Top 5 Frontend Hosting Platforms in 2021
Recommended hosting platforms for application frontends
In modern web hosting, the frontend requires special attention. It’s pretty common to optimize the frontend and deliver using CDNs to reduce latency. And some platforms handle most of the complexities.
However, choosing a platform isn’t easy since each one brings in different capabilities.
So, in this article, I will discuss five frontend hosting platforms with feature comparisons to help you choose the best based on your priorities.
1. Netlify — Best in Class for Simplicity and DX
Netlify is one of the most used hosting platforms for frontend deployments.
Its simplicity and developer friendliness is at the forefront. You can easily connect your Git repository and configure build commands with Netlify to host your application. But, that’s not all. There are some amazing features that make Netlify stand out from the rest.
Features of Netlify
- Support team collaboration.
- Support serverless functions.
- Can easily roll back deployments if there are any issues.
- Updates all the changes you make to the source code in real-time.
- Easy integration with Slack for notifications.
- Branch deploys and subdomains.
- Provides additional services like analytics, identity, forms, and functions.
Netlify Pricing Options
Netlify provides a free package for developers, and it allows to deploy unlimited websites up to 100GB bandwidth and 300 build minutes per month. This is simply sufficient for a website with moderate traffic.
Truly a generous free tier, isn’t it?
Also, there are 3 other pricing options as Pro, Business, and Enterprise. The Pro and Business packages will cost you $19 and $99 per member-month, respectively, while the Enterprise package allows you to customize based on your requirements.
2. GitHub Pages — Static Hosting and Code in One Place
GitHub Pages is a static hosting service maintained by the GitHub team.
It allows you to easily host your frontend application and watch it update on every commit you make.
You can configure all the things in your GitHub repository settings, and all you need to do is selecting the branch that needs to deploy.
Features of GitHub Pages
- You can use the
github.iodomain or a custom domain to host your application. - Maintains a direct connection to your GitHub repository.
- Can manage access control if your application is published from a private or internal repository.
- Provides a generator to give you a default setup to build from.
In addition to all these, GitHub pages are completely free of charge.
As for the limitations, the bandwidth is 100GB per month, and the project should be less than 1GB in size. But, it is more than enough to host a simple static website.
3. Amazon CloudFront —Cloud CDN for Frontend Caching
Amazon CloudFront is a Content Delivery Network(CDN) provided by AWS.
It caches the frontend assets in edge locations to optimize the delivery time and reliability. These edge locations are distributed around the world and will be picked automatically based on the user’s physical location.
Since CloudFront is a CDN to optimize the content delivery, you will need to connect storage service to CloudFront for it to function properly. AWS S3 is one of the best candidates with Cloud native integrations.
Features of CloudFront
- Optimized for both static and dynamic content.
- Protects your data against network and application-layer attacks.
- SSL and TLS encryptions.
- Access control using signed URLs signed cookies and token authentication.
- High availability.
- Provides CloudFront functions and Lambda@Edge for computational purposes.
Most importantly, CloudFront is cost-effective and there are multiple pricing options to choose from.
CloudFront Pricing Options
CloudFront provides a free tier for 12 months and it includes 50 GB data transfer out, 2,000,000 HTTP or HTTPS requests and 2,000,000 CloudFront function invocations per month.
Apart from that, on-demand options are the most used pricing option among the developers, and cost will be changed based on your location and capacity. You can find all the details about CloudFront pricing here.
4. Amazon S3 — Highly Reliable Static Hosting with Integrations
AWS S3 is a popular storage option among developers. But, it can also be used as a static website hosting platform.
You just need to upload the build content of your application to the S3 bucket, enable static site hosting, and configure few settings. You can find the detailed step-by-step guide on enabling static hosting here.
S3 will provide you a default URL for the hosted application, and you can map it to your custom domain using Route53. Based on my experience, this is the easiest way to host a static site and let’s see what the other features provided by S3 are.
Features of AWS S3
- Easy to use.
- Cost-effective.
- Access control using IAM users and programmatic access keys.
- High availability.
AWS S3 Pricing Options
Similar to CloudFront, S3 also provides a free tier for 1 year with 5 GB storage, 20000 get requests, and 2000 put requests.
With the support of AWS CloudFront, you can connect AWS S3 to build a highly performant and cost effective frontend platform.
5. Vercel —Obsessive Focus on End-user Performance
Vercel is another robust and reliable frontend-focused deployment platform that supports serverless functions, lightweight event-driven APIs, and static sites.
Similar to Netlify, it supports multiple Git providers like GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket. After connecting the repository, you can host the application with few clicks.
Features of Vercel
- Supports collaboration.
- High-performance Edge Network.
- Supports serverless functions.
- Live reload experience for UI components.
- Allows connecting any data source, headless CMS, or API.
- A free version is available.
Vercel Pricing Options
Vercel provides 3 pricing options for you as Free, Pro and Enterprise. Pro version will cost you 20 USD per member-month and the Enterprise package allows customizing based on your needs.
Conclusion
As you may have understood by now, each deployment platform has its own set of strengths. The below table shows a comparison of those 5 platforms discussed in terms of pricing, features, etc.
You can choose the best platform for you, depending on your project requirements. You should also consider the reliability, pricing, and limitations to find the best one for you.
And its extremely important to asses the price of each platform offerings, how it would grow with the usage.
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