How Netlify Powers “Ask Netlify” with Kapa.ai: A Build vs Buy Success Story
"Time to market is critical right now. Why waste time building from scratch and likely only make it 70% of the way to production? Instead, find somebody trusted you can work with."
Dana Lawson
CTO, Netlify
Challenge
Netlify faced the classic build-vs-buy call. Hooking an LLM up to docs sounds simple, but keeping it current as docs change daily, avoiding hallucinations, and building the analytics to actually learn from it are all problems most in-house attempts never fully solve.
Solution
Instead of building in-house, Netlify deployed Kapa through the Kapa SDK to power "Ask Netlify" inside its documentation. "I don't want to own a model," Lawson says, "I just want to tell a model what to do." The result, in her words: "set it and forget it."
Results
750,000+ technical queries answered every year
1 week time-to-production
Zero maintenance needed for the Netlify team
Over 8,236 conversations discovered gaps in Netlify's technical content
Saved over 180,000 support hours from answering repetitive questions
Documentation Agent
Ask Netlify: answers that keep pace with their technical documentation
Embedded in Netlify's docs, Ask Netlify answers developer questions instantly and keeps pace with docs that change daily, without Netlify's team maintaining any of the underlying infrastructure. It went from decision to production in one week. Netlify now gets real-time insight into what developers are actually stuck on: a shift from specific error questions ("Why did this fail?") toward foundational ones ("What is DNS?"), a trend that's shaping both documentation and product design.
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Looking forward
Netlify plans to expand Kapa’s reach further, embedding contextual help directly into the product. The goal: reduce friction for both seasoned developers and beginners learning to code.
For Netlify, that trusted partner is Kapa.ai - handling the complex infrastructure of AI-powered documentation while Netlify focuses on what it does best: empowering developers to build and deploy modern web experiences.
"The value is irrefutable.
Kapa has been great to work with - super easy, set it and forget it. As we expand what we're doing, we're just going to find more integration points to bring the information to users better."
Dana Lawson
CTO, Netlify
