The JAMstack - Jam on waffles

How to choose an infrastructure provider for MACH or Jamstack websites

Development on the JAMstack or MACH architecture introduces changes to far more than just the language you're using to write code. Selecting 'best of breed' services applies to everything from hosting and CDNs, build and deploy services, through to serverless functions and edge computing services. Modern platforms can simplify things for you by providing a whole suite of these services in one place.

Andy Thompson

25 April 2024

3 minute read

This is not an a paid ad for Netlify, any more than it's an ad for Azure! 😜 Similar arguments can be made for any number of emerging full-featured Jamstack platforms, such as Vercel.

Coming from a Traditional DXP world, where you have a huge, monolithic server-side web application backed by heavy databases, you're typically looking first and foremost for some infrastructure on which to host the application and databases. This will need to be high-performance, highly available, and well-supported by engineers who can investigate the myriad issues that could go wrong with your application.

In a JAMstack or MACH world, most of the heavy applications you're working with are cloud-native SaaS applications, such as your Headless CMS, CRM, or Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms. These are typically not hosted within the infrastructure you're looking at, and are frankly less of your concern. This changes the game in terms of selecting your infrastructure.

Traditional, using a typical Traditional DXP and .NET/C# stack as an example

  • Hosting of code/assets - VM with IIS, or Azure Web Apps
  • Database - VM with SQL Server, or SQL Azure
  • Serverless functions - Azure Functions
  • CDN - Cloudflare, or Azure CDN/Azure Front Door
  • Authentication/security - Azure Front Door
  • Build & Deploy - Azure DevOps
  • QA/preview environments - Azure Web Apps/Deployment Slots
  • Edge Computing - Cloudflare Edge Workers
  • Forms - built in to DXP, or custom C# code

Here we see while there are lots of different services, it can simplify things significantly by using Azure services for the majority of it.

Jamstack, typical Headless CMS (Kontent.ai) + JS-driven Static Site Generator (Next.js) as an example

  • Hosting of code/assets - Netlify
  • Database - n/a (Kontent.ai is pure SaaS)
  • Serverless functions - Netlify Functions
  • CDN - Netlify CDN
  • Authentication/security - Netlify
  • Build & Deploy - Netlify
  • QA/preview environments - Netlify/Deploy Previews
  • Edge Computing - Netlify Edge Functions
  • Forms - Netlify Forms

In addition to the apples-to-apples comparison, there are a number of new considerations when selecting your Jamstack infrastructure.

  • Preview site - statically generated production (published) sites are super fast, but typically the trade-off is that they take time to build and publish a new copy of the site when something changes. You need to make sure your platform is capable of quickly updating 'preview' pages (containing unpublished content) as you're making changes in your headless CMS, so your editors aren't waiting minutes (or longer!) to preview their changes.
  • Speed of production builds - for a traditional DXP, this is less of an issue, as the application is rarely built and deployed. Content changes are just published to a database which the application uses to display up-to-date content. A Jamstack site however, typically has to rebuild its pages every time content changes, which takes time. Different platforms are likely to perform drastically differently, depending on which technology you're using to build your site.

Everyone knows about Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). But if you're in a MACH world, here are a few more options you should look long and hard at, and why:

  • Netlify
    • Comprehensive end-to-end tooling
    • Build, deploy, authentication, forms, CDN, it ticks so many boxes
    • Enterprise support and SLAs available
  • Vercel
    • Next.js native, unparalleled support and speed
  • Gatsby Cloud
    • Gatsby.js native, unparalled preview and production build speeds


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