Deployment Platform Chooser

Cloudflare, Vercel, Railway, or a plain VPS — pick one with your eyes open.

Six questions. We will tell you when a $5 Hetzner box beats the fancy edge platform.

1. What are you deploying?

Mostly static — marketing site, docs, blogSSR app — server-rendered pages, some API routesAPI-only — backend service, mobile or SPA clients elsewhereBackground workers — queues, cron, long-running jobsFull-stack — web app, API, database, and workers together

2. What database do you need on-platform?

None — stateless or external DB I manage separatelyServerless SQL — edge SQLite (D1-style) or similarManaged Postgres — relational, extensions, serious dataBring my own — I will run Postgres/MySQL on the same host or wire an external URL

3. Expected traffic in the next 6 months?

Hobby — mostly you and friends, pre-revenueSmall — hundreds of daily users, early customersGrowing — thousands of users, need headroom without re-architectingLarge or spiky — serious volume or unpredictable bursts

4. Realtime / WebSocket needs?

None — plain HTTP request/response is fineNice to have — live updates but not the core productCritical — chat, games, collaboration, persistent connections

5. How much platform ops do you want to own?

Zero — git push, no SSH, no patchingManaged containers — I deploy images, they keep them runningDIY — I want root on a Linux box and full control

6. How should the bill behave?

$0 when idle — scale-to-zero or generous free tierFlat and predictable — I want to know the monthly numberCheapest at my actual scale — I will tune and monitorCost is secondary — ship fast, optimize later