Legacy projects shut down after repeated Next.js upgrade nags → Cloudflare
“Eventually, they just shut them down without much warning”
Vercel alternatives: where its users went, and why they left
Vercel (vercel.com) has 17 sourced reports on Friction, drawn from 53 public source threads. This page reads the ones about leaving: 3 destinations named in 4 switching reports. If you are leaving Vercel, what do its users say they moved to, and what pushed them out?
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Where Vercel users say they went
Switching reports that name a destination. Every report quotes a real commenter and links to the thread it came from.
| Named alternative | Reports naming it | Newest report |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare (compare) | 1 | 2025 |
| TanStack Router with Vite | 1 | 2025 |
| Wireit | 1 | 2023 |
In their words
Pivot away from backend services broke apps built on Now v1 → other providers
“That broke everything I built on the Now v1 platform and there wasn't anything to do but switch to other providers”
Longtime fans moving projects and customers off the platform
“I know a concerning number of former die-hard Zeit fans who've taken their projects and customers elsewhere”
Team trialing TanStack Router with Vite instead of Next.js → TanStack Router with Vite
“Team is trying out Tanstack router + vite this week”
What pushes people away from Vercel
Open reports about a customer's money or workflow, or that block work or cause churn: customer-side reports first, then worst severity. Each links to the item with its source. Reports about third-party add-ons and outsiders' abuse are left out.
Client-side environment variables force large re-architecture · Permissions & security · Blocks work
“you have to re-architect vast swaths of an application just so a secret (of any kind) is never required on the client”
12 serverless function limit blocks route splitting on Hobby · Pricing & plans · Blocks work
“The biggest bottleneck is often the limit of 12 serverless functions per site”
Usage dashboard metrics are opaque and hard to predict on the $20 plan · Pricing & plans · Annoyance
“I just pay them $20/mo and pray none of those usages go over 100%”
Other hosting and deployment tools on Friction, and what their users struggle with
Switching trades one set of problems for another. The same evidence, for each tool Friction covers in this category:
Cloudflare
27 reports · 45 source threads · most-discussed area: Reliability & bugs
- Cache rules added 300–600 ms of latency to routes
- Turnstile blocks Linux and Firefox users
- Cloudflare challenges affect privacy-conscious browser users
Vercel vs Cloudflare: side by side · Cloudflare alternatives
Every report quotes a real commenter and links to the thread it came from. How the data is built.