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Powering a Serverless Web: Vercel Joins AWS Marketplace

77 points by mariuz 4y ago

neom 4y ago
Super curious: What are the advantages of Vercel over something like Netlify or Cloudflare? I thought they're all about the same these days?
- tough 4y ago
  They are pretty different in the details tho, with vercel for example you have turbo/repo/pack to handle monorepo bundling/caching. Also Vercel's and Netlify's serverless function might be similar but ain't exactly 1:1 the same. I think vercel is more powerful, netlify seems more oriented to frontenders or so to me, dunno All of them are UX wrappers of AWS infra underneath anyways
  - bm-rf 4y ago
    Except for Cloudflare workers which is run on, predictably, Cloudflare
- hoofhearted 4y ago
  For building a Next.js app, it’s Vercel —> Netlify —> Cloudflare —> AWS Amplify My prediction is that somebody is going to merge with somebody. Or somebody is going to acquire another when the finance markets stabilize.
  - Squarex 4y ago
    For Sveltekit I've found cloudflare pages much faster than vercel but YMMV.
  - nailer 4y ago
    AWS should buy Architect Serverless. It’s the most AWS-specific and the easiest (infra is a few lines in package.json) and Amazon have shown it on stage at re:invent a few times as one of their preferred ways for customers to do serverless.
    - Terretta 4y ago
      Architect, for building database-backed web apps on AWS, simplifies provisioning with a high-level manifest file that turns cloud infra into a build artifact, making the development process faster and more flexible. Cool stuff: 1. Speedy local development with smart defaults. 2. Equal focus on local, staging, and production environments. 3. Seamless integration with AWS SAM and CloudFormation. 4. Secure least privilege access for resources. 5. Open source under Apache 2.0 and part of the OpenJS Foundation. 6. Backward compatibility and regular updates. https://arc.codes/docs/en/get-started/why-architect https://arc.codes/docs/en/get-started/why-architect
  - 5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV 4y ago
    More like Vercel -> any Node service -> remainder
Woeps 4y ago
I must be honest, I had to Google who Vercel are because that blog post didn't make it clear at all. They should have just started with name dropping nextjs
- tough 4y ago
  If you're -old- enough you would remember they started out as zeit (zero in rauchg's german)
  - samuba 4y ago
    Zeit means Time in german. Not sure about rauchg's german though...
    - tough 4y ago
      Thanks, my german is non existent heh
      - nailer 4y ago
        You might know zeitgeist - spirit of the times - which is literally time ghost in German. Or the newspaper Zeit which is literally The Times.
        ushakov 4y ago
        Fun fact: Vercel's design system is called "Geist" https://vercel.com/design https://vercel.com/design
    - jjtheblunt 4y ago
      english cognate : tide
  - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
    Next time they blame computers for confidently hallucinating answers
hoofhearted 4y ago
Does this mean that Vercel’s hosting features will be available to AWS Gov Cloud users now? I have a large client that is in dire need of Vercel’s features. However, if they can’t run their own enterprise version behind their private VPC, then it’s a hard pass for them :(
- cramforce 4y ago
  <Vercel CTO here> It does not mean this immediately. We're currently working with some clients on hybrid solution where a very limited feature set is available in a government context, but the full Vercel feature set is not yet available in AWS Gov Cloud. Definitely happy to have a conversation about it!
  - hoofhearted 4y ago
    Hey thanks for responding Malte! It’s awesome seeing everyone from Vercel active here on HN. I would love to chat. How can we connect?
    - cramforce 4y ago
      You can email my first name at our domain!
tough 4y ago
Damn, that's kinda a big deal ain't it? Vercel already used AWS infra under the hood, but lots of big corps would not host with them probably because AWS all the things. Now they can get vercel bundled into their AWS bill right?
- thundergolfer 4y ago
  Existing AWS credits are a big factor as well. We have customers who have 100k in AWS credits and if they can't spend them on our platform it's a blocker to adoption. But now AWS credit holders can spend them on Vercel via the marketplace.
  - CSDude 4y ago
    That's a misconception. You cannot spend most of the credits with marketplace. For instance, AWS Activate credits issued to startups.
    - thundergolfer 4y ago
      Oh, thanks for the correction. Which credits can be used in the marketplace?
      - rescbr 4y ago
        IIRC, credits from enterprise deals (EDP, MAP, etc) are eligible
1023bytes 4y ago
Starts at $250k
- johnnypangs 4y ago
