What it is
Vercel is a cloud for shipping websites and web apps: connect your repo and every change deploys automatically, with a preview URL to review before it goes live. It's the company behind Next.js and the AI SDK, so it's the natural home for that stack, though other frameworks work too. You also get serverless functions, a global CDN and tooling for AI apps.
How to use it
- Connect your repo from GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket and deploy on every push.
- Review every change on a preview URL and leave comments before it ships.
- Run server-side code with functions that scale automatically, no servers to manage.
- Add a database from the Marketplace (Supabase, for example) without leaving the dashboard.
- Track performance with Web Analytics and Speed Insights.
What it's good for
- A web agency shipping Next.js sites and sharing a preview link with each client before launch.
- A SaaS startup deploying its frontend and API several times a day with no infrastructure team.
- A team launching an AI app with the AI SDK and streaming responses from functions.
Pros
- A preview URL for every branch and pull request
- Makers of Next.js, with day-one support for new features
- São Paulo function region for faster responses in Latin America
- CLI and API to automate deployments
Cons
- The free Hobby plan is for personal, non-commercial use only
- Bandwidth and function costs can climb with traffic spikes
- A poor fit for always-on servers, WebSockets or very long-running jobs
