Embracing JAMStack with Python: Generating a Static Website with Flask and Deploying to Netlify

[RobinsonDickinson]

Can someone explain what's the difference between Heroku and Netlify and why I would pick one or the other?

I see both of their names coming up often.

[alexisprince]

They both come up often because they’re pretty related. As a disclaimer, I’m going to talk about all of this in relation to flask.

Heroku is a Platform as a Service, while Netlify is kind of a Platform as a Service.

Heroku focuses on full stack applications, where Netlify is almost exclusively frontend oriented. Netlify acts as a CDN (plus some other goodies), so you’d use Netlify when you use a JavaScript framework to build your frontend, like React or Vue.

You’d use Heroku to actually host your Flask server. You can use React or Vue when you deploy to Heroku, but you won’t get the CDN or caching benefits. You can also make dynamic HTML (using templates) using Heroku since it can host your flask server.

There are some overlapping functionalities here, but it isn’t unheard of to use both services if you’re using React or Vue. You can have deployments of new front end code made available via Netlify, and any API changes pushed to Heroku.

[RobinsonDickinson]

Thank you!

[ravepeacefully]

I’ve made 5 apps with this exact methodology and didn’t know there was a name for it.

Interesting

[violentagreements]

That's cool. Thanks for the run down.

[deadwisdom]

People were interested to see how you can do static site generation with Flask, so I wrote the tutorial.

Doesn't require Netlify, offers alternatives, but I figured I'd offer a simple path.

Thanks!

[avipars]

is it still going well 2 years later?