In July of 2022, I got an official offer from the tech startup Vercel, my first official position after graduating from Bloomtech. The more and more I learn about the company and its product offerings, the bigger fan I become of it.
So what is Vercel?
Vercel is a front-end platform that allows developers to collaborate, create, and ship software with speed and reliability. The closest competitor with have in the space is Netlify.
Vercel specializes in front-end application creation & collaboration only. So I wouldn’t qualify AWS as a direct competitor.
Does that mean you can’t build full-stack applications with Vercel? Hard no.
They have integrations for backend architecture, like with MongoDB, but their platform is primarily for the front end – think the part of Netflix you interact with in order to select a movie, and not where their movies are stored (database).
Vercel frees developers from time-consuming processes engineers and their teams can more time focusing on creating, and not debugging.
Top Tier Customers
Vercel can boast hosting and providing products to top-tier clients like:
- The Washington Post
- Underarmor
- Netflix
- Loom
- Zapier
Here’s their official customer page with customer stories.
Templates
On the Vercel platform, you can jumpstart your application process in less than 5 minutes with template installations of the most powerful and common tech stacks on the market like:
Next.js
The founder of Vercel, Guillermo Rauch, also created the React framework Next.js. Next.js is a powerful javascript/React framework that provides hybrid static & server-side rendering, TypeScript support, smart bundling, and route pre-fetching.
It’s exploding. Last month that framework officially passed React in the number of downloads, and the trend line suggests that the delta will only increase.
Next.js seamlessly integrates with the Vercel platform for an incredibly easy installation process. Next.js also contains a built-in image and link components for enhanced performance.
Next.js provides automatic preview deployments for every single branch, so you can view and edit your applications before you ship them.
There are also collaborative reviews on UI. Where you can comment directly on components, and layouts, copy, and seamlessly integrate with GitHub and Slack. It’s powerful to say the least.
Integrations
Vercel seamlessly integrates with some of the world’s most popular tools such as:
No need for stitching together integrations will other powerful platforms by hand, Vercel has you covered.
Enterprise Features
Trusted by some of the world’s largest companies, Vercel ENT provides world-class security features. Need more bandwidth, features, and security that aren’t provided by our Pro product?
We got you covered.
The main Enterprise offerings are:
1 – SAML/SSO
Securely log in with platforms like Okta, Auth0, and more
2 – SOC2 Audit Reports
They are in line with security standards and provide an industry-standard report
3 – DDoS Mitigation
The platform automatically detects and blocks denial-of-service attacks
4 – Enterprise Edge Network
Get an extra layer of protection with a secure and isolated environment.
Versatility
Another beautiful thing about this platform and its products is it can provide frontend infrastructure to an array of applications.
Spinning up a side project that isn’t commercially viable yet? Just go use our Hobby product.
Are you a startup with only 3 developers and don’t have the budget for our Enterprise product yet but have a legit commercial application? Pro is the way to go.
Skin in the Game
I’m personally using it for my side project, Unbundled, a marketplace for Higher Education alternatives. In order to become well-versed with the product, and a bigger product advocate, I’m building on Vercel.
I’m starting off with using the Next.js framework, Sanity.io as my CMS, and MongoDB for the backend. Where this project goes next I’m not sure, but I’m more than excited to build on Vercel.
