How to choose a static host by who reviews your work
Seven comparisons sorted by situation: who has to open the preview, whether a git repo exists, what a shared password costs, and which default you inherit.
Build minutes and CDN edges are the wrong first question. If what you are deploying has to be looked at by someone before it goes public, the platform is decided by a narrower one: who can open this URL, and what does it cost to change that.
Each page below answers that for one platform, with every competitor claim quoted from that platform's own documentation and linked to it. This page exists to tell you which one to read.
Start from your situation
| If this is your situation | Read |
|---|---|
| You want every platform's answer to the same access question on one screen before picking a side | All platforms compared |
| The reviewer is a client or a designer, the preview is protected, and they have no account on your host | VibeHost vs Vercel |
| Previews are private already and the problem is admitting one named person without buying a seat | VibeHost vs Netlify |
| You pasted a preview link into a channel, then noticed nothing had stopped a stranger from opening it | VibeHost vs Cloudflare Pages |
| The front end sits beside a web service, a database, or a cron job, and splitting them across two bills is the thing you want to avoid | VibeHost vs Render |
| The source already lives in a GitHub repo and the open question is whether the published site can be non-public | VibeHost vs GitHub Pages |
| You built it in a chat window, it works, and now you want a URL you understand and a bill you can predict | VibeHost vs Replit |
The four questions these pages turn on
Is the reviewer an engineer. Most of the platforms in the six-way table answer "restrict this preview" with "make the viewer sign in". That costs nothing when the reviewer is on your team, and it is a dead end when the reviewer is a client who will not create a hosting account to look at one page. Read Vercel and GitHub Pages for the two clearest versions of that trade.
Is there a git repo. Automatic per-branch and per-pull-request previews are a git feature on every platform that has them. With no repository you are on a manual-upload path instead, and the platforms differ widely in how complete that path is. Compare Render, where a static site starts from a linked repo and a branch, with Netlify, which documents four no-git ways to deploy.
What does a shared password cost. A password on the page needs no account and no invite, only one secret you hand out, and it sits on a different tier on every platform. It is included one tier down on one platform, charged per protected project on another, and not documented at all on two more. On Vercel Pro the bill grows with every project you protect.
Which default did you inherit. Whether a new deploy is public or private is not a constant, and it is not always a plan question either. One platform changed the default for teams created after a date in July 2026 and left older teams alone, so two teams on the same product can behave in opposite ways. Netlify has the exact wording.
If you are already moving
These are migration guides rather than comparisons. Each one covers what to build, where to point DNS, and what breaks on the way.
- From Netlify is the most complete of the four, and
_redirectscarries across. - From Replit lifts a built static export out of a credit-metered environment.
- From Weebly covers a site with no build step and no export you can deploy directly.
- From Vercel is a stub today. It covers the static-export case by pointing at the Netlify steps, and the full walkthrough is still being written.
If what you need is a number rather than an argument, limits has the per-plan caps, generated from the same object the API enforces.
Share private deploys with expiring links
Keep the app private and send a share link that expires on its own. Reviewers don't need to sign up.
VibeHost vs Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, Render, GitHub Pages (2026)
Six static hosting platforms compared on who can open a deploy, what restricts it, and which plan unlocks a password. Every cell quoted from official docs.