Most serverless platforms impose a maximum execution time limit on functions, which may not be suitable for long-running applications.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Serverless architectures often rely on the specific features and services of a cloud provider, which can make it difficult to switch providers.
  • Complexity in Debugging
    Debugging and monitoring serverless applications can be more challenging compared to traditional architectures, due to their distributed and ephemeral nature.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing resources on a serverless platform can introduce security vulnerabilities that must be managed vigilantly.

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.

Serverless videos

Thoughts on Zero V3, Instant Page and Serverless 1.37!

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 Serverless and Netlify)
Developer Tools
40 40%
60% 60
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100
Open Source
100 100%
0% 0
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Serverless and Netlify. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

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

Serverless Reviews

We have no reviews of Serverless yet.
Be the first one to post

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 Serverless. It has been mentiond 108 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.

Serverless mentions (39)

  • Show HN: Winglang – a new Cloud-Oriented programming language
    GP may have been referring to Serverless Framework (http://serverless.com//). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Invocation error - can't find any results helping me to solve this issue
    I deployed a lambda and http api gateway using a serverless.com (sls) template as a start. I get the following error when it processes a specific request:. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Deploying Lambdas from Zipped Code on S3 vs Image Repository
    Have you tried serverless.com ? It lets you have infrastructure as code. Source: about 2 years ago
  • [p] I built an open source platform to deploy computationally intensive Python functions as serverless jobs, with no timeouts
    - With Lambda, you manage creating and building the container yourself, as well as updating the Lambda function code. There are tools out there such as sst or serverless.com which help streamline this. Source: over 2 years ago
  • AWS Lambda, a good host for a rest API?
    If you'd like to use Lambda, usually you need to engineer FOR it, from day one, you don't (often) get to choose some other framework and shoehorn it into Lambda and Serverless. There's some great frameworks to help deploy code into Lambda easily and create REST endpoints for things, one such frameworks is serverless.com that helps easily deploy to it, but it lacks a framework for doing REST that also supports... Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Netlify mentions (108)

  • 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 / 16 days 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 / about 2 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 / 9 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
  • Replatforming from Gatsby to Zola!
    Wait as the Netlify CI/CD robots work their magic to build and push my updated blog site with the shiny new post to the open internet. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

Nimbella - Simple serverless cloud for developers

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

Webiny - The Enterprise CMS platform that you can host on your cloud

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

Up by apex - Deploy serverless apps and APIs in seconds to AWS Lambda

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.