Netlify Drop vs ship.page: an honest comparison
Netlify Drop pioneered drag-drop deploys in 2013 and it's genuinely good. It's also, by design, the front door to the Netlify platform: keep the site and you're managing it in a Netlify account from then on. ship.page is for when you want the URL without the platform.
Competitor facts verified against Netlify Drop in September 2026. Where they win, we say so.
Side by side
| Netlify Drop | ship.page | |
|---|---|---|
| Account required | Not to drop — but the site expires unless you claim it into a Netlify account | No — anonymous drops live 30 days with nothing to sign up for |
| Keeping a site | Claim it into your Netlify team; it's a Netlify site from then on | Claim into a free account with a one-time token, restore after expiry, or let it lapse — your call |
| Framework builds | Detects your framework and runs the build for you (requires login) | Not offered — you ship the built output, so there's no build config to fight |
| URL | Random name on netlify.app | Unguessable random subdomain on shipped.run |
| Search engines | Sites are publicly indexable like any Netlify site | noindex, nofollow on every drop, always |
| Free tier | $0 forever, metered by a monthly credit allowance — 15 credits per production deploy, 20 per GB of bandwidth; run out and every site on the account pauses | $0 — 25 MB zips, 30-day drops, no account, no metering to reason about |
| API & automation | Full platform API and CLI — account required | One curl with no account; MCP server for AI agents; GitHub Action |
| Updating a site | Keep dropping to the same site once it's claimed | Named drops redeploy in place on Pro ($4/mo); append files to a live drop |
| Custom domains | Free, with SSL — a real strength | Not offered — Team ($19/mo) adds branded vanity subdomains on our own serve domain |
| What happens when you stop | The site lives in your Netlify account until you delete it | The drop expires and is purged — nothing lingers by default |
| Upload limits | No published per-drop cap, but Netlify's docs advise keeping folders under ~50 MB; once claimed, bandwidth and deploys draw from the monthly credit allowance | 25 MB zips, 100 MB decompressed on free — 100 MB uploads on Pro |
| Branding on your site | None — files are served as uploaded | A small badge visitors can close; none on Pro ($4/mo) |
| Price | $0 metered by monthly credits; Personal $9/mo and Pro $20/mo raise the ceiling | $0 anonymous; Pro $4/mo for named drops, no TTL, append, bigger uploads |
Where Netlify Drop wins
- The build step. Drop a Next.js or Astro source folder and Netlify builds it — we only serve what you already built. If you don't want to think about build output, that's a real convenience.
- Free custom domains with SSL. We don't offer custom domains at all — Team adds vanity subdomains on shipped.page.
- Permanent free sites with an ecosystem around them: functions, forms, rollbacks, deploy previews, analytics. ship.page is deliberately just the hosting.
- Scale and track record: thirteen years of Drop, millions of sites, enterprise-grade CDN.
Where ship.page wins
- No account, no claim wall. The anonymous drop is the product, not a funnel step — it lives 30 days and never nags you to sign up.
- Nothing to manage afterwards. No site list accumulating in a dashboard, no credit allowance to watch, no platform you're now on.
- Privacy defaults Netlify doesn't have: unguessable URLs, noindex on every drop, automatic expiry and purge.
- Agent-native: an MCP server any AI agent can deploy through with zero auth, plus a one-line curl. Netlify's automation story starts at an account and an API token.
- A flat $4/mo Pro — no credit math. Named drops, append, restore, bigger uploads.
The short version
If your project needs a build step, a custom domain, forms, or functions — or you want a permanent site on a big platform — use Netlify. That's what it's for, and the free tier is generous.
If you have built static output and want it on a URL right now — a report, a prototype, something an agent just generated — ship.page skips the account, the platform tie-in, and the cleanup afterwards.
What happens to your site after you drop it
On Netlify Drop, an unclaimed site is temporary by design. It gets a random name like flamboyant-badger-82f1a.netlify.app, and if nobody claims it, it expires — the URL simply stops serving. Claiming it means creating a Netlify account or logging in, at which point the site moves onto your team dashboard and behaves like any other Netlify site: permanent until you delete it, metered against the monthly credit allowance.
