Does Vercel get expensive at scale?

Vercel's pricing is usage-based — bandwidth, function invocations and build minutes. For most SaaS and marketing applications, the Pro plan ($20/month) is sufficient. At high traffic (millions of monthly visitors or many serverless function calls), costs can grow significantly. At that point, self-hosting Next.js on a VPS or container cluster becomes more cost-effective. We evaluate hosting cost as part of every architecture decision.

How does Vercel compare to AWS?

Vercel is optimised for Next.js and front-end/full-stack JavaScript — it is significantly simpler to configure than AWS. AWS offers more control, more services and lower unit cost at scale, but requires DevOps expertise to configure correctly. For most product teams, Vercel is the correct starting point. As traffic and complexity grow, specific services may migrate to AWS while the Next.js frontend remains on Vercel.

Can I self-host Next.js instead of using Vercel?

Yes. Next.js can be self-hosted as a Node.js process or Docker container. All rendering modes (SSR, SSG, RSC) work in self-hosted deployments. ISR requires a cache layer configuration that Vercel handles automatically — self-hosting requires explicit setup. Preview deployments and some edge features (Edge Middleware at the CDN level) require additional tooling when self-hosting. For most projects, Vercel's simplicity is worth the cost at typical traffic levels.

What are preview deployments and why do they matter?

Vercel creates a unique live deployment URL for every Git branch or pull request. This means a designer can review UI changes in a real browser on a real device before the code merges to main. Stakeholders can approve features in a live environment. QA can test on the actual deployment configuration. Preview deployments reduce review cycles, catch visual regressions early and eliminate the "it looked fine in dev" class of production issues.

Infrastructure

Vercel

The deployment platform built for Next.js.

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Vercel is the cloud platform created by the makers of Next.js — optimised for front-end and full-stack JavaScript applications. It provides automatic CI/CD from Git, global edge network, serverless functions, image optimisation, preview deployments per pull request and Vercel Analytics. Our primary deployment target for all Next.js projects.

Why we chose it

Why Ascii-Core uses Vercel

1
Zero-config Next.js deployment — push to Git, deployment is live within minutes
2
Preview deployments per pull request — every branch gets a live URL for review before merging
3
Global edge network with 40+ regions — static assets and edge functions served from the nearest node
4
Incremental Static Regeneration and On-Demand ISR supported natively without configuration

Ideal use cases

When to use Vercel

All Next.js application deployments
Projects requiring preview deployments for design and stakeholder review
Globally distributed applications requiring low-latency static and edge delivery
Teams that want CI/CD without DevOps overhead

Trade-offs

Honest limitations

We believe in accurate trade-offs. These are the cases where a different tool may be the better choice.

Cost scales with bandwidth and function invocations — very high traffic applications should evaluate self-hosting
Cold starts on serverless functions for infrequently invoked routes
Not suitable for stateful long-running processes — use Railway, Render or EC2 for those

Services