Netlify

A free tier you can actually run a business on

Netlify's key advantage over Vercel Hobby is simple: the free Starter plan permits commercial use. A small commercial site, a client demo, or an early-stage product can legitimately run on Starter. The constraints are quantitative — bandwidth, build minutes, concurrent builds — not a blanket commercial ban.

Practical implications

• Build minutes are the first wall you hit, not bandwidth, for most projects. A large site rebuilt frequently can exhaust the monthly allowance; cache dependencies and avoid unnecessary rebuilds.
• Netlify is framework-agnostic — it does not privilege one framework the way Vercel privileges Next.js. Good if your stack is Astro, Hugo, SvelteKit, etc.
• Serverless and scheduled functions are included, but cold starts and execution limits apply on lower tiers.

When to choose it

Choose Netlify when you want a free tier that is honestly usable commercially and a framework-neutral platform. If you need unlimited bandwidth, look at Cloudflare Pages; if you are all-in on Next.js, Vercel's integration is deeper.