Static Website Hosting - GitHub Pages vs Netlify vs Cloudflare Pages

Here I describe my search for the right static website hosting.

For my digital garden I was looking for static website hosting in combination with GitHub and Jekyll.

As I describe here, three options quickly came to mind:

1. GitHub Pages
2. Netlify
3. Cloudflare Pages

All three have the option to link a custom domain.

GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages works with Jekyll but can also work with GatsbyJS. Unfortunately not all Jekyll plugins can be used, like for example Paginate V2. I also read somewhere that it is not possible to link a private repository. I haven’t tried GitHub Pages yet.

Netlify

Netlify is different in design and has fewer restrictions than GitHub Pages. For example, Netlify has support for various frameworks.
Netlify can also be linked to a private repository on GitHub.
The big disadvantage is that Netlify can only display visitor statistics for a fee.
I have tested Netlify and it works fine.

Cloudflare Pages

Like Netlify, Cloudflare Pages has support for various frameworks including Jekyll. And can also be linked to a private repository. The big advantage is that Cloudflare's privacy-first Web Analytics is included for free.
However there are known issues like For users migrating from Netlify, Cloudflare does not support Netlify's Forms and Serverless Functions features. So there are also limitations.

Conclusion

There is of course much more to compare, but I only looked at what is important to me:

1. Support for different frameworks, that’s future-proof
2. Connection with GitHub
3. View visitor statistics without a subscription. And without using third parties such as Google who slow down the website and do not respect the privacy of visitors
4. Being able to link a custom domain

That’s why I chose Cloudflare Pages.

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