  This is similar to Vercel’s enterprise offerings. We wanted to use Vercel with more than 10 people at a previous employer and opted not to due the price. https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-lwqascgzju3bo https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-lwqascgzju3bo
- jesuspiece 4y ago
  lol why on earth is it so expensive
  - andrenotgiant 4y ago
    It doesn't really start at $250k. It's just a dumb quirk of the AWS marketplace participation process. As a vendor, if you want to participate, you have to have a public listing page with a price. But many vendors don't actually want you to initiate the buying process that way. They want you to talk to them first, negotiate a deal/contract, and only then handle the payment through AWS marketplace (presumably with pre-committed spend you already have on AWS) via something called "Private OFfers" So lots of marketplace pages have an absurdly high public listing price to discourage people from using that route.
    - andrethegiant 4y ago
      nice username ;-)
- cramforce 4y ago
  <Vercel CTO> So, why this price is there is complicated within the way this marketplace works. In practice, you talk to sales and these figures are irrelevant. From the page: For custom pricing, EULA, or a private contract, please contact awsmarketplace@vercel.com for a private offer.
airocker 4y ago
We run our own micro service for next js in a kubernetes cluster. It works like a charm. We have not touched the deployment in a while. Hope it keeps getting supported.
sergiotapia 4y ago
Be careful what you deploy to Vercel, you can quite easily rack up a ridiculous bill even with a toy project you are using to learn. Look at the code that caused this huge bill - it's trivial. Be very careful! https://twitter.com/shoeboxdnb/status/1643639119824801793 https://twitter.com/shoeboxdnb/status/1643639119824801793
- zoover2020 4y ago
  Would also be fair to include the Vercel CEO's response to this: https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1644099739959590912 https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1644099739959590912 (I am not working for Vercel)
  - sergiotapia 4y ago
    Of course, very fair! I think this is the major win: https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1644116821438763009 https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1644116821438763009 I think the vast majority of us can deal with outages as opposed to dealing with a sudden $3000 bill.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jrm4 4y ago
How in the world did "serverless" become an acceptable phrase among people who know IT? I'm genuinely curious about this. I think I understand what they're trying to say with it but COME ON. Why not also call them "Electricity-free?" That's literally just as truthful. Which is to say, not at all.
- helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  > How in the world did "serverless" become an acceptable phrase among people who know IT? Isn't it a good phrase? It means you're not responsible for a "server/virtual server/container" 24/7 to provide your backend services - but are paying for usage when your functionality is executed.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    No? It's a terrible phrase. What you're saying is you're managing my servers for me cool! Servers as a service or something like that. But that's much different from a term that implies "no more servers?" It's just really strange. HR Block wouldn't advertise as "tax-less," Waste management wouldn't advertise as "garbage-truck-less." Why not brag on what you're doing? Servers improved? Ultra-servers? Easy-servers? I don't know.
    - helsinkiandrew 4y ago
      > What you're saying is you're managing my servers for me cool! Servers as a service or something like that But that’s what virtual machines or container hosting services are doing. This is a level of abstraction higher than that - there’s no link between you code and any server instance. Ultimately when your code runs, it runs on a piece of hardware - a server. But it’s up to the serverless provider to choose where. If during the day your function call is invoked a million times, it could be run on the one or a million servers anywhere in the world. I think serverless is a better term for that than ultra or easy servers, when you don’t have to think about provisioning the size or quantity of servers you require. A better real world analogy might be the kitchens that share a seating area in a mall. Although they might still be considered ‘restaurants’ the are also ‘restaurantless’ as the tables and seats are provided to them/their customers on an as needed basis. A kitchen can serve as many diners as they are able, table provisioning is handled by someone else.
tmikaeld 4y ago
Hm, I was hoping they'd go the opposite direction and run their own cloud on dedicated hardware, cut pricing and be competitive with both CF and Lambdas.

