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Serdar Tekin
Serdar Tekin

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Start with Vercel, Scale to VPS: The Smart Developer's Path

#vercel #webdev #devops #startup

Two years ago, my friend woke up to a $500 Vercel bill. His small SaaS had gone viral overnight - 100k visitors in 24 hours. Great problem to have, right? Until the invoice arrived.

But here's the thing - Vercel isn't the villain. They just outgrew it.

🎯 The Truth Nobody Tells You

Vercel, Netlify, and Render are AMAZING tools. I still recommend them to everyone starting out.

But they're meant to be your launching pad, not your permanent home.

Here's the smart path that'll save you thousands:

📈 The Natural Evolution of Your Project 

Stage 1 (Month 1-6): Vercel/Netlify Cost: $0-20 Focus: Ship fast, validate idea Stage 2 (Month 6-12): Getting traction Cost: $50-200 Focus: Growing, but bills creeping up Stage 3 (Month 12+): Time to graduate Cost: VPS $20-40 vs PaaS $500+ Focus: Own your infrastructure
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This is the way.

💰 The Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything

October 2022. My friend's best month turned into a nightmare:

  • ✅ 30k monthly active users (steady growth)
  • ✅ 500 paying customers
  • ❌ Hit bandwidth limit (1TB)
  • ❌ Function invocations maxed out 
// Vercel Invoice - October 2022 Base Pro Plan: $20 Bandwidth overage: $280 Function overage: $140 Image Optimization: $60 Total: $500 // Same usage on VPS: DigitalOcean: $24 Vultr: $24 Raff Technologies: $20
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He wasn't even viral. Just successful enough to hit the paywall.

🚀 Why Start with PaaS Though?

I still tell everyone: start with Vercel/Netlify. Here's why:

Week 1 with Vercel: ✅ Deployed in 5 minutes ✅ Auto SSL ✅ Preview deployments ✅ Global CDN ✅ Zero DevOps knowledge needed Week 1 with VPS: ❌ Still configuring nginx ❌ SSL cert errors ❌ No deployments yet ❌ What's a firewall? ❌ Already burned 20 hours
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Your time is worth more than $20/month. Ship first, optimize later.

📊 When to Make the Jump

Watch for these signals:

Time to migrate when: - Bill exceeds $100/month - You have paying customers - You need background jobs - You're serving lots of media - You want websockets - You need more control
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The sweet spot: When PaaS costs more than 2 hours of your time per month.

🛠 Modern VPS = Just as Easy as PaaS

Here's what changed in 2025:

Old VPS Days (2020):

# 3 days of configuration hell apt-get update apt-get install nginx nodejs postgresql # 500 more lines...
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VPS Today (2025):

# 10 minutes with modern tools curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | sh docker compose up -d # Done. Seriously.
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⚡ Your Vercel Workflow on VPS

You can have the SAME workflow:

# Install Coolify (open-source Vercel) curl -fsSL https://coolify.io/install.sh | bash # Or Dokku (Heroku-like) wget https://dokku.com/install/v0.34.4/bootstrap.sh sudo DOKKU_TAG=v0.34.4 bash bootstrap.sh # Now you have: ✅ Git push deployments ✅ Auto SSL ✅ Preview environments ✅ One-click rollbacks
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Total setup time: 1 hour. Then it works just like Vercel.

💵 The Money Math

Real numbers from real projects:

E-commerce Site (100k visitors/month): 

Vercel: $320/month VPS Options: - DigitalOcean (4GB): $24/month - Vultr (4GB): $24/month - Raff Technologies (4GB): $20/month Savings: $3,600-$3,840/year
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SaaS App (50k users): 

Vercel: $500/month VPS Options (8GB RAM): - DigitalOcean: $48/month - Vultr: $48/month - Raff Technologies: $40/month Savings: $5,520-$5,760/year
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API Backend (10M requests/month): 

Vercel: $850/month VPS Options (16GB RAM): - DigitalOcean: $96/month - Vultr: $96/month - Raff Technologies: $80/month Savings: $9,240-$9,480/year
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🎯 The Migration Path

Week 1: Keep everything on Vercel

  • Frontend stays on Vercel (free tier)
  • Move API to VPS
  • Immediate 50% cost reduction

Week 2: Move background jobs

  • Cron jobs on VPS
  • Queue processing on VPS
  • Another 30% saved

Week 3: Move media/storage

  • Images to Cloudflare R2
  • Videos to BunnyCDN
  • Final 20% saved

You don't have to move everything at once!

🔧 Tools That Make VPS Easy in 2025 

Deployment: - Coolify (self-hosted Vercel) - Dokku (self-hosted Heroku) - CapRover (auto-scaling PaaS) Monitoring: - Netdata (one-line install) - Uptime Kuma (better than paid tools) CI/CD: - GitHub Actions + SSH - GitLab CI/CD - Drone CI
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All free. All one-command installs.

✅ My Advice

  1. START with Vercel/Netlify - Speed matters early on
  2. MONITOR your bills - Set alerts at $50, $100
  3. LEARN basic VPS skills - 2 hours on YouTube is enough
  4. MIGRATE gradually - Backend first, frontend last
  5. KEEP what works - Maybe frontend stays on Vercel forever

There's no shame in using PaaS. There's also no shame in saving money.

🎬 Action Plan

If your PaaS bill is over $100/month:

# This weekend: 1. Pick a VPS provider: - Vultr ($24): Great network, global locations - Raff Technologies ($20): Best value, modern AMD - DigitalOcean ($24): Nice UI, good docs 2. Install Coolify or Dokku 3. Deploy your API there 4. Keep frontend on Vercel 5. Save $200+/month immediately
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I've tried most providers. My favorites are Vultr for global projects and Raff Technologies for best price/performance.

💭 Real Talk

I love Vercel. I recommend it to everyone. But it's a stepping stone, not a destination.

Use PaaS to launch fast.
Use VPS to scale smart.

Both have their place. Know when to switch.

🏆 My Favorite VPS Providers (2025)

After testing dozens of providers, here are my go-to choices:

Raff Technologies - Best price/performance ratio. Best in US. Modern AMD EPYC processors, 4GB RAM for just $20/month. Consistently outperforms providers charging 2x more.

Vultr - Great for projects needing low latency worldwide. Their $24/month plan is my backup choice.

What's your PaaS bill right now? Drop it in the comments. Let's calculate how much you could save. 👇

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