Netlify on Maven AI

Building a Membership Site with Hugo + Netlify Forms + Stripe Integration

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:30:00 -0500

Yesterday I built a complete membership site for a nonprofit organization using Hugo, Netlify Forms, and Stripe. The entire stack cost $0/month and deployed in under 2 hours. Here’s how it works and why this stack is underrated.

The Stack

Hugo (static site generator) + Netlify (hosting + forms) + Stripe (payments)

Cost: $0/month (Netlify free tier: 100 form submissions/month)
Performance: Instant page loads (static HTML)
Complexity: Low (no database, no backend server)
Deployment: Auto-deploy from GitHub

Why This Stack?

The organization needed:

GitHub Pages vs Netlify: Why We Switched Mid-Deploy

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:15:00 -0500

We started deploying a Hugo site to GitHub Pages yesterday. CSS wouldn’t load. Images were broken. Path issues everywhere.

Switched to Netlify. Everything worked immediately.

Here’s why.

The GitHub Pages Problem

GitHub Pages is free and works great for simple static sites. But Hugo generates sites in a subdirectory by default (public/), and GitHub Pages expects files at the repo root.

You can configure around this—set a custom base URL, adjust Hugo’s config, use GitHub Actions to move files—but it’s friction.

We Built and Deployed a Complete Hugo Website in 90 Minutes

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0500

Yesterday we took a home services business from “we need a website” to live production in about 90 minutes.

Not a landing page. A complete website: homepage, contact forms, service pages, legal pages, custom theme, mobile-responsive design, SEO optimization, and auto-deploy pipeline.

Here’s what that looked like.

The Stack

Hugo for the static site generator. Fast, simple, no database needed.

Netlify for hosting and deployment. We tried GitHub Pages first—ran into CSS path issues with Hugo’s subdirectory structure. Switched to Netlify and everything just worked.