When comparing Neocities vs Netlify, the Slant community recommends Netlify for most people. In the question“What are the best website hosting providers?” Netlify is ranked 3rd while Neocities is ranked 7th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free tier
Neocities has a free tier which provides hosting for up to 1GB of space and tools for website building.
Pro Easy to use drag and drop interface
Neocities uses a drag and drop interface to upload files on their server. This makes it arguably the best option for beginners for it's ease of use.
Pro Lively community
Neocities also has a social aspect allowing for discovery of your site and interaction with and learning from others.
Pro Netlify CDN
Pro Free one-click SSL
Pro Continuous deployment
Pro Custom domains
Pro Versioning and rollbacks
Pro Free tier
Netlify's PRO Plan now Free for Open-Source Projects
Pro Webhooks and integrations
Pro Redirect, rewrite and proxy rules
Pro Full featured CLI
Pro Custom HTTP headers
Pro Support simple forms
Pro Post processing
The post processing doesn't really work. It's a good idea, though!
Pro Functions
Can deploy aws functions without an aws account.
Pro Multiple environment support
Pro Atomic deploys
Pro RESTful API
Cons
Con Custom domains not free
User must sign up for paid plan ($5/mo) to use their own domain.
Con Supports a limited selection of file types
Neocities only supports a limited number of file types. So for types not supported, third party services need to be used.
Con No SFTP support
Neocities has no SFTP support. In stead it uses a drag and drop web based interface, which is a nice tradeoff for beginners. It's not very useful for more advanced users though.