Netlify

Raised as a usability problem by 21 people on Hacker News over 11 years (2015–2025), in 17 threads.

People raised many different problems with Netlify, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 22 complaints

Verify DNS says success, but reloading the page asks to verify again, and the cert takes ages2025-09-18
Found the whole Netlify platform confusing and scary to use2025-03-16
Hard to tell why a seat was charged and couldn't remove seats2024-02-28
Hard spending limits are hard to find and set; most users don't know the webhook method2024-02-27
No way to set a spending cap or warning threshold, so bills can grow unbounded2024-02-27
Free service requires a payment method and can produce surprise bills2024-02-27
Roaming option is hidden three levels deep and enabled by default, so users get charged unknowingly2024-02-27
No edit function for DNS records, so changes require deleting and re-adding2022-11-09
Hours of digging through docs to learn how to upload a static site2022-04-14
Setting it up for non-technical users to edit content was a very bad experience2022-03-03
Optional integrations create hassle, forcing users to work around them for basic publishing2021-02-09
Overwhelming output, misleading feedback, and crashes when a .git folder is present2020-12-11
Self-hosting setup documentation is cryptic, leaving users confused and filing issues2020-10-03
Requires a difficult setup for the average user2020-06-13
Previews take about a minute and saving is slow2020-02-26
Clunky to use, long waits for Git commits, and images hard to set up2019-12-30
Widgets nest content in deeply complex frontmatter, making it hard to source and transform2019-08-29
Images must be uploaded manually and linked one by one, which is tedious2019-04-09
Commenter repeatedly couldn't figure out what the product is from its site2018-04-22
Pointing DNS records to Netlify is confusing and the user can't get it working2018-03-25
Single file upload fails with unclear error; user must figure out they need a folder2015-03-31
Pricing menu link leads to a page requiring multiple screens of scrolling to see prices2015-03-31