Dear Netlify Community,
I am working to improve the deployment efficiency of a static site, established in May 2025, to support a small business’s online portfolio hosted on Netlify. While the site deploys successfully, the build process has become increasingly time-consuming due to a large number of assets, affecting iteration speed. Your expertise in addressing this challenge would be greatly valued.
My project, built on the Netlify Free plan using a Gatsby.js framework, includes approximately 2,000 high-resolution images and 500 CSS/JavaScript files, totaling 1.5GB in the repository. The site is managed through a GitHub integration, with builds triggered automatically on each commit, as configured per the Netlify documentation for continuous deployment.
The Netlify Build Logs report an average build time of 8 minutes, with the “Building” phase—specifically asset processing—consuming nearly 6 minutes. To address this, I optimized images to under 200KB each and implemented lazy loading in Gatsby, reducing build times to 7 minutes.
I also adjusted the build command to include gatsby build --prefix-paths, ensuring efficient static file generation, and confirmed sufficient build minute quotas in the Netlify dashboard. However, the build duration remains higher than the desired 4-minute target, slowing down deployment cycles for frequent content updates.
Despite these efforts, the prolonged build times suggest inefficiencies in handling large asset volumes or potential misconfigurations in the build pipeline. I am particularly interested in strategies to further reduce build times, ensuring faster deployments without compromising site performance.
What specific techniques or configurations would you recommend to optimize build times for a static site with a large number of assets on Netlify?
Thank you for your insights and guidance.
