Netlify, the cloud for collaborative web development, has acquired FeaturePeek – a Y Combinator and Matrix Partners-backed startup that enables developer teams to preview frontend content. Through this acquisition, Netlify has added FeaturePeek’s developer collaboration product as a core capability in the next generation of Netlify Deploy Previews.

Available today, Deploy Previews make it easy for developers to gather feedback with their web teams, including internal and external business stakeholders, product managers, designers and marketers. Teams share URLs to review a preview of the website or web application and can leave contextual feedback directly on a UI that overlays the site. All feedback is synced in the pull request or productivity tool of choice.

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FeaturePeek was founded in 2019 by Eric Silverman and Jason Barry, with investors including Y Combinator (YC) and Matrix Partners. In addition to acquiring the technology, the FeaturePeek team has joined Netlify. With FeaturePeek now delivered in Netlify, FeaturePeek users can move to any of Netlify’s plans to take advantage of collaborative Deploy Previews.

Share Progress Faster and Get Better Feedback

In 2016, Netlify pioneered the concept of Deploy Previews, where a frontend pull request in a user’s Git repo automatically generates a live preview of the site with a unique shareable URL. Deploy Previews have been a popular feature of the Netlify workflow, doubling over the last year with users sharing previews millions of times each month. All of this is powered by Netlify and the Jamstack, the serverless architecture designed to make the web faster and more dynamic with a better development experience.

However, until now, the process for collecting feedback has been slow and inconsistent. Reviewers often turn to email, Slack or shared documents tto communicate feedback, which rarely makes it back into the productivity tools teams are using. With FeaturePeek now fully integrated into the Netlify workflow, every piece of feedback becomes a comment on the Git pull request, or the team’s collaboration tool.

With most teams still working remotely, the tools for asynchronous collaboration and content review are more important than ever. According to Forrester, the trend toward long-term remote working will increase the importance of digital collaboration, so developers must harness collaborative work tools¹. Netlify is enabling more effective collaboration across development teams and stakeholders by allowing for richer communication through videos and screenshot annotation, simplifying the number of tools to gather feedback and coordinate tasks.

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Shorter Review Cycles Lead to Better Web Experiences

Netlify’s collaborative Deploy Previews offer:

• Live automated previews: Netlify automatically builds a new Deploy Preview as a unique permanent URL for each pull/merge request. It’s posted as a commit status for easy collaboration.
• A floating UI that overlays the deploy: Without leaving the browser, reviewers can make comments, take and annotate screenshots, record videos and reply to teammates asynchronously on web projects.
• Feedback automatically synced to the Git repo host: Developers get feedback directly in a GitHub pull request, easily organized in their workflow.
• Integration with productivity tools: Progress can be automatically synced to productivity tools like Clubhouse.io, GitHub, Linear and Trello (with more integrations to follow), promoting shorter, more frequent feedback loops and reducing inefficiencies.
• Testing and troubleshooting on different devices: Netlify records browser metadata for every review so engineers can reproduce and troubleshoot bugs. Scan a QR code to easily open a Deploy Preview on a mobile device or reproduce a reviewer’s environment via a BrowserStack integration.