Vercel Hosting: When to Use It and Alternatives to Compare

B2C teams commonly choose Next.js as their frontend framework owing to their need of building a fast loading, SEO compliant and server-side rendering website. As a result, when it comes to serving these sites, hosting from Vercel - the organization behind Next.js framework is often evaluated.

This post deciphers what Vercel hosting offers and the various considerations to help you answer the question:

Should you host your website frontend on Vercel or elsewhere. And, in case if you decide to host it elsewhere, what are some solid alternatives.

If you just want the recommendations, here’s the quick version:

1. Three core Vercel capabilities to know first

The Vercel hosting platform comes with a ton of features. This section does not aim to cover all the features. Instead, it aims to explain primary Vercel platform capabilities that can affect your hosting platform decision making.

1.1. Understanding Vercel’s serverless model

The major Vercel hosting components are all serverless. There are no servers for you to manage. So, when someone visits your Vercel hosted website, Vercel automatically runs your code to handle the requests. It does this by using short-lived serverless functions that start only when needed and stop when the work is done.

This means:

• You do not provision or manage any servers.
• Based on the traffic volume, Vercel automatically scales up/down the infrastructure to handle the load.
• You are billed for usage (duration for which your code ran, amount of data transferred) instead of capacity of the provisioned servers.
• Security components like firewall are built into the platform.
• Serverless computing limitations like cold start delays and lack of support for long running jobs come into play.

1.2. How deployments work on Vercel

Vercel offers automatic deployment. All you do is connect your git repository to your Vercel account. And then, whenever you push your code to the right branch, Vercel:

• Automatically pulls the latest code, builds and serves the build output on Vercel’s infrastructure.
• Lets you create environments (dev, qa, staging, etc) with their own settings and environment files.
• Offers production readiness features like deployment preview, CI/CD workflows and promotion to production once tests pass.
• Handles deployment without downtime or traffic disruptions.

1.3. Vercel’s deep Next.js integration

Vercel is the company behind the Next.js framework. As a result, the Vercel platform automatically integrates with certain Next.js features. This can simplify setup for Next.js based frontends. For example:

• Image Optimization: Using the <Image /> component (from next/image library) in your code automatically routes image requests through Vercel’s image optimization functions and caches them on the Vercel CDN.
• Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR): When Next.js ISR pages are updated, Vercel automatically invalidates CDN cache and regenerates the content in background.
• Streaming responses: Server-rendered pages in Next.js app/ directory support streaming responses if the underlying server has streaming capability. Vercel serverless functions support streaming out of the box.

Vercel also integrates well with other frontend frameworks, though not as deep as with Next.js.

2. Factors to consider

By choosing Vercel hosting, you also choose its core ingredients, along with the benefits and drawbacks they bring:

2.1. Hosting Cost

A major implication of Vercel being a serverless platform is on how it is billed. Instead of being billed for number of servers provisioned and their capacity, Vercel bills based on the actual usage (duration for which your code ran, amount of data transferred).

Usage based billing is great for sites with super-low traffic volumes. But, it carries a few noteworthy considerations:

Hard to estimate

Vercel pricing page is super-detailed. But the number of aspects metered also reflects how challenging it is to estimate next month’s bill. For example, below are some aspects metered to calculate the billing:

• Number of incoming requests that the firewall will rate limit.
• Amount of data that will move between serverless functions and Vercel CDN.
• Number of times the ISR pages will be revalidated.

Each of these factors can fluctuate with code updates, configuration changes, or unexpected traffic (including bots), making it nearly impossible to reliably predict costs.

Potential billing shocks

Stories of unexpected billing from Vercel hosting are not uncommon. The core issue isn’t Vercel itself, but the usage-based billing model. With usage-based pricing, your costs depend directly on traffic patterns. In effect, the internet decides your bill.

Usage-based billing is susceptible to abuse. A surge of automated requests can drive up hosting costs, a scenario known as Denial of Wallet (DoW).

Vercel has built safeguards against infrastructure abuse, but the risk remains. As long as billing is tied to usage, you are always exposed to potential DoW attacks.

Hosting cost grows non-linear to traffic growth

Vercel’s pro plan limits are generous. But once we cross those limits, the hosting costs drive up fast.

Costs also rise fast because every user visit triggers multiple services. For instance, a single product page visit on an eCommerce site may use:

• Serverless compute - server-side html generation
• Image optimization compute - optimize images on the fly
• Bandwidth usage - load JS, CSS, images
• Edge requests - geo-specific price fetching

As traffic grows, the increased usage of each service creates a multiplier effect in hosting costs.

2.2 Cold start delays

Vercel’s serverless infrastructure does not require permanently running servers. Instead, it starts a short-lived environment to execute our code on receiving a request and stops this when done. This additional time needed to start the short-lived environment adds up to the time taken to serve the request.

Both Vercel and AWS (Vercel serverless functions use AWS lambdas) have introduced features to minimize cold start delays. But, these approaches minimize the delay and not eliminate it. As a result, when hosting on Vercel, it is important to keep an eye on the server-response speed.

Because of how serverless functions work, cold start delays have a higher impact on certain kind of requests:

2.3. Scalability during traffic spikes

An inherent benefit of a serverless platform like Vercel is that it can scale fast without requiring any additional setup. So, sites with recurring traffic spikes can benefit from Vercel’s serverless capability.

• Its usage-based billing can be cost-effective since you need not over provision servers for peak traffic.
• You need not spend time and effort to build a setup that can sustain traffic spikes.

2.4. Limits on long running tasks

Serverless platforms like Vercel are generally suited to serve requests that need a few milliseconds to process. So, if your workload includes tasks that take a few seconds / minutes to run:

• Your long running requests (taking 30+ seconds) can quickly rake up the bills since these are billed based on the time taken to complete.
• Vercel has a hard limit of 15 minutes for long running jobs. Any job (including Vercel cron tasks) that take longer are aborted.

Setups with long running background jobs may separate such jobs for a more suitable handling and hosting. Setups with long-running on-the-fly requests may prefer non-serverless deployment options.

2.5. Vercel platform limits

Like any managed platform, Vercel comes with deployment and usage specific limits. It’s important to review these upfront to avoid later surprises. Common ones include:

Note: The above list is not exhaustive.

While these limits may not affect every project, they can become a blocker for some setups. If you expect to exceed these, you may want to evaluate alternative platforms.

2.6. Aligning frontend and backend hosting

Vercel focusses on frontend hosting. Projects that also need a backend or database must host them elsewhere, which can influence the choice of your frontend platform.

Vercel has readymade integrations with managed backend providers. So, if your backend is already hosted on cloud services, Vercel can be a natural fit. But if you maintain your own backend servers, keeping frontend and backend together on the same infrastructure may be simpler.

2.7. Factoring in DevOps expertise

One of Vercel’s key strengths is its automatic build and deployment infrastructure. The platform also offers analytics, speed tracking and observability. Together, these capabilities often cover core DevOps needs that would otherwise require dedicated resources.

However, if you already have an in-house expertise to manage servers, configure deployments and handle monitoring / logging, self-hosting may offer more control and flexibility.

2.8 Framework integrations and GTM trade-offs

A key Vercel differentiator is its deep integration with frontend frameworks. For Next.js in particular, Vercel offers the tightest integration of any hosting platform. It also integrates well with other frontend frameworks with a varying level of support. These integrations reduce the setup needed for features like ISR, image optimization, and middleware enabling a faster launch while retaining advanced hosting capabilities.

However, these benefits come from relying on framework-specific platform features. This coupling can create a hosting lock-in, making it harder to move away from Vercel in the future.

3. Vercel Alternatives

If you are looking for a Vercel alternative, it is important to identify what key Vercel ingredient you seek to replace. This helps you narrow down your choices and choose an alternative most aligned with your priorities.

