Gatsby Cloud Review and Features

Written by Thom Krupa

Last update: 6/7/2024

Feature		Gatsby Cloud
Infrastructure What runs under-the-hood.		AWS
Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
Continuous deployment Imagine an automatic update system for your website. This feature automatically deploys any changes you make to your code (usually from Git) to your live website.
Automated builds from Git An easy integration with popular Git repository hostings like Github, GitLab and Bitbucket.
Instant rollbacks to any version Easy way to promote any previous build to production without the need to revert commits or data changes.
Site previews for every push New build with a unique URL for every commit and pull request.
Compatible with all Static Site Generators
Notifications Events triggered on successful, canceled, or failed build.		Slack, GitHub, outgoing webhook
Team Management Create team account and invite your teammates to the project.
Custom domains Bring your own domain and connect to the project.
Automatic HTTPS SSL certificate generated automatically.
Rewrites & Redirects HTTP 301 or 302 redirects from one URL to another. Rewrites work similar to reverse proxy and allow to send user to different URL without modifying the original URL.
Password Protection An easy way to restrict access to the website for users who don't have password. Useful if you work on a new site and want to keep it in secret.		Included in paid plan
Skew Protection Skew Protection ensures client and server versions stay synchronized during deployments, preventing compatibility issues.
Free Tier
Websites Number of projects you can have in Free Tier on one account.		Unlimited
Build Minutes The amount of time your build scripts can run per month.		Unlimited
Concurrent builds How many builds can be run at the same time?		1
Bandwidth The amount of data that is transferred to or from the CDN.		100GB /month
Team Members The number of users (team members) that can be added to the CMS.		1
Build Time Per Deployment Build have to finish within the limited time. If not it will fail due to timeout.		60 minutes
Build Memory Limit (in MiB) The amount of memory that is allocated by system to build process. Some operations like image processing are expensive and might require more memory. For Node.js it is `max-old-space-size` setting.		1024 MiB
Paid Plans
Max team members before switch to custom pricing		10
Git contributors have to be Team Members In order to triger build, Git contributor has to be a paid team member.
Serverless
Serverless Functions (API) Small pieces of code that run on-demand without managing servers, typically used for API endpoints.		JavaScript
Edge Functions Serverless functions that run closer to the user, reducing latency and improving performance.
Background Functions Code that runs in the background on the platform to perform tasks that don't require immediate user interaction.
CRON Jobs Schedule tasks to run automatically at specific times or intervals. Useful for automating repetitive website maintenance tasks.
Developer Experience
CLI Command Line Interface tools that allow developers to perform tasks and manage the tool via the command line.
Extensions Additional plugins or add-ons that can enhance the functionality of the platform.
Environment Variables Secret configuration settings for your website that change based on where it's deployed (dev, staging, production).		N/A
Build Logs Track the progress and results of website builds for troubleshooting
Build Canceling Ability to stop a build process that is currently running. This frees up resources and lets you make changes to your website faster by stopping builds you don't need anymore.
Platform Built-in Products
Analytics Tools for tracking and analyzing website traffic.		Integration with Google Analytics
Authentication Services for managing user logins and authentication.		N/A
Database Managed database services.		PostgreSQL, MySQL
Asset Optimizations Tools for optimizing images, CSS, JS, etc.		bundling, minifying, compressing images
A/B Testing Lets you test different versions of your site by directing traffic to each variant, helping you optimize user experience based on performance metrics.
Form Handling Services for managing form submissions.
Data Storage Solutions for storing and managing data.
Push Notifications This allows your website to send real-time alerts or updates to visitors who have opted-in.
Machine Learning
Security & Compliance Offerings
Two-factor authentication Adds an extra layer of security when logging in.
Team Logs Tracks user activity within the platform for better accountability.
SOC2 Service Organization Control 2 compliance for managing customer data.
ISO27001 International standard for information security management.
GDPR Compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation for handling personal data.
Sustainability
Carbon Neutral		N/A
Carbon-free Energy		N/A
Integrations
Integrations Connecting your deployment platform with external services like headless content, commerce, databases, and more.
Custom build-system integrations Allows you to connect your own build tools and processes with the deployment platform.		N/A
Support with self-hosted instances of git		N/A
API mesh API Mesh allows you to combine multiple APIs into a single unified API, simplifying data fetching and integration across different services and backends.		N/A
Deploy Preview feedback integrations Enables team members and stakeholders to comment directly on preview deployments.		N/A
Edge Functions integrations		N/A
High Performance Build Memory and CPU		N/A
Native Build Plugins

Gatsby Cloud is a commercial platform created by Gatsby, Inc. team. It is designed for open-source Gatsby framework. Cloud started in 2019 with just a bunch of features including integrations with headless CMS and real-time preview. That was a big step forward to solve a painful Gatsby problem - long builds. They gave content editors ability to instant preview of new changes without the need to fully rebuild (which can take sometimes dozens of minutes).

Gatsby Incremental Builds

Few months after the launch, Gatsby announced Incremental Builds. If you make a change in CMS and not in the code, Incremental Build will be up to x1000 times faster than a normal one. That leads to <10 seconds build times. It's not the same as Preview which basically is a develop server running somewhere in the cloud.

Deploy to your favorite CDN

At first, Gatsby Cloud was just a CI/CD tool. They didn't offer any hosting solution. You could connect and deploy website to one of those popular CDNs:

It changed recently. If you prefer to have everything in one place, Gatsby introduced Gatsby Hosting in March 2021. You can easily add your domain and use Gatsby Cloud with Fastly under the hood. If you prefer using Netlify, Vercel or S3 you can still connect this in just one click!

Lighthouse report built-in

Gatsby Cloud runs a lighthouse test for each deployment. That's a nice way to control the performance of your builds and commits.

As you can see above, build logs are beautifully printed and grouped. That's unique for Gatsby Cloud since they can focus on just one framework.

Gatsby Functions

It seems that Cloud roadmap is tied with Gatsby the framework roadmap. This is similar strategy to what Vercel does with Next.js. By having control on both software and infrastructure Gatsby team can improve developer experience and release features that are supported on their Cloud on the release day. A small vendor lock-in is the price you need to pay in order to have top-notch UX.

Conclusion

Gatsby Cloud is probably the best way to run Gatsby projects. Especially if you struggle with long build times or want to take advantage of Gatsby Previews. It's not designed to work with other frameworks, so if Gatsby is not your jam, take a look on other options in our Discovery Hub.