Stick with Netlify or switch to Vercel?
I'm in the process of migrating a site from React Static to Next.js. It uses all the Next features like SSR and API routes.
It's currently hosted in Netlify which has been great and which now supports all Next features as far as I know (with a plugin). But I think Vercel is the obvious choice for Next apps and would have deployed it there if I was starting from scratch.
Do you think it's worth moving over to Vercel, or would you stick with Netlify?
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It takes only a few minutes to try it out. You could put it there and test speed,etc and then make your decision.
Good idea, I might do that.
If you’re comparing the free plans of each, I think I read a comparison that said you can’t use the free plan of Vercel for commercial uses or something where you can on Netlify.
I know this is vague, but I’m winding down before bed and don’t have time to find the source. Wanted to share that potential blocker though.
Such a good point. I didn't realise that at until shortly after I created this post. I saw it in a comment on this comparison https://dev.to/maxniederman/netlify-vs-vercel-a-comparison-5643
It's the main thing stopping me from switching over now. My app is monetized but isn't making any money yet.
Netlify now supports fully Next.js with https://github.com/netlify/netlify-plugin-nextjs.
You'll be able to use SSR and API.
The free tier of Netlify supports commercial use, and you also have more built-in "add-ons".
This article: https://snipcart.com/blog/vercel-vs-netlify might be useful for a more in-depth comparison!
Out of curiosity, what's the argument for moving from React Static to Next / SSR ?
Just entered the React world and , for SEO you have helmet who a good job while for previews on social media etc.. you can use a prerendering solution or build a sharer api route that detects the user agent and serves the good meta tags. There's some work sure, but wouldnt that be less than moving to Next? Pardon my ignorance as I'm new to this paradigm :)
Just to clarify, React Static is a static site generator. The SEO issues you're referring to are more for react SPA sites. Moving from React Static to Next.js was fairly simple.
React Static was a great alternative to Gatsby at the time I started using it. But it doesn't have the backing of a big company like Next and Gatsby do, so it can't keep up with all the features coming out of the other two. The maintainer gave up on it a while ago because of this I believe, and handed control over to someone else.
The thing I love most about Next.js is being able to choose between static generation and SSR on a per page basis. So you can have your landing page and blog statically generated and your app server side rendered all with the one tool. Plus API routes which are simpler than Netlify functions. It's just an awesome tool which is leading the space in my opinion.
I'm a nuxt.js user, but I figure that the concept is the same (where next.js offers SSR capabilities over the static site on react) . As someone who has deployed on both platforms, vercel is the obvious option as it supports SSR. I also noticed with netlify, at times some pages can be missing, where it throws that page not found on certain routes. I also haven't deployed on netlify for a while but last I checked it doesn't support server side rendering. This was a major headache before I realised and switched over to vercel.
Netlify does actually have full support for Next.js now, including SSR and API routes. You just need to install a build plugin to use it https://github.com/netlify/netlify-plugin-nextjs
which I think is an extra step one can avoid by using vercel..but if it integrates well and you like it, then it's alright. I'm not in any way against netlify. I actually think it's great.
I recently did the same thing. Switched my react app to NextJS as I was tired of the crappy previews on Social media and bad SEO scores on Lighthouse. I moved to Vercel during the transition process.
It seems like you may not be able to use all the NextJS features on Netlify( i read an article about it but cant recall where)
SEO is way better, speed is about the same, lighthouse scores varies on pages but overall I am happy with the change.
However long you think the transition will take, double your estimate. There are things that you need to change to make your app work with NextJS. Routing for example. Also if you decide to move some pages to full SSR or or build them at buildtime you may end up running code that was meant to run in the browser in the Node env instead which may break some things.(I am looking at you Firebase sdk)
Then add some time to test your app thoroughly even more so if your test coverage is not the best.
The migration to NextJS is done, the last piece remaining is just the deployment. I did get tripped up a bit by moving the app route to a SSR page like you mentioned. But overall, going from React Static to Next was a fairly painless experience. I do imagine going from a react app with client routing to Next would be a bit more challenging.
Once you are working in Next.js, then I think the vertical integration with Vercel is completely worth it.
Agreed, I'll be using Next for everything going forward, and it makes sense to use the platform it was built for. Whenever Next adds a new feature, you know it's going to work in Vercel straight up.
I prefer Vercel much more over Netlify. It is faster, easy to setup and easy to work with. Especially if your projects are React, serverless, or NextJS based.
I just found out that Vercel's free tier doesn't allow commercial projects, so that's probably the main thing that will stop me jumping ship for now. My app is monetized, but isn't making any sales yet.
Ah ok, yep that would make sense.
In my region (eastern Europe) Vercel was quite a bit faster than Netlify.
Don't know if this applies for other regions though.
Interesting. I'm in Australia, but most of my traffic comes from Europe and the US. I might run the app in both platforms and see how they compare.