On ship.page, the anonymous drop is the whole product. Your files land on an unguessable <slug>.shipped.run subdomain, served with only a small, closable 'Hosted on ship.page' badge in browsers, and live for 30 days with nothing to sign up for. A one-time claim token pulls the drop into a free account and extends it to 90 days from claiming, and an expired drop can be restored inside its retention window; Pro ($4/mo) removes the TTL entirely for named drops. Let it lapse and it's purged — nothing accumulates in a dashboard you never asked for.
Move a site off Netlify Drop in one command
If you still have the folder you dropped, you're already done preparing: ship.page serves exactly what Netlify Drop served. Build output, exported prototypes, AI-generated sites — anything static ports over unchanged. If the site was never claimed and has already expired, Netlify no longer has the files — rebuild locally first.
Zip the folder and POST it. The URL you get back is live immediately, lives 30 days with no account, and never lands in a dashboard you didn't ask for:
terminal
cd my-site && zip -qr - . | curl -fsS -X POST https://ship.page/deploy \
-H "Content-Type: application/zip" \
--data-binary @- | jq -r .urlQuestions
Do you need an account for Netlify Drop?
Not to deploy: you can drag a folder onto the Drop page and get a live URL without signing up. But an unclaimed site expires, and keeping it means claiming it into a Netlify account — so the account is deferred, not avoided. On ship.page there is no account at any step: the anonymous drop is the product.
Does Netlify Drop expire?
Yes. Sites dropped without an account are temporary and expire unless you claim them into a Netlify account. Claimed sites stay up like any Netlify site. ship.page drops also expire by default (30 days); claiming pulls a drop into a free ship.page account with a one-time token — no platform adoption, no site dashboard to manage — and expired drops can be restored within their window.
How long do Netlify Drop sites stay up?
Netlify doesn't publish a fixed lifetime for unclaimed drops, so treat them as ephemeral: fine for a quick demo, wrong for anything you need tomorrow. Once claimed into an account, a site stays up as long as the account does. ship.page commits to a number instead: 30 days anonymous, 90 days once claimed, no TTL on Pro.
Is Netlify Drop down?
Probably not — check status.netlify.com first. The common false alarm is an expired unclaimed site: its URL returns Netlify's 'not found' page while the rest of netlify.app works fine. That's expiry, not an outage. A real outage appears on the status page and hits many sites at once.
What are the best Netlify Drop alternatives?
Depends what you need. For drag-drop without an account: ship.page for static sites, tiiny.host for documents like PDFs. For permanent sites tied to a git repo: Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, or Vercel. And if you want the framework builds and platform ecosystem, Netlify Drop itself is honestly hard to beat.
Can ship.page build my framework project like Netlify does?
No, and that's deliberate. You run your build — npm run build, hugo, whatever — and ship the output folder. No build minutes, no config detection, no surprises when a platform build image changes.
What if I need the site to be permanent?
On ship.page, claim the drop to an account and redeploy or restore it — Pro ($4/mo) removes the TTL entirely for named drops. If you want permanent and free with a custom domain, Netlify is honestly the better pick.
Is Netlify Drop free?
Dropping is free, and Netlify's Free plan is $0 forever — but it's metered: production deploys, bandwidth and requests all draw from a monthly credit allowance, and running out pauses every site on the account. ship.page's anonymous tier has no metering to reason about: 25 MB zips, 30 days, no account.
What are Netlify Drop's limits?
Netlify publishes no per-drop size cap for the Drop UI, but its own docs advise keeping folders under ~50 MB and point bigger projects at the CLI. Unclaimed sites expire on an unpublished schedule, and per-IP rate limits apply after past abuse waves. ship.page states its numbers instead: 25 MB zips, 100 MB decompressed, 500 files, 30 days — and paid tiers raise every one of them.
Keep reading
- The best Netlify Drop alternatives in 2026
- ship.page vs tiiny.host — the other drag-drop host
- Host a zip file as a website
Judge it in ten seconds
Drop the file here, or keep it in the terminal — either way the URL is live for 30 days.
Drop your page here — get a live link
.zip, folder, or single .html — free, no account, live for 30 days.
or one curl command
curl -X POST https://ship.page/deploy \
-H "content-type: text/html" \
--data-binary @index.html