Quick question — Vercel or Netlify
Vercel recently (well not so recently but recently enough) updated its services and upgraded its edge network. I’m currently hosting static sites on Netlify but thinking of switching to Vercel.
I was wondering if anyone had experience making the switch or any other thoughts on Vercel vs Netlify.
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Try an indie hacker project? ;) I built tiiny.host
Do you provide access to tiiny.host via an API? Would pay for it if I can build many static websites via API.
That's a really cool idea! Thanks @gabrieljoel ! Could you please elaborate on that? What would you be sending as a request? A zip file / html / JSON etc. What type of sites would you create with it?
Would like to send in a zip or just plain CSS + HTML. Even better if I can provide the files and you build it using a static page generator such as Gridsome.
Haha, nice, usually I’d love to help a fellow indie hacker out but for now can’t beat price and performance.
First of all, based on your paid plan it looks like there’s ads if I don’t pay monthly? Also, what does live for 3 days mean? The big players give you unlimited ad free live sites for forever. And lastly, what’s your network backed by? I know that both Vercel and Netlify (and many others like Firebase and Render, just to give a few examples) have very extensive, comprehensive and fast edge networks ensuring that my site is served as quickly as possible.
Lastly, just a personal preference, the time that’s saved by being able to connect a GitHub or GitLab repo directly to the hosting provider including build commands and output directory + custom 404 pages and other routing rules is quite invaluable. Imagine updating a site 10 times a day, every day. Or having to implement a hot fix, from my phone. All of that is a simple update and push as opposed to having to update, build, zip, navigate to your site, login and then push.
Good luck going forward, I really hope you succeed and I’d love to hear any response you have to any of the points above!
Haha thanks for the detailed response!
Yep it's hard to compete like for like with Vercel and Netlify (both VC backed) sir experimenting with a different ways right now.
Yes that's correct, on the free plan it is ad supported plus your site is only live for 7 days max actually - I need to update this. It started off being a tool to upload disposable sites that auto delete after a certain date. For testing, demos etc. So the free plan isn't exactly like Netlify or Vercel.
We are currently situated on AWS so provide CloudFront CDN on the paid plans.
Regarding GitHub integration yep you're right, one of the most requested features so will be adding that soon.
Just curious, is there anything you think Netlify or Vercel don't do well enough? Anything really annoying you've found that they could have done better?
I’d for sure mention on your site that you’re backed by cloud front, that’s great to hear and already let’s me know that you have AWS servers so speed wouldn’t worry me.
Unfortunately, for my needs Netlify is perfect. They have GitHub integration, fast speeds for my site, if I wanted I could add server side analytics for relatively cheap. If I think of something I’ll let you know but as they stand now I’d be hard pressed to find a reason to switch off of them or for a killer feature to compete with them on.
Sorry I couldn’t be more help 😕.
No worries man, that insight is helpful in itself :) best of luck with your project!
I voted "
Don’t even waste your time with this, if what you’re using works for you, just stick with it."
Personally I like Vercel and use it for all my projects like https://storycreatorapp.com
StoryCreator, Your website looks amazing. Wondering if you are only hosting the front-page of your app on Vercel as a static page.
Nope using Next.js. The whole app is connected through Next.js.
Thanks for the quick Prompt @storycreator. Even the Video editor not jus the front-page.
Hey man 👋, just checked out your app. 1) looks awesome, haven’t used it or anything but just based on the screenshot it ties into something I’ve want to build for a while already, so cool.
2) ADD WATERMARKS TO YOUR FREE PLAN!!!
I don’t know how well your business is doing but I do know that it would be an immediate huge boost. Suddenly everyone would have massive motivation to upgrade to pro. Plus, anyone who didn’t would be giving you free advertising.
I agree.
To be honest I am struggling. So I took it off until I get some traction. When it's well-positioned I will add it back.
Maybe I haven't tried hard enough but I am having a hard time even giving it away for free.
So I am doing some deep soul searching and figuring out things.
Good luck!
You for sure gotta hustle, it’s very difficult building an audience and getting the word out.
I do believe that when you do start getting customers, having the watermark will expand your reach exponentially. Every user that you get will then have the potential to bring you more users when they see your watermark on someone’s video.
Even if your initial audience is hard to get/build, don’t miss out on the exponential growth that you’ll get when things start to click.
Again, good luck, looks like you have an awesome product. Maybe it’s time to start messaging creators directly and trying to get some to try it out.
Yeah to be honest it's my fault.
All my friends and advisors have been telling me to stop coding and focus on getting paid users.
Since April I should have at the very least been sending 300-1000 messages per week. I was nowhere close to that.
I gravitated towards my comfort zone and coded, then coded some more. I've put together a nice product that no one wants -- yet.
I am creating new habits and focused on sending at least 500-1000 messages this week and trying to get 5-10 customers.
Cheers, and thanks for the love. Sending it right back!
Man, checked out https://storycreatorapp.com and now reading your comments here I am committed to getting one of my clients to use it for social video ads. Looks awesome. Hope you grow and grow and grow!
Love it. I really appreciate the support and love.
@yehuda you were right. I added watermarks and got 5 new customers that week.
I am now working on a lifetime plan. Then I am working on locking features. Then driving traffic.
Thanks for your help :)
Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you guys out!
I sure will, but that's amazing!! I'm so freaking happy to hear it and congratulations on those customers, you 100% deserve them 😊.
You seriously made my week, I can't wait to continue following you as your product grows even more.
I've tried both and they're both great, however I much prefer Netlify at this point. Vercel's pricing was recently changed and not necessarily for the better, whereas Netlify actually recently lowered their pricing tiers. Also in terms of usability, I find Netlify a total breeze to work with (Vercel is also good, but not quite the same). In the end you can't really go wrong with either, but if I had to pick one after using both extensively, I would vote for Netlify.
Recently moved all my projects (mostly small non-production apps) to Vercel. Netlify had way worse latency (in my region at least). On the other hand, Vercel's UI is quite confusing, CLI has less features and in general the platform feels less mature (occasional bugs and quirks).
Shameless fellow indie hacker plug - I created https://tiiny.host to provide a super simple interface for hosting static sites. Would love your thoughts :)
Personally I often use Firebase for my backends so I just stick to firebase also for the hosting part.
Moovweb XDN is a great alternative to Netlify and Vercel. The XDN is JAMstack platform for eCommerce, making sites faster for users and simpler for frontend developers. Some of the benefits include:
I recommend taking a look at the docs, some great stuff in there: https://developer.moovweb.com/
I'm using Netlify for https://bullish.email and couldn't be happier.
I'm still a big fan off Netlify, they do an amazing job and keep adding on features.
They’re both good :) I switched from Vercel to Netlify because of their pricing, though Netlify recently lowered their prices. Haven’t noticed much difference overall.
Vercel's Now is amazing, and super fast. They do make it hard to find the repo though. It's almost as if they don't want people to use it.
What do you mean?
You already knew the answer — don't touch it if it works. I used both and in my experience Netlify has cleaner interface for such simple things as you described.
I won't vote, as I can't compare having never used Netlify in anger. What I can say is that I've been using Vercel for the last 2-3 static sites I've built without any issues. I started when it was still called Zeit.co.
Personally I find it easy to work with, and relatively painless. Again, I'm sure Netlify will be the same.
I use Netlify for everything :)