"Deploy to Netlify" button doesn't work as expected

Last reviewed by Netlify Support Staff: August 2023

If you are having problems when hitting the “Deploy to Netlify” button you may see around, here are some tips to get you started on debugging. That said, it can be a bit tricky for us debug exactly what is happening. Sometimes, it’s a transient error or it’s related to browser plugins you have installed.

Generally speaking, what our service is trying to do when you click the Deploy to Netlify button is this:

  1. create a new repository on GitHub for you, under your default organization
  2. copy the content of the initial repo with the button in it, to that new repo
  3. deploy a site from it, using the settings specified in netlify.toml (which is provided by the project hosting the button; you can edit it to customize later!)

The failure usually comes somewhere between steps 1 or 2, otherwise you’d probably be debugging a build failure instead. Do also be aware that most of the Deploy to Netlify buttons are maintained by third parties rather than by Netlify, so often a problem in building when you push the button is a code problem they’ll need to fix - perhaps there’s an open issue on their repository about this already, that you could look at?

So, some questions if this has failed:

  1. do you have a GitHub account already? If so, were you signed into it when you clicked the deploy to Netlify button? This is a good idea and worth trying again if you weren’t signed in when it initially failed.
  2. If not, were you able to create a new GitHub account as part of the Deploy to Netlify prompts? If not, it is probably worth signing up and signing in before clicking the button as a first-pass debugging effort.

GitHub enforces some rate-limiting on their side too, so sometimes we’ve seen that a customer waiting 10 minutes and trying again worked with no other changes (aside from not using your GitHub API token in other workflows for that 10 minutes :)). Because of this experience, we recommend you give it another try after a short wait, hopefully while signed into your GitHub account, and let us know if that works any better. If not, please let us know!