Vercel hosting for Next.js websites: where it fits
Push code, get a preview link, approve it, and it’s live. That loop is why Vercel is popular for websites. Its limits show once a site starts doing app work in the background.
Reviewed by: Rahul Jaiswar, founder
Where we use it
We host websites on Vercel, including this site.
What we check
We check that the domain redirects behave as intended, and that preview builds are not reachable publicly. Previews carry work in progress, and a public one can be found or indexed alongside the live site.
We deploy and host the sites we build, and the hosting account stays in the client’s name. Region is a per-project choice rather than a default. Whether a project sits on a serverless platform or a managed server is settled at the start.
About Vercel
Vercel is a hosting platform for web frameworks, from the company that maintains Next.js. It builds each git push, gives branches their own preview URLs, serves static files from a global network and runs server code as functions.
Limits to plan for
Server code runs as functions with execution time limits. Queue workers, bots and websockets need a long-running process elsewhere; the Railway page compares the two platforms. Heavy bandwidth or function use should be checked against how your plan bills it before launch. And the Hobby plan is for personal, non-commercial use, so a business website belongs on a plan that permits commercial use.
What Vercel does well
Company sites, landing pages and content sites built with Next.js. Preview links for reviewing changes before release. Campaign spikes, since static pages are served from the edge network with no server to resize.
Launch checklist
- Function timeouts. An AI call, a big export or PDF generation can outlast a function. Move those tasks to a queue.
- Functions far from the database. A function in one region querying a database in another adds delay to each query. Set the function region near the database.
- DNS on Cloudflare. If the domain’s DNS sits on Cloudflare, the proxy setting matters; the Cloudflare page explains it.
Planning a Next.js website?
Tell us about the pages and what should happen after a visitor submits a form. Our websites service covers the build, and we deploy and host it in an account you own.