> I mean honestly “HUGO static sites”…how about a directory of html files hosted by nginx or Apache?
Whether you put HTML files on the mentioned services or have a build step with a static site generator is not the point.
Where does your nginx server run, how do you keep it up and running, how you do provision it, how do your files end up on the server?
You can write a bunch of shell scripts and do all of this on a cheap VM for 5 bucks. Or you can get it for free on some of these services with git integration, global caching, web hooks, previews, cheap storage, image optimization etc. You get unlimited or at least a lot of sites and it's all automatic. On some you can even just drag and drop a directory into their web interface and the website is there in a couple of seconds.
It's basically a different layer of abstraction that's free/cheap and works nicely for simple use cases or as a specialized part of a more complex deployment architecture.
I have personally recommended netlify, cloudflare etc. to people who have the technical ability to write HTML/CSS or use a static site generator. Those things are very easy to use and carry around less risk than having to provision and configure a web server yourself.
They may cut the extent of a free offering, but I suppose they won't drop it. An ability to make a quick proof of concept, to just try something and play with it, is very important for bringing in paying customers. People tend to buy with more confidence things they already know and comfortable with. People tend to pay for things that are widely known, with tons of examples and explanations online; free services generate much more of these.
That might be true but it really depends how many can convert. Recently Heroku dropped their free tier as well as Fly.io having a credit card only free trial in order to deter scammers.
I don't disagree with you, but I do think the economics of static sites are pretty different which may keep the free tiers around for longer. Even if it's "free for sites under 1MB", which would cover a lot of sites.
Whether you put HTML files on the mentioned services or have a build step with a static site generator is not the point.
Where does your nginx server run, how do you keep it up and running, how you do provision it, how do your files end up on the server?
You can write a bunch of shell scripts and do all of this on a cheap VM for 5 bucks. Or you can get it for free on some of these services with git integration, global caching, web hooks, previews, cheap storage, image optimization etc. You get unlimited or at least a lot of sites and it's all automatic. On some you can even just drag and drop a directory into their web interface and the website is there in a couple of seconds.
It's basically a different layer of abstraction that's free/cheap and works nicely for simple use cases or as a specialized part of a more complex deployment architecture.
I have personally recommended netlify, cloudflare etc. to people who have the technical ability to write HTML/CSS or use a static site generator. Those things are very easy to use and carry around less risk than having to provision and configure a web server yourself.