Cloudflare Challenges Netlify with New Jamstack Hosting

Cloudflare is currently developing a new service known as Cloudflare Pages. This upcoming offering has the potential to be a direct competitor to Netlify and Vercel, both of which are cloud hosting providers specializing in building and deploying websites utilizing Jamstack frameworks.

The discovery of this new product occurred on Saturday through the efforts of reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, who uncovered details while examining Cloudflare’s code.

For those unfamiliar, Jamstack represents a widely adopted approach to website development and deployment, particularly well-suited for scaling. It enables the utilization of global edge networks, with a strong emphasis on performance optimization.

Consider a scenario involving a highly popular musical artist preparing to release a new album through their website. They anticipate a significant surge in traffic and a large volume of orders.

If this artist also possesses web development expertise, they might choose to build a Jamstack website to ensure consistent availability and rapid loading times. Rather than relying on a conventional content management system for hosting and delivery, a Jamstack framework allows for the separation of the front end and back end.

The artist could create new content within their content management system and then deploy an update to their website. Their Jamstack application will then pre-render static pages based on this new content. These pages are subsequently cached on a global edge network, enabling delivery in mere milliseconds to users worldwide. This process is analogous to making a photocopy of a document instead of rewriting it each time it’s requested.

However, what happens when a visitor wishes to purchase the new album through the designated purchase page? This page will incorporate a checkout module, representing dynamic content that cannot be cached. Utilizing a payments API, like Stripe, ensures that content is not loaded from the user’s server.

This example illustrates a common trend among many organizations. Static content is pre-built and cached for optimal performance, while dynamic content is handled through microservices that load on demand and can readily scale to meet fluctuating needs.

According to screenshots shared by Jane Manchun Wong, Cloudflare Pages will facilitate website deployment through a simple Git commit. It offers direct integration with GitHub repositories for those hosting their source code on that platform.

Users will be able to define a Node.js build command that will be executed whenever changes are made to the code. Upon completion of the build process, the website becomes accessible to end users.

Cloudflare Pages will include a free tier, allowing for the generation of up to 500 builds each month. Usage exceeding this quota will likely require a paid subscription for additional builds and features.

By default, Cloudflare provides a subdomain name for testing the service – your-website-name.pages.dev. Users also have the option to configure a custom domain name and integrate Cloudflare Pages with other Cloudflare services.

Documentation for Cloudflare Pages is currently available, as noted by Jane Manchun Wong, suggesting a potential launch in the near future.

Update: The documentation site, which was accessible at the time of original publication, is now unavailable.