What is the best Netlify alternative?

It depends which half of Netlify you use. Apps with servers and databases: Render, Railway or Fly. Static sites on generous free limits: Cloudflare Pages. A page you want to publish and send without a repository or a build: your existing agent plus a host that gives it an address.

Is Netlify still free?

There is a free plan, and as of 2026-09-08 their documentation describes it as 300 credits a month that do not roll over, with a production deploy at 15 credits and bandwidth at 20 credits per gigabyte. When the credits run out, their docs say all of your web projects are paused and visitors see a Site not available page. Check the current rates before planning around them.

Why do people say Netlify can get expensive?

The threads usually trace back to bandwidth: a file that suddenly gets downloaded a lot turns into a bill or, on the free plan now, into exhausted credits and paused sites. We are not repeating any specific horror story as fact; the documented mechanism is enough to plan around.

Can Birta replace Netlify?

For a static site, yes: publishing, versions, rollback, a review link and a lead form, without Git or a build. For builds, functions, the database or blob storage, no, and those are all on Netlify's free plan.

Do I need to move my domain?

Only when you are ready. A custom domain on Birta needs Solo or Pro; on the free tier your site gets a Birta subdomain, which is enough to compare the two before you touch DNS.

Netlify Alternatives: Sort Out Which Half of Netlify You Use

People leave Netlify for two different reasons, and the alternatives lists mix them up.

One group outgrew it and needs a server that stays up, a queue, a database, background jobs. For them the answer is Render, Railway, Fly or Cloudflare, and the table at the bottom says so.

The other group never used the platform half. They have a landing page, a portfolio, a client site, and Netlify gave them Git, a build pipeline, deploy previews and a credit meter to run four files that never change. If that is you, the alternative is skipping that layer.

One prompt: try the page without a build pipeline

Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT.

Build this as a single static bundle: index.html plus one style.css, no build
step, no framework, no client-side router. Multi-page is fine as separate
.html files that link to each other.

What it is: [one sentence]. Who it is for: [one sentence]. The one action:
[what you want them to do].

Style: [two words], and specifically oversized headline, high contrast, one
accent colour, generous whitespace, system fonts. Real copy, no placeholder
text.

Then publish it and time the whole thing, from empty folder to a link you can send. Compare that with a Netlify project set up from scratch: repository, connect, build settings, first deploy. Yours is the number that decides. The prompts that publish the result and collect a client's remarks are in AI website prompts.

The number worth knowing before you pick anything

Netlify's free plan is credit-based now, and their own documentation is specific about it. Read on 2026-09-08:

The free plan includes 300 credits a month, and free-plan credits do not roll over.
A production deploy costs 15 credits. Bandwidth costs 20 credits per gigabyte. Compute is 10 credits per GB-hour, web requests 2 credits per 10,000. Form submissions are free on all credit plans.
When the credits are gone, quoting their docs directly: "Once your credit balance is completely used up, all of your web projects (sites/apps) are paused and visitors to your web projects will find a Site not available page at each of your web project's URLs."
The free plan is a hard limit. There is no option to buy more credits on it.

Do the division yourself: 300 credits at 15 per deploy is twenty production deploys a month, before a single visitor uses bandwidth. A gigabyte of traffic is another 20 credits from the same allowance.

What that means in practice

On the free plan, a site you edit often and a site people actually visit are drawing from the same 300 credits. Run out and the pages stop answering until the next billing cycle.

That is the mechanism behind the fear in every thread about leaving Netlify. Be fair about the rest, though: the same free plan includes functions, a database, blob storage and custom domains with SSL. Not a thin free tier. A metered one.

What Birta does instead, and what it does not have

No credit meter, and publishing again spends no allowance. After the agent writes the site:

Publish from the same conversation, and get back that version's own permanent address.
Versions and rollback, so undoing is choosing the previous version. Republishing is not rationed.
A review link that needs no account. Your client pins remarks to the element; your agent reads the numbered threads and fixes them in the same draft. It cannot reply or resolve.
A declared lead form, with submissions in the panel plus an email digest roughly fifteen minutes after the first.

Our limits are real and different in kind: 25 MB per project and 50 projects on the free tier, 10 form submissions per project per month, and a badge that does not switch off. A custom domain needs Solo or Pro. Ours cap size and volume. Netlify's free cap pauses the site.

If you need the platform half, this is not us

Stay on a platform if any of these is true

You need a build triggered by a push, or any build at all.
You need serverless functions, edge middleware, or scheduled work.
You need a database or file storage behind the site. Netlify's free plan includes both; Birta has neither.
You need a preview URL per branch as part of a review workflow.
You need to take payments on your own site. That is not something Birta does yet.

Netlify Forms is worth naming: submissions are free on all their credit plans, with no monthly cap of the kind we have.

The honest alternatives

Unranked, because what you need decides, and priceless, because prices move faster than this page.

Instead of Netlify	What it is for	Worth knowing
Cloudflare Pages	Static and edge functions at very generous free limits	The usual first stop, and it does not meter deploys the way credits do
GitHub Pages	Static sites straight from a repository	Free, but the repo must be public unless you pay, and review happens on the source in a PR
Vercel	Front-end frameworks, Next.js above all	The closest like-for-like if you are staying in that world
Render, Railway, Fly.io	Apps with servers, databases and background work	Where the "I outgrew Netlify" group actually belongs
Coolify, Dokploy	The same thing, self-hosted on your own box	Cheapest at scale, most work to run
static.app, Tiiny Host	Drag-and-drop static hosting, flat pricing	static.app ranks for this query on exactly that pitch: no Git, no pipeline, no credit metering
Netlify Drop	Netlify's own no-account drag-and-drop	Same company, different product; worth knowing before you leave the ecosystem entirely
Your agent plus Birta	A page that has to be correct and reachable, not built	No builds, no functions, no database. That is the trade

If two rows fit, pick by what you will maintain in a year rather than what is fastest to set up this afternoon.

Publish a page without a build pipeline

Versions, rollback and account-free review come with it, and republishing is not rationed.

Connect your agent to Birta