Part 1 - Vercel to VPS

Vercel, it feels like magic.

You push to Git, and suddenly your site is live and globally available. No servers. No configs. No stress.

But at some point, you decided to move out of Vercel. Not because Vercel is bad or more pricey, but because production means more than “it works”.

But first, why move from a managed platform to a VPS?

Managed platforms like Vercel and Netlify manage all the behind infra setup, so developers can ship faster, but a VPS optimizes for control.

Here are a few things that might trigger the shift:

1. Cost:

Managed platforms are cheap at low traffic, and expensive at scale.

A VPS has a fixed monthly cost, regardless of traffic patterns.

1. Infrastructure Control:

On managed platforms:

• You don’t control the server
• You don’t control process lifecycles
• You don’t control the network

On a VPS:

• You choose how requests flow
• You decide how apps restart
• You define how failures are handled

All this is a fine reason. But we're moving for the love of the game. Game? yes to learn a thing or two about the production system.

So how the production setup is done in VPS?

A VPS-based production app usually follows this this request flow:

User → DNS → Nginx → Node / Next.js → PM2

User → DNS:

When a user sends a request, the first stop is DNS (Domain Name System).

DNS is responsible for:

• Translates a domain name into an IP
• Allows IPs to change without breaking users
• Enables global routing and failover

DNS → Nginx

Once DNS resolves the domain, the request reaches your server and is handled by Nginx.

Think of Nginx as the front door of your application.

It handles:

• Incoming HTTP/HTTPS traffic
• TLS certificates (HTTPS)
• Request routing
• Rate limiting
• Static asset delivery
• Reverse proxying

Nginx sits in front of your app to absorb traffic, handle networking efficiently, and protect your Node process from direct exposure.

Nginx → Node / Next.js

Nginx forwards the request to your Node.js / Next.js application via a reverse proxy.

It handles:

• Routing
• Rendering
• API logic
• Data fetching
• Authentication logic

Node / Next.js → PM2

Your application is managed by a process manager such as PM2.

PM2 ensures that:

• Your app restarts if it crashes
• Multiple instances can run
• Logs are captured
• Memory leaks don’t silently kill production

Without a process manager:

• One crash = downtime
• One uncaught exception = dead app

TL;DR:

• PM2 protects Node
• Nginx protects your app
• DNS protects your server
• The VPS hosts them all

You can also check out my article on Test-Driven Development (TDD) on my blog. Give it a read.