I've done such setups as well. E.g. my "personal" website cimnine.ch is set up like that.

Netlify was just a lot quicker to get started. It automatically compresses images, js, etc., if you tell it to. It automatically deploys branches to a special subdomain, so you can share previews of branches with other people. Also, though I haven't used that yet, it has this "Functions" thing that would allow you to add dynamic behaviour to your static website.