Netlify will sponsor the Astro JavaScript/TypeScript framework and is becoming the official deployment partner for this open source project.

CEO Matt Biilmann contrasted Astro to other frameworks which have “countless rendering modes, complex JavaScript hydration models, complicated caching modes, and a stronger and stronger sense of vendor lock-in.” We are guessing that is primarily a reference to competitor Vercel – which sponsors Next.js and has a special relationship with Meta’s React framework. 

Biilmann added that Astro has a focus on “simplicity and content-driven websites.”

On the Astro side, Thuy Doan (partnerships and operations) and Fred Schott (co-creator of the framework) said that “Netlify will be sponsoring $12,500 each month towards the ongoing open source maintenance and development of Astro,” and that Netlify’s minds would be working with the team to develop a feature called Server Islands – currently experimental – which renders content on the server, with deferred loading for fast initial performance.

This contrasts with a long-standing Astro feature, simply called Islands, which serves dynamic components with bundled JavaScript that then calls server APIs. Using Islands, Astro projects can integrate with other frameworks including React, Vue, Preact, Svelte and Solid.

It seems that, like the Next.js team, the Astro developers have concluded that some sort of hybrid approach – between server-side and client-side code – is necessary for optimal performance in every situation.

Biilmann promises more Astro news later this week, which will likely include an update about Server Islands.

Netlify’s core business is in hosting. It’s possible there is some business advantage in smarter server-side features – in that it gives developers more incentive to deploy with a host that has specific support for those features. Though if this is the case, Netlify could be vulnerable to the same accusations of vendor lock-in that apply to others. Hosting providers like Netlify and Vercel also promise built-in CDN (Content Delivery Network) support for fast performance globally. The idea is that it is easier to deploy a low-latency global website than it is to set up the necessary infrastructure on AWS (Amazon Web Services) or other hyperscale clouds.

The disadvantage is that hosting at scale on Netlify or Vercel tends to work out more expensive – sometimes by a large margin – than going direct to AWS. In March a user complained of an unexpected $104,000 bill accrued on a “free tier” site after a denial of service attack consumed a large amount of bandwidth – a bill which was later waived. Soon after, Netlify introduced a rate-limiting feature.

For Biilmann, there may be a back-to-basics aspect to the Astro news. There is a refreshing lack of AI hype in his post, and Astro is in tune with the original Jamstack concept, which Billmann has long championed.

Biilmann also observed that Astro scored highest in developer satisfaction among all rendering frameworks in a “State of web development” survey conducted last year.