Excuse the tag, couldn’t find one that fit.
I’m making an tiny Electron app that works in conjunction with the website hosted on Netlify and the backend API.
I want to serve the install files (exe, dmg) to the user directly from the website, hosted on Netlify, is there a policy against this? As in, CAN I do that? Or is it frowned upon?
The install file is around 40mb.
Hey @freddy this post is better suited in the admin category, there a member of the support team will be able to clarify the TOS to you; specified to your uses.
While you wait, this may be helpful
- Users may not use the Service as a remote storage server only.
Kyle.
Greetings!
@freddy correct me if I’m wrong here but it sounds like you already have a site on Netlify (probably more a web-app than ‘site’ based on context, but I digress) and then some other external API service you’re using to hydrate your app and you just want to host a 40MB file that’s openly downloadable — an Electron shell for your same app. Is that right?
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Jon
Thank you, but it really doesn’t.
" 1. Users may not use the Service as a remote storage server only."
I’m not “only” hosting the remote storage. Well, I guess it does help, I interpret that as the fact that I can host downloadable content, as long as it’s not all I’m doing.
That is right, I have a super traditional website. The electron app is simply an app that would give the user native notifications that usually come through socket.io on the website.
The app itself will of course just communicate with the API, which is not on Netlify (Duh), but the website itself is hosted on Netlify which in turns communicates with the API. The ElectronJS app is simply a small subset of what the existing website already does (Mainly notifications).
Nothing secret about it, so here goes. https://www.elytra.no (In Norwegian tho)
Support engineers regularly check the admin category so yes, that is the most appropriate place for this post to be.
By what your describing, the Netlify site that will be holding the downloadable file doesn’t have any other “reasonable” content on it, is this correct?
We are only trying to help 
Yep. Totally understand 
I don’t work for Netlify so my answer stands without official capacity (they’ll chime in when they get through the massive backlog of other posts here in the Community) — but I don’t see this as being an issue, with two caveats.
First, understand that it obviously puts implications on your site’s bandwidth usage, and you’re financially responsible for that beyond some point (not sure if you’re on free tier / etc). I don’t personally consider it expensive, but it’s something to keep in mind with 40MB downloads depending on how many downloads you anticipate.
Second, not that it’s particularly relevant for file downloads, but it’s worth noting that the Edge (CDN) won’t be caching this file. So the initial request for the user / browser to get the file will be maybe a second slower than that of your site’s actual HTML files (again not a big deal, but just a heads up 
)
Hope that helps!
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Jon
Thank you very much, I’m aware of the caveats, it’s mainly to avoid any confusion from those who download the file itself, that the file they download and are supposed to install comes from elytra.no, and not some subdomain or a remote website. The users aren’t that tech savvy, and just to avoid any potentional questions, issues or what not, I find it best to just serve it from the main domain.
The amount of downloads are limited, and updates would come from the API, it’s just the initial installer (Which shouldn’t have to be updated that often) that needs to be served.
@kylesloper Sorry, I should have clarified, my “Thank you, but it really doesn’t” was directed towards your “While you wait, this may be helpful”.
Roger that!
If you ever need, you can always write a “rewrite” style redirect so that you have a path on your site’s domain / host that proxies behind the scenes to another request and passes it along under the redirect mask 
just more options!
Hey freddy! as long as there is a site that is about the content in some way, then hosting downloadable content is fine - just do know that files over 5mb in size will stream from our original server which is slower than our CDN nodes.
The caveat that people are referring to in the TOS is basically to limit folks who do not have html files or sites really, and are only using us as a storage server - as in, just doling out direct links to content as opposed to having that content embedded in a served site.
does this make things more clear?