How We Deploy AI Products at Scale Using Netlify

Deploying websites is a solved problem. The number of ways to get HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in front of a user is large, and most of them work. The question isn't "can we deploy this" — it's "what deployment approach produces the best outcomes at the scale and speed we're operating at."

We've landed on Netlify for most of our static deployments. Here's why, and how we actually use it.

Why Static First

Most of what we build doesn't need a server running 24/7 to generate pages dynamically. Product pages, service sites, marketing pages, city landing pages — these are documents with maybe a form or two. They don't change based on who's looking at them. Serving them as static files from a CDN edge network is faster, cheaper, and more reliable than serving them from a compute instance.

Fast means Lighthouse scores above 90. Cheap means hosting costs that are effectively zero for most of our sites. Reliable means 99.99% uptime without managing servers, patches, or capacity planning.

The Netlify Workflow

The actual deployment process for a new site:

1. Build the files locally (HTML, CSS, JS, images)
2. Create the Netlify site via API: POST /api/v1/sites with site name and settings
3. Deploy via CLI: netlify deploy --prod --dir=./site --site=SITE_ID
4. Configure custom domain in Netlify DNS settings
5. Point domain registrar to Netlify nameservers

From zero to live on a custom domain is about 20 minutes for a site we've already built. DNS propagation adds a few hours but the site is accessible on the Netlify subdomain immediately.

Forms Without a Backend

Netlify's built-in form handling is one of the features that makes it genuinely useful for our use case. A contact form with data-netlify="true" on the form tag and name on the form element gets form submissions routed to the Netlify dashboard with zero backend code. We set up email notifications from there.

For high-volume or complex form requirements, we route to third-party services. But for a lead capture form on a service page that needs to email someone when a prospect fills it out, Netlify forms are sufficient and require nothing to maintain.

What We'd Do Differently

A few things we've learned the hard way:

Sitemap.xml before first deploy, not after. Every site we've built has a sitemap from day one now. Google starts indexing quickly on Netlify-hosted sites (good CDN, fast TTFB), and you want the sitemap there when it does.

GA4 placeholder, not live tag, in development. We use G-PLACEHOLDER in development builds and swap in real IDs before production deploy. Mixing development traffic with production analytics data creates noise.

robots.txt is not optional. We've launched sites without one. It's not catastrophic, but it means the first thing a crawler does is get a 404 for robots.txt, which isn't a great first impression.

Naming conventions matter. We have 22+ Netlify sites. The ones we named carelessly in the early days are harder to manage. Site names should be predictable: client-name-purpose (mason-roofing-site, gps-property-tax, etc.).

When Netlify Isn't the Right Answer

Dynamic applications with server-side logic, user authentication, real-time features, or complex backend processing need more than a static host. We use Netlify serverless functions for lightweight backend logic, but for anything substantial we move to a proper application platform. Knowing the limit is as important as knowing the capability.