Introduction to Optimizely Frontend Hosting

Optimizely Frontend Hosting is a cloud-based solution for deploying headless frontend applications, currently only those built with Next.js. Its deployment process and overall concept are similar to what .NET developers may already know from working with Optimizely DXP. Just like in DXP, code is deployed through a managed pipeline, and the environment setup is handled by Optimizely.

Out of the box, Optimizely Frontend Hosting includes a Web Application Firewall (WAF) and CDN powered by Cloudflare, which ensures fast and secure global delivery of your static frontend content. Your statically generated pages from Next.js are served directly from this infrastructure, giving you performance and security without extra configuration.

It’s important to note that the platform comes with limited customization capabilities. For more advanced configurations or features, you may need to reach out to Optimizely Support. This is quite different from platforms like Vercel or Netlify, which specialize in headless frontend hosting and offer a wide range of built-in features, such as:

• Vercel Toolbar (feature flag preview, draft mode toggle, commenting tools)

• Preview environments and branch-based deployments

• Real-time performance monitoring and analytics

• An admin interface tailored for managing and debugging Next.js applications

While Vercel provide a rich developer experience, not every client needs all of these features. In many cases, a business simply needs a reliable and performant environment to host their headless frontend. In such scenarios, Optimizely Frontend Hosting is a great fit - especially if the rest of the tech stack is already based on Optimizely.

It’s also encouraging to see Optimizely expanding its offering in the headless space, giving customers more deployment options from a single trusted provider. This helps unify infrastructure, support, and vendor management under one roof, which can be a valuable advantage in enterprise projects.