The European alternative to Netlify.
Netlify made "git push, live site" normal, and it remains a fine product — run by a US company on US-controlled infrastructure, priced in dollars with metered build minutes and paid add-ons. If your clients or your principles say European work belongs on European infrastructure, that's a problem no settings page fixes.
slew.sh keeps the workflow — connect a repo, push, get a live URL and preview deploys — and runs it entirely on EU-operated infrastructure: Hetzner in Germany, Bunny in Slovenia. European companies, top to bottom.
| slew | Netlify | |
|---|---|---|
| Jurisdiction | European Union | United States |
| Infrastructure | Hetzner (DE) + Bunny (SI) | AWS (US company) |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Yes |
| git push → live URL | Yes | Yes |
| Preview URLs per pull request | Yes | Yes |
| Node / Next.js as real servers | Yes | Functions-based |
| Visitor analytics | Included, every plan | $9/mo add-on per site |
| Image optimization | Included, every plan | Included (Image CDN) |
| Build minutes | Not metered | Metered per plan |
| Forms | Not yet | Yes (metered) |
| Pricing currency | EUR, flat | USD, usage-based |
What the table means in practice
The workflow is the one you know: connect the repository through the GitHub App and every push builds and deploys, with the result reported back to the commit. Every pull request gets a preview URL that updates per push and expires after 7 days. Deploys are zero-downtime — the new version passes a health check before traffic cuts over — and rollback is instant.
Two differences matter most. First, analytics: Netlify charges $9/month per site for server-side analytics; on slew, cookieless analytics measured at the CDN edge is part of hosting, on every plan. Second, server code: Netlify decomposes backends into functions; slew runs Node and Next.js as long-running servers with env vars, live logs and scale-to-zero — the model your app was written for.
The bill
Flat euros: €0, €9, €24 or €99 a month, ex VAT, differing only in how much you hold at once. Builds aren't metered — there is no build-minute budget to watch — and bandwidth allowances are monitored, not billed: going over means an email from me, not an invoice. Teams are included with zero seat fees.
Where Netlify is still ahead
- Forms: Netlify has built-in form handling; slew doesn't yet. If forms are core to your sites today, that's a real gap — tell me and it moves up the roadmap.
- Edge functions and a large plugin/integration marketplace.
- A decade of docs, tutorials and community answers.
Migrating is one command
The CLI has a Netlify importer. Run it in your site's directory and it reads netlify.toml and _redirects — and, with a Netlify token, your build settings, env vars, connected repo and domains straight from Netlify's API, read-only. It starts with an honest compatibility report (Netlify Functions and Forms have no slew equivalent; it says so before creating anything), then sets up the project, env vars, redirects and the git connection, and ends with a DNS cutover checklist. Netlify's redirect syntax translates almost verbatim — splats and :splat carry over as-is.
$ slew import netlify --dry-run
Compatibility check: clean — nothing in the way.
$ slew import netlify
Created project 'your-site' → https://your-site.slew.cloud
Imported. Nothing on Netlify was changed — cut over when ready:Your site keeps serving from Netlify until you flip DNS yourself — and flipping it back is the same edit in reverse. The full walkthrough is in the migration guide.
Frequently asked
- Is slew GDPR-compliant hosting?
- The stack is EU-jurisdiction end to end — Hetzner (DE), Bunny (SI), EU-incorporated company, no US parent — and a signed DPA with the subprocessor list is available. Compliance of your site remains yours, but the "where does the data live?" row reads: the EU.
- Do my redirect rules work?
- Yes — slew serves redirects and same-site rewrites declared in slew.json, and Netlify's syntax translates almost verbatim: splats, :splat and exact status codes carry over, the importer does it for you. The exception is 200 rules that proxy to another origin — those move into your app.
- What about my build plugins?
- Builds run your own build command in a clean container, so most "plugins" that are really npm packages just work. Netlify-platform-specific plugins don't.
- Can you move my sites for me?
- Email hello@slew.sh — I migrate your first project free, and on Studio I do the first batch for you.