What is the difference between smart and incremental publishing?

Smart publishing focuses on efficiently updating content by only publishing items that have been changed since the last publish action. This means that it minimizes the amount of data sent to the production environment, making it a lightweight and efficient process. On the other hand, incremental publishing encompasses all unpublished items, meaning that whenever an incremental publish is executed, it will publish all content that has not been published yet, regardless of whether those items have been altered since the last publish.

The primary distinction lies in the scope of what each method targets: smart publishing is selective, whereas incremental publishing casts a wider net. This can impact overall efficiency, network load, and the speed at which content updates are reflected on the live site.