77 points by mariuz 4y ago

neom 4y ago

Super curious: What are the advantages of Vercel over something like Netlify or Cloudflare? I thought they're all about the same these days?

tough 4y ago
They are pretty different in the details tho, with vercel for example you have turbo/repo/pack to handle monorepo bundling/caching. Also Vercel's and Netlify's serverless function might be similar but ain't exactly 1:1 the same. I think vercel is more powerful, netlify seems more oriented to frontenders or so to me, dunno All of them are UX wrappers of AWS infra underneath anyways
- bm-rf 4y ago
  Except for Cloudflare workers which is run on, predictably, Cloudflare
hoofhearted 4y ago
For building a Next.js app, it’s Vercel —> Netlify —> Cloudflare —> AWS Amplify My prediction is that somebody is going to merge with somebody. Or somebody is going to acquire another when the finance markets stabilize.
- Squarex 4y ago
  For Sveltekit I've found cloudflare pages much faster than vercel but YMMV.
- nailer 4y ago
  AWS should buy Architect Serverless. It’s the most AWS-specific and the easiest (infra is a few lines in package.json) and Amazon have shown it on stage at re:invent a few times as one of their preferred ways for customers to do serverless.
  - Terretta 4y ago
    Architect, for building database-backed web apps on AWS, simplifies provisioning with a high-level manifest file that turns cloud infra into a build artifact, making the development process faster and more flexible. Cool stuff: 1. Speedy local development with smart defaults. 2. Equal focus on local, staging, and production environments. 3. Seamless integration with AWS SAM and CloudFormation. 4. Secure least privilege access for resources. 5. Open source under Apache 2.0 and part of the OpenJS Foundation. 6. Backward compatibility and regular updates. https://arc.codes/docs/en/get-started/why-architect https://arc.codes/docs/en/get-started/why-architect
- 5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV 4y ago
  More like Vercel -> any Node service -> remainder

Woeps 4y ago

I must be honest, I had to Google who Vercel are because that blog post didn't make it clear at all. They should have just started with name dropping nextjs

tough 4y ago
If you're -old- enough you would remember they started out as zeit (zero in rauchg's german)
- samuba 4y ago
  Zeit means Time in german. Not sure about rauchg's german though...
  - tough 4y ago
    Thanks, my german is non existent heh
    - nailer 4y ago
      You might know zeitgeist - spirit of the times - which is literally time ghost in German. Or the newspaper Zeit which is literally The Times.
      - ushakov 4y ago
        Fun fact: Vercel's design system is called "Geist" https://vercel.com/design https://vercel.com/design
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    english cognate : tide
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
  Next time they blame computers for confidently hallucinating answers

hoofhearted 4y ago

Does this mean that Vercel’s hosting features will be available to AWS Gov Cloud users now? I have a large client that is in dire need of Vercel’s features. However, if they can’t run their own enterprise version behind their private VPC, then it’s a hard pass for them :(

cramforce 4y ago
<Vercel CTO here> It does not mean this immediately. We're currently working with some clients on hybrid solution where a very limited feature set is available in a government context, but the full Vercel feature set is not yet available in AWS Gov Cloud. Definitely happy to have a conversation about it!
- hoofhearted 4y ago
  Hey thanks for responding Malte! It’s awesome seeing everyone from Vercel active here on HN. I would love to chat. How can we connect?
  - cramforce 4y ago
    You can email my first name at our domain!

tough 4y ago

Damn, that's kinda a big deal ain't it? Vercel already used AWS infra under the hood, but lots of big corps would not host with them probably because AWS all the things. Now they can get vercel bundled into their AWS bill right?

thundergolfer 4y ago
Existing AWS credits are a big factor as well. We have customers who have 100k in AWS credits and if they can't spend them on our platform it's a blocker to adoption. But now AWS credit holders can spend them on Vercel via the marketplace.
- CSDude 4y ago
  That's a misconception. You cannot spend most of the credits with marketplace. For instance, AWS Activate credits issued to startups.
  - thundergolfer 4y ago
    Oh, thanks for the correction. Which credits can be used in the marketplace?
    - rescbr 4y ago
      IIRC, credits from enterprise deals (EDP, MAP, etc) are eligible

