How Netlify Powers “Ask Netlify” with Kapa.ai: A Build vs Buy Success Story

Check out "Ask Netlify" on the official Netlify docs and within their app

Netlify powers modern web development for millions of users worldwide. As its community grew, CTO Dana Lawson noticed a shift:

• Experienced developers were becoming power users of AI tools.

• Newcomers, technically-adjacent users learning to code for the first time, were also arriving in large numbers.

Both groups shared a common problem: getting pulled out of flow when searching for answers.

“Nobody's going to go into a docs page anymore,” Lawson explains. “They're going to ChatGPT and asking for answers. But ChatGPT doesn't have the latest. With Kapa, we're trained on our stuff. We get to control it. We have the boundaries, we have the guardrails.”

The Build vs Buy Decision

Like many CTOs, Lawson faced the classic dilemma: build an AI assistant in-house or partner with a specialized provider.

At first glance, it sounds simple: just hook an LLM up to your docs. But the reality is far more complex:

• How do you keep it up to date as docs evolve daily?

• Who ensures it doesn’t hallucinate or recommend competitors?

• How do you ensure accuracy doesn't lag behind the pace of AI progress?

• How do you handle spam prevention, abuse protection, and scaling to millions of requests?

• What about the analytics to learn from user interactions and improve the product?

Lawson’s perspective was clear:

“I don’t want to own a model. I just want to tell a model what to do. I don’t want to scale or worry about GPUs. We already have enough to do on our own roadmap.”

As she put it bluntly:

“Everybody thinks they can do it cheaper, faster, smarter. They get 70% there, and then it never makes its way into production.”

The Solution: Kapa.ai on Netlify Docs

Instead of building in-house, Netlify deployed Kapa.ai to power Ask Netlify directly within their documentation using the Kapa SDK.

The experience has been seamless, or as Lawson describes it, “set it and forget it.”

Key Results

• 200,000 developer questions answered annually

• 1 week time-to-production with the kapa platform

• Zero maintenance overhead for the Netlify team

• Real-time insights into user pain points and documentation gaps

Beyond Cost: Strategic Value

While many internal projects stall at 70%, Netlify’s partnership with Kapa delivered immediate and ongoing value.

The biggest win: intelligence from user interactions.

“When I go look at our Kapa.ai summary – what are they hitting? What's the volume? Where are they at? It's a good product indicator,” Lawson notes.

She points out a striking trend:

• In the past, most questions were about specific errors (“Why did this fail?”).

• Now, many are about foundational concepts (“What is DNS?”).

This shift reflects the changing user base and helps Netlify improve both documentation and product design.

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 Lawson, the build vs buy choice remains clear: "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."

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. Y’all have 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