The whole thing with security and Vercel got my team talking about how, while that can ring some alarms for teams, infrastructure tax is another real breaking point that's often overlooked.
There are good reasons why Vercel has become a default deployment platform for many modern web applications: great developer experience, easy deployments, and seamless integration with frameworks like Next.js. But as projects grow, some unforeseen challenges arise.
For example:
1. Compute costs are starting to hurt
Vercel is incredibly convenient, but that comes at a price. As traffic increases, serverless and edge workloads can become a significant part of your infrastructure budget.
For some teams, moving workloads directly to AWS means substantial savings while maintaining a similar development workflow.
2. You need more control over media delivery
As applications scale, caching strategies matter more.
If you're dealing with large amounts of media or highly customized delivery requirements, platform abstractions can sometimes make it harder to optimize performance exactly the way you want.
3. Compliance and security requirements are growing
Many startups don't think about private networking, granular IAM permissions, or specific compliance requirements until they have to.
And when that moment comes, managed platforms don’t always provide the level of control that enterprise environments need.
So... should you migrate?
Not necessarily.
For many teams, Vercel remains the right choice. The question isn't whether Vercel is good or bad, it's whether it still aligns with your current business, technical, and operational needs.
If you do decide to move, consider a gradual approach. Tools like SST can help preserve much of the developer experience while giving you greater control over your AWS infrastructure.
We put together a short video on it.
Thinking about leaving Vercel? I'll read you 👇🏼
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