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When I first build my website a few years ago it was hosted on Gitlab Pages. It was easy to deploy and it just worked.
Then, a few years later, I moved over to Netlify. Why? The promise of speed.
I never used any of Netlify's features. I didn't even use them to build the website - I still used Gitlab's CI/CD to run the build upload the output to Netlify.
The website was a little faster though, at least in some scenarios, so I was happy.
Then something scared me: Netlify's pricing model.
Here is an example on Reddit from a user who, like me, was using Netlify's free plan to host a simple static website. Then one day, they got a bill for over $100.000. Why? Because their website was attacked and used up a bunch of bandwidth.
Netlify's free plan comes with 100 GB of bandwidth included. However, when you go over that, they automatically charge a bandwidth add-on that cost $55 per 100 GB. And there is no way to prevent this 🤯
So this user's website was DDoS'ed and they racked up 60 TB of bandwidth in a single day. Leading to the massive bill.
They weren't the only ones either. Netlify actually has a policy to reduce the bill for these kinds of situations to 20%, or even 5%, of the initial charge (which would still be $5.000 in this case). For this user the CEO waived the fee to avoid the bad press, but the root problem remains.
Like many other users in that thread I've (finally) moved away from Netlify. I just can't trust them.
I'm now happily back on Gitlab Pages and intend to stay here for a while.
See you tomorrow 👋