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Forge vs GitHub Pages vs Netlify: What are the differences?
# Introduction
When it comes to deploying static websites, Forge, GitHub Pages, and Netlify are popular options. Each platform offers unique features and capabilities catering to different needs.
1. **Hosting Environment**:
Forge provides a dedicated environment for Laravel applications with features tailored to PHP developers. In contrast, GitHub Pages and Netlify cater to a wider range of static websites, supporting various languages and frameworks.
2. **Workflow Integration**:
GitHub Pages seamlessly integrates with GitHub repositories, offering a simple workflow for version control and deployment. Netlify takes it a step further by providing continuous integration/delivery (CI/CD) capabilities, automating the build and deployment processes. Forge, on the other hand, is more focused on server management for PHP applications.
3. **Custom Domain Support**:
Both GitHub Pages and Netlify offer easy configuration for custom domains, allowing users to use their own domain names. Forge also supports custom domains but is primarily designed for hosting Laravel applications rather than generic static websites.
4. **SSL Certificate Provision**:
Netlify automatically provisions SSL certificates for all sites, ensuring secure connections by default. GitHub Pages also offers SSL support for custom domains but with certain limitations. Forge users need to handle SSL certificates manually, which may require additional configuration.
5. **Add-On Services**:
Netlify provides a wide range of add-on services such as form handling, serverless functions, and identity management. GitHub Pages offers basic static site hosting without additional services. Forge focuses on server management and deployment for Laravel applications without extensive add-ons.
6. **Cost Structure**:
GitHub Pages is free for public repositories, making it an attractive option for open-source projects. Netlify offers a generous free tier with advanced features available on paid plans. Forge follows a subscription-based pricing model, catering to developers working with Laravel applications.
In Summary, Forge, GitHub Pages, and Netlify differ in hosting environments, workflow integration, custom domain support, SSL certificate provision, add-on services, and cost structure, catering to different needs in static website deployment.
Decisions about Forge, GitHub Pages, and Netlify
Howie Zhao
Full Stack Engineer at yintrust · | 7 upvotes · 228.8K views
We use Netlify to host static websites.
The reasons for choosing Netlify over GitHub Pages are as follows:
- Netfily can bind multiple domain names, while GitHub Pages can only bind one domain name
- With Netfily, the original repository can be private, while GitHub Pages free tier requires the original repository to be public
In addition, in order to use CDN, we use Netlify DNS.
Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
Learn MorePros of Forge
Pros of GitHub Pages
Pros of Netlify
Pros of Forge
- Fgfgf1
Pros of GitHub Pages
- Free290
- Right out of github217
- Quick to set up185
- Instant108
- Easy to learn107
- Great way of setting up your project's website58
- Widely used47
- Quick and easy41
- Great documentation37
- Super easy4
- Easy setup3
- Instant and fast Jekyll builds2
- Great customer support2
- Great integration2
Pros of Netlify
- Easy deploy46
- Fastest static hosting and continuous deployments43
- Free SSL support22
- Super simple deploys22
- Easy Setup and Continous deployments15
- Faster than any other option in the market10
- Free plan for personal websites10
- Deploy previews8
- Free Open Source (Pro) plan6
- Easy to use and great support4
- Analytics4
- Great loop-in material on a blog4
- Custom domains support3
- Fastest static hosting and continuous deployments3
- Great drag and drop functionality3
- Canary Releases (Split Tests)1
- Supports static site generators1
- Tech oriented support1
- Django0
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Cons of Forge
Cons of GitHub Pages
Cons of Netlify
Cons of Forge
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Cons of GitHub Pages
- Not possible to perform HTTP redirects4
- Supports only Jekyll3
- Limited Jekyll plugins3
- Jekyll is bloated1
Cons of Netlify
- It's expensive7
- Bandwidth limitation1
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What is Forge?
Fastest possible way to host lighting-fast static websites for small businesses, web startups, and app developers.
What is GitHub Pages?
Public webpages hosted directly from your GitHub repository. Just edit, push, and your changes are live.
What is Netlify?
Netlify is smart enough to process your site and make sure all assets gets optimized and served with perfect caching-headers from a cookie-less domain. We make sure your HTML is served straight from our CDN edge nodes without any round-trip to our backend servers and are the only ones to give you instant cache invalidation when you push a new deploy. Netlify is also the only static hosting service with integrated continuous deployment.
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What companies use Netlify?
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What tools integrate with Forge?
What tools integrate with GitHub Pages?
What tools integrate with Netlify?
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What are some alternatives to Forge, GitHub Pages, and Netlify?
Fabric
Fabric is a Python (2.5-2.7) library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks.
It provides a basic suite of operations for executing local or remote shell commands (normally or via sudo) and uploading/downloading files, as well as auxiliary functionality such as prompting the running user for input, or aborting execution.
Spigot
It is home to the community behind the biggest Minecraft server software projects and provides a place for everyone involved with Minecraft servers to connect with each other whether they seeking help and support or sharing and showcasing their work. We provide a web forum, chat room and wiki for providing support as well as project hosting for content creators and hope that you too will become involved in this extensive and growing community of more than 300,000 members.
Postman
It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.
Postman
It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.
Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming.