Should you use Vercel?

Vercel's recent pricing changes have caused quite a stir among developers. While some will be charged more, others will actually see a reduction in their bills.

The confusion was sparked by an email stating that customer feedback regarding the high prices was heard, yet it announced that customers would need to pay more in the following months.

In light of this, I created a simple tool to help you decide if Vercel is the right choice for you. Check it out here: https://www.nico.fyi/should-you-use-vercel.

After releasing the tool, Lee Robinson from Vercel kindly reminded me that Vercel supports 38 web frameworks, not just Next.js and Remix. I've updated the tool to include a list of supported frameworks.

Furthermore, the community has informed me about some tools for self-hosting your app. Here are some recommendations:

• sst.dev: Build modern full-stack applications on AWS.
• coolify.io: Self-hosting with superpowers.
• Scale to Zero AWS: AWS serverless kit with best practices.
• kamal: Deploy web apps anywhere. From bare metal to cloud VMs.

I have been eager to try coolify.io for a while because it appears to be an excellent tool for self-hosting your app. So, yesterday I spun up a small server on Hetzner and installed coolify.io on it. I then deployed this blog to it, and it worked like a charm. It still took me around an hour to set everything up, but that's because I wasn't familiar with coolify.io yet. I'm sure it'll be much faster for you if you're already familiar with it. What I appreciate about coolify.io is that it offers many features I like from Vercel, such as automatic deployments, rollbacks, a user-friendly dashboard, and preview deployments.

As for the other AWS-related tools, I haven't tried them yet, mainly because I prefer to avoid AWS to not get lost in its complexity. From firsthand experience with AWS, I find it overly complicated. In one client project, they insisted on using AWS despite its complexity, claiming they had an expert capable of handling it. Unfortunately, they didn't. We encountered a bug that remained unfixed for days, a situation that never occurred when I hosted the app on Vercel. 🤷‍♂️

I believe SST and Scale to Zero AWS will reduce setup time. However, if there's a problem with the deployment unrelated to the app, you're on your own to figure it out. If you have the time and resources for that, great! But many people would likely prefer to ship products faster and with less hassle. That's where Vercel shines.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use Vercel or AWS. It really depends. That's why I made this tool, to help you make the right choice for yourself.

Let me know in Twitter if you know any other tools that you'd recommend. I'll add them to the list.

By the way, I'm making a book about Pull Requests Best Practices. Check it out!