Vercel

Vercel hosts web apps, and Next.js above all, since the same company builds the framework. You connect a repository, every push builds, every branch gets its own URL, and the main branch is the live site. There is no server to think about.

How I use it

Every Next.js site I run, including this one, deploys here. The workflow is the whole product: I push a branch, a minute later there is a URL I can open on my phone and send to someone for a look, and nothing goes live until the branch merges. For a site that gets rebuilt often, that preview step has saved more embarrassment than any test suite. Environment variables live per environment, and one command pulls them to a local file, so a fresh checkout runs without a scavenger hunt.

What surprised me is how little I touch the dashboard. The CLI and the GitHub integration do the daily work; the dashboard is for reading logs when something is wrong. What annoys me is the bill. The seat price is clear, but functions, bandwidth and image optimisation are metered on top, and a page that suddenly gets traffic can turn a $20 month into a bigger one before you notice. I set spend alerts after the first time. The lock-in is also real: a site built around their image and function conventions does not move to a plain server without an afternoon of work.

The Hobby plan is free but not for commercial use, so anything that earns money starts on Pro.

Who it is for

If you build with Next.js and want the least possible operations, this is the default choice and a good one. If your site is static and you care about cost, a static host or a CDN bucket is cheaper and nearly as convenient. Skip it if you expect high traffic on a thin margin; price the usage first, then decide.