And Gitlab Pages supports free CI for building your static HTML assets however you like, upon code push, without cluttering your repo with compiled assets. Run code through Metalsmith? No problem. Run through Jekyll? Can do. Anything that's Dockerized.

This is perhaps my favorite distinction between Github and Gitlab pages.

Glad to hear that! Examples for many static sites generators can be found on https://gitlab.com/groups/pages

There are also several in-progress feature requests related to Let's Encrypt automation, which should make HTTPS much easier. (Right now it's possible to use Let's Encrypt, but you have to manually renew the cert every 90 days.)