The alternatives below are grouped into categories based on how they differ from Vercel.

3.1 Frontend-only serverless platforms

If Vercel pricing or any of its limitations are a concern, you may look for frontend-only serverless alternatives. These are closest to Vercel in terms of their features and offerings than those in other categories.

Overall, Cloudflare and Netlify are better suited for static sites while Vercel is a better fit for frontends that need server-side rendering or ISR. Many teams also combine Cloudflare CDN with Vercel for a hybrid approach.

3.2. Full-stack serverless ecosystems

If some part of your tech stack is already setup on a cloud provider, using their serverless offering to host your frontend can simplify management, billing and integration. It also saves on data transfer charges since most intra-cloud transfers are free or discounted.

AWS Amplify or Google Firebase make sense if your stack is already tied to AWS or Google cloud. Their breadth of services and options ensures you aren’t out of option at any time but it also makes DX complex.

3.3. Always-on server providers with modern DX

If you prefer predictable pricing and want to avoid serverless limitations (cold start delays, max limits on long running tasks), but still want Vercel-like developer integration (Git integration, automatic builds, previews), you may evaluate the following platforms.

These platforms trade serverless constraints for better predictability - clearer pricing, no cold starts, no function limits. But they lack Vercel’s deep frontend framework integration, built-in CDN-edge features and instant infinite scalability.

3.4. Self-managed traditional server providers

If you can setup your own build and deployment pipeline, it allows you to host your frontend on one of the many self-managed server platforms (AWS EC2, Google Compute Engine, Azure VM, DigitalOcean Droplet, Hetzner, etc.). This is usually the most cost-effective option with a minimal risk of platform lock-in. But it requires an additional effort to setup build & deploy pipeline and to manage the server(s).

Using a self-hosted PaaS framework can simplify deployments on such servers:

Self-managed setups with Coolify, Dokku and many other self-hosted options offer maximum control at lowest costs. However, these require more hands-on server management than managed platforms.

4. Conclusion

Choosing the right hosting platform is about matching each option’s strengths (cost, scalability, DX, framework integration, etc.) with your needs.

Vercel’s serverless foundation, CI/CD automation and deep Next.js integration make it a viable choice for teams looking for faster GTM with modern platform offerings. At the same time, its usage-based pricing, cold starts and lock-in risks may not fit well in every scenario.

The table below summarizes which platform fit different needs:

Overall, Vercel hosting offers fast go-to-market and strong Next.js integration, but runaway costs and lock-in risks mean alternatives may fit better. For some projects, predictable pricing or greater DevOps control may matter more than fast launches and framework features. The best fit depends on your priorities, skills available and how your setup and traffic evolve.

Got a web-dev pain point?

Freelance dev & architect for B2C orgs.

What I do:

• Frontend - performance, scaling, migrations with React / Next.js
• Backend - Node.js, Koa, Knex
• Strapi, Directus CMS - customize, migrate, upgrade
• Guide tech choices - Cloud services, Frameworks, Databases
• Architectural aspects - scaling, observability

Tech I use:

Node.js, React, Next.js, Postgres, MySQL, AWS, GCP, Serverless (Lambda, CF Workers), ElasticSearch, Redis, RabbitMQ, Kibana

My Clients Include:

Let's solve your tech challenges →

Or email: punit@tezify.com

Punit Sethi

Got a web-dev pain point?

I'm a freelance dev & architect for B2C sites.

What I do:

• Frontend - performance, scaling, migrations with React / Next.js
• Backend - Node.js, Koa, Knex
• CMS - customize, migrate, upgrade Strapi, Directus CMS
• Guide tech choices - Cloud services, Frameworks, Databases
• Architectural aspects - scaling, building observability

Tech I use:

Node.js, React, Next.js, Postgres, MySQL, AWS, GCP, Serverless (Lambda, CF Workers), ElasticSearch, Redis, RabbitMQ, Kibana

My Clients include:

Let's solve your technical challenges →

Or email : punit@tezify.com