A Netlify alternative for sites you already build yourself

Moving a site from Netlify

What your configuration maps to, what has no equivalent at all, and the order to do it in. The middle one is the part that decides whether this is an afternoon.

What maps to what

What has no equivalent

Handle these before you move DNS, not after. Pages serves files: it has an SPA fallback, custom error pages and an exclude list, and it has no redirect table and no custom response headers.

• Redirect and rewrite rules. Anything in _redirects or [[redirects]] beyond the SPA fallback — vanity URLs, proxying a path to an API, country splits — has nothing to map to. Move them into your build as real files, or into your DNS/app, before you cut over.
• Custom response headers. There is no _headers equivalent. Caching is handled for you — content-addressed and immutable — but a CSP or a custom X- header you set today will not survive the move.
• Functions, Identity and Edge Functions. Static files only. Whatever they do has to live somewhere else before the domain moves.

The order to do it in

1. STEP 01

   Read your config before you touch anything else

   Open netlify.toml, _redirects and _headers and sort every rule into "maps to something" and "does not". The table above is the mapping. This is the step that decides whether the move is an afternoon or a rewrite, and doing it last is how people find out too late.

2. STEP 02

   Run the build yourself

   Take the command out of [build] and run it locally. You should get the same publish directory Netlify would have deployed — if you do not, fix that here rather than in CI.
   locally

   $ npm ci && npm run build
   $ ls dist

3. STEP 03

   Create the site and a CI token

   A site has to exist before anything can deploy to it — the action will not create one, so a typo fails instead of quietly publishing to a new address. Do both from the dashboard if you prefer.
   once

   $ one9x pages create mysite
   ✓ created mysite → https://mysite.one9x.app/
   $ one9x tokens create "github actions"
   one9x_tok_7Kd…  (shown once)

4. STEP 04

   Deploy once by hand and open the preview

   Add --spa only if your _redirects had the /* /index.html 200 line. Without --deploy the release stages: fully uploaded, nothing live, its own URL. Click through it — especially any path that used to be a redirect.
   first deploy

   $ one9x pages release ./dist --site mysite --error 404:/404.html
   ✓ v1 staged → https://v1--mysite.one9x.app/

5. STEP 05

   Swap the deploy step in CI

   If you deploy through Netlify’s Git integration there is no workflow to change — you are writing your first one, and GitHub Actions has it in full. If you already deploy from Actions, it is one step out and one step in; your build steps do not move.
   before

   - uses: nwtgck/actions-netlify@v3
     with:
       publish-dir: ./dist
       production-deploy: ${{ github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' }}
     env:
       NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN }}
       NETLIFY_SITE_ID: ${{ secrets.NETLIFY_SITE_ID }}

   after

   - uses: one9x/pages-deploy@v1
     with:
       site: mysite
       dir: dist
       token: ${{ secrets.ONE9X_TOKEN }}
       # the one line that decides preview vs live
       deploy: ${{ github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' }}
       comment: true

6. STEP 06

   Cut the domain over

   Lower the TTL on the records you are about to change to 300, a day ahead — this is the step everyone skips and then waits four hours for. Then link the domain here, add the TXT and CNAME/ALIAS records we print, and wait for the certificate. Leave the Netlify site running until traffic is actually on us.

7. STEP 07

   Decommission

   Once the domain is serving from here and you are happy, delete the Netlify site rather than leaving it to renew quietly. Remove netlify.toml, _redirects and _headers from the repo in the same commit, so nobody later reads them as live configuration.

Your live site on Netlify keeps serving throughout — nothing here touches it until you move DNS, and the free plan is enough to do the whole rehearsal first.