1023bytes 4y ago

Starts at $250k

johnnypangs 4y ago
This is similar to Vercel’s enterprise offerings. We wanted to use Vercel with more than 10 people at a previous employer and opted not to due the price. https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-lwqascgzju3bo https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-lwqascgzju3bo
jesuspiece 4y ago
lol why on earth is it so expensive
- andrenotgiant 4y ago
  It doesn't really start at $250k. It's just a dumb quirk of the AWS marketplace participation process. As a vendor, if you want to participate, you have to have a public listing page with a price. But many vendors don't actually want you to initiate the buying process that way. They want you to talk to them first, negotiate a deal/contract, and only then handle the payment through AWS marketplace (presumably with pre-committed spend you already have on AWS) via something called "Private OFfers" So lots of marketplace pages have an absurdly high public listing price to discourage people from using that route.
  - andrethegiant 4y ago
    nice username ;-)
cramforce 4y ago
<Vercel CTO> So, why this price is there is complicated within the way this marketplace works. In practice, you talk to sales and these figures are irrelevant. From the page: For custom pricing, EULA, or a private contract, please contact awsmarketplace@vercel.com for a private offer.

airocker 4y ago

We run our own micro service for next js in a kubernetes cluster. It works like a charm. We have not touched the deployment in a while. Hope it keeps getting supported.

sergiotapia 4y ago

Be careful what you deploy to Vercel, you can quite easily rack up a ridiculous bill even with a toy project you are using to learn. Look at the code that caused this huge bill - it's trivial. Be very careful! https://twitter.com/shoeboxdnb/status/1643639119824801793 https://twitter.com/shoeboxdnb/status/1643639119824801793

zoover2020 4y ago
Would also be fair to include the Vercel CEO's response to this: https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1644099739959590912 https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1644099739959590912 (I am not working for Vercel)
- sergiotapia 4y ago
  Of course, very fair! I think this is the major win: https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1644116821438763009 https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1644116821438763009 I think the vast majority of us can deal with outages as opposed to dealing with a sudden $3000 bill.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jrm4 4y ago

How in the world did "serverless" become an acceptable phrase among people who know IT? I'm genuinely curious about this. I think I understand what they're trying to say with it but COME ON. Why not also call them "Electricity-free?" That's literally just as truthful. Which is to say, not at all.

helsinkiandrew 4y ago
> How in the world did "serverless" become an acceptable phrase among people who know IT? Isn't it a good phrase? It means you're not responsible for a "server/virtual server/container" 24/7 to provide your backend services - but are paying for usage when your functionality is executed.
- jrm4 4y ago
  No? It's a terrible phrase. What you're saying is you're managing my servers for me cool! Servers as a service or something like that. But that's much different from a term that implies "no more servers?" It's just really strange. HR Block wouldn't advertise as "tax-less," Waste management wouldn't advertise as "garbage-truck-less." Why not brag on what you're doing? Servers improved? Ultra-servers? Easy-servers? I don't know.
  - helsinkiandrew 4y ago
    > What you're saying is you're managing my servers for me cool! Servers as a service or something like that But that’s what virtual machines or container hosting services are doing. This is a level of abstraction higher than that - there’s no link between you code and any server instance. Ultimately when your code runs, it runs on a piece of hardware - a server. But it’s up to the serverless provider to choose where. If during the day your function call is invoked a million times, it could be run on the one or a million servers anywhere in the world. I think serverless is a better term for that than ultra or easy servers, when you don’t have to think about provisioning the size or quantity of servers you require. A better real world analogy might be the kitchens that share a seating area in a mall. Although they might still be considered ‘restaurants’ the are also ‘restaurantless’ as the tables and seats are provided to them/their customers on an as needed basis. A kitchen can serve as many diners as they are able, table provisioning is handled by someone else.

tmikaeld 4y ago

Hm, I was hoping they'd go the opposite direction and run their own cloud on dedicated hardware, cut pricing and be competitive with both CF and Lambdas.