Exploring Hosting Alternatives for Next.js Beyond Vercel

Today we are going to be talking about hosting Next.js applications. We want to look beyond Vercel and see what hosting alternatives are out there for hosting your front-end application.

Next.js has gained significant popularity as a front-end framework, and rightly so. Next.js has a solid developer experience, lots of features, and is flexible enough to work for many use cases. Next.js has become very popular with Sitecore headless services and XM Cloud, so now is a great time to look at what hosting alternatives are out there. Let's jump in.

Why Look Beyond Vercel?

With Next.js comes Vercel. Vercel are the maintainers of Next.js and the go-to platform for hosting your Next.js application. You'd think since Vercel built Next.js and continues to add features, wouldn't Vercel be the best hosting solution? Well, yes, Vercel is a great choice, but it's prudent to understand that there are other options out there that go beyond Vercel.

So in this article, we're going to explore alternative hosting solutions for your Next.js app. We're going to take a high-level look at the different hosting solutions. Your situation is probably unique, so find what works best for you, compare the different options, and look at what's going to fit best for your needs. You're building awesome applications and you want to show them to the world, so learn what hosting makes sense for you.

Key Considerations for Hosting

When choosing your hosting, consider things like advanced support for Next.js features such as: - Incremental Static Generation (ISR) - Middleware - Serverless functions

Also, consider the developer experience, costs, and scalability. These are all things that are important when looking at hosting. If you're comparing for an enterprise setting, make sure you look into things like security, compliance, single sign-on integration, and dedicated customer support. Weigh what's important to you.

The two standout alternative hosting platforms are going to be Netlify and Amazon Web Services' Amplify service. The out-of-the-box support for Next.js features, built-in content delivery network, and other nice-to-haves of Netlify and AWS Amplify make them great choices. We're also going to take a look at some other choices like Microsoft static web apps and even self-hosting. But right now, my big recommendations are Netlify and AWS Amplify. Let's find out why.

A Closer Look at Netlify

First up is Netlify. Netlify is a great choice as an alternative to Vercel. It has the closest feature parity to Vercel as well as some of its own great features that are different from Vercel, but it also has that same really nice developer experience. It's really simple to get started with Netlify and start hosting your web applications.

Netlify is one of the most popular web hosting platforms, especially for Jamstack applications. Like Vercel, Netlify can host an array of front-end frameworks from Next.js, React, Angular, Nuxt, Vue, and many more. So it's a one-stop shop for all of your front-end hosting needs, not just Next.js, but it really does focus in and make sure that it supports all of Next.js's great features.

Netlify has its own content delivery network, support for Next.js serverless functions, incremental static regeneration (ISR), middleware, image optimization, and more. The Netlify team works hard to provide a fully-featured Next.js experience inside of Netlify. In my opinion, Netlify is the closest and most worthy competitor to Vercel.

Diving into AWS Amplify

The second alternative hosting solution that I would recommend is going to be AWS Amplify. AWS Amplify is a service offered by Amazon in their AWS Cloud platform. So if you're already using AWS for your cloud, using Amplify is going to be an easy choice.

AWS Amplify provides a complete solution for hosting a globally distributed Next.js application. It supports all the biggest Next.js features including: - SSR - API routes - Middleware - ISR - Image optimization

This means less infrastructure setup and maintenance for you. The developer experience is not going to be as seamless as Vercel and Netlify, but I see improvements being made often. One thing with AWS Amplify is that it's not going to be updated to those new and greatest Next.js features as quickly as, say, Vercel or Netlify. I do see Amazon looking to support and trying to support Next.js features, but maybe just not always day one when they come out.

Other Noteworthy Alternatives

Those are my two primary recommendations: Netlify and AWS Amplify. Those are going to be the top two solutions that I think are going to work best for developer experience, scalability, and less maintenance when working with your Next.js application or really any front end that you're wanting to deploy out to the world.

There are a lot of other solutions out there, and I can't talk about all of them, but I do want to mention a couple more just to make sure that you're aware of them and maybe why I'm not recommending them as highly.

Microsoft Azure Static Web Apps: A Future Contender?

Next, we're going to take a look at Microsoft Azure's Static Web Apps. I know many people are in the Microsoft cloud ecosystem, so I want to mention the Microsoft solution. As you may have gathered, Azure Static Web Apps is not one of my top recommended solutions, and that's because it currently does not support many of Next.js's more advanced features. That's the reason you're choosing Next.js—because you want that SSR, you want the incremental static regeneration, you want API routes to be available to you, and as of right now, those are not available in Azure Static Web Apps.

Now, I do see there is a public preview available that shows Microsoft is really putting in the work to support Next.js. It's in public preview, though, so it's not quite ready for enterprise solutions. I wouldn't even want to put my production-ready app on there quite yet, and there are some limitations that they have in there that I just don't think are ready for prime time with Next.js. But I do see Microsoft putting in the effort to explore and support Next.js's bigger features in the future, so I'm hopeful for what we can see down the road.

The Self-Hosting Route: Maximum Control, Maximum Responsibility

The last hosting option that I want to cover is dedicated Node.js hosting or self-hosting with Next.js. Next.js can run on anything that supports Node.js; you just may not get all of the features available. But you can run a base static Next.js application with just Node.js. This is the option if you need complete control for your Next.js application and you want full responsibility for the maintenance.

I stay very far away from this because I don't want to maintain my own CDN, I don't want to deal with all the infrastructure, and I don't want to set everything up. Some people might call that a learning experience, but to me, that is a torturous experience that I don't need to do because Netlify, AWS Amplify, or Vercel all offer solutions that are much quicker, much easier, but they also scale well and can work for enterprise solutions.

If you want to self-host—and I'm not recommending it—but if this is a direction you want to take, the platforms that you may find yourself using if you're in this category would be: - AWS EC2 instances - Azure's Web Apps - Digital Ocean - Heroku - Or heck, it could even be your own laptop.

Would I recommend this? No. This gives you full control of your Next.js app, but almost too much control. Now you have a lot of maintenance, a lot of upkeep, and it's just going to be very difficult, especially when there are these solutions out there that can globally distribute your application, have a much nicer developer experience, and scale well. Don't make things harder on yourself than they need to be. So consider those top several options of Vercel, Netlify, and AWS Amplify.

Final Thoughts

While Vercel is an exceptional choice when hosting Next.js applications, it's essential to recognize that alternative options are available to suit your specific needs and preferences. Determine what's most important to you and your situation, then choose what fits best.

Support for Next.js advanced features, developer experience, and not having to maintain a globally distributed infrastructure are what are most important to me. That's why I've recommended Netlify and AWS Amplify as alternatives to Vercel. Choose any of the three, and you'll have a fast, secure, and scalable Next.js app. Vercel, Netlify, and AWS Amplify can all support Sitecore headless services with Next.js at an enterprise scale.