Do you do native app packaging?
Short answer: no.
Slightly longer answer: we trust in the Web platform to continue doing what it does best, ie overcome walled gardens and enable interoperability, openness and choice for everyone. We're convinced that the Web platform is already a great alternative for many types of software, and we want to help developers leverage all of its benefits, beyond just maintaining a single codebase and wrapping the result in a "native" binary.
The great thing about HTML5 app deployment (and DVCSs like Git) is that you can simultaneously push your code to both a native packaging service and a pure web app platform like 5apps Deploy. So you get exposure in today's closed app stores, and can still participate in the future of app distribution, with no extra work required.
Why don't you deploy directly from GitHub?
Mainly so you can deploy from anywhere you like with a simple push. This lets you integrate the deployment process with your continuous integration or build tool of choice. That said, deployment hooks for GitHub and Bitbucket are on our roadmap for later this year.
How is Deploy different to other static site hosts like GitHub Pages?
Deploy is a specialized hosting platform, heavily optimized for client-side web app delivery. Aside from providing up-to-date build tasks for the configuration and optimization of your app itself, we also fine-tune our server settings to provide the best experience to your users and minimize potential problems. This includes correct HTTP headers for content types and charsets, sane caching defaults, and a whole lot more.
Here's a basic example: you want to cache static assets for a short
period of time, but always return empty 304s if the content hasn't
changed (based on the request's If-None-Match header). At
the same time, you never want to cache an appcache manifest, but you do
want to deliver it with the text/cache-manifest
Content-Type header.
We take care of the nitty-gritty pitfalls of app delivery, so you don't have to.
Where are your servers located?
We're currently using the Exoscale Cloud as the basis for our infrastructure. Their data centers are located in Switzerland, certified ISO/IEC 27001:2013, and connected directly to different Tier 1 and Tier 2 transit providers for fast, reliable connections from the center of Europe. Swiss data protection laws apply.