How I picked a host: where Vercel and Cloudflare part ways
Two projects, two decision records, two different answers — written in the same week by the same person. Here is what actually drove the difference.
I ended up choosing different hosting for my own product and for my studio site. Since both decision records were written in the same week by the same person, it’s worth naming what actually produced the difference.
Different premises, different answers
It came down to two questions.
- Does the framework depend on the Node.js runtime?
- Does the site count as commercial use?
The product is built with Next.js, where image optimization and some API routes assume a Node.js runtime. Put that on an edge-runtime-first platform and the official documentation stops matching what you see. While still learning, that isn’t just a compatibility problem — it’s the cost of getting stuck with no answer to find.
The studio site is a static Astro build. The output is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, so the runtime question never comes up.
Where commercial use begins
The second question is about terms of service. Many free hosting plans restrict commercial use. Publishing a portfolio is fine; a studio site whose purpose is winning work is commercial from day one.
That single condition — a free plan with no commercial-use restriction — is what left Cloudflare standing.
The rule, in one line
When in doubt, pick the platform where the official docs work verbatim.
For Next.js that was Vercel. For Astro on Cloudflare that was Workers. Each framework has a path its maintainers actually walk.
The criterion isn’t which platform is technically better. It’s where the answers will be when I get stuck — and early on, that matters more than almost anything else.
What’s still open
- Two platforms now means two billing dashboards and two places to look during an outage
- Being fully static, adding a contact form will require another design pass
Neither hurts today, and both will eventually. They’re written into the “future review” section of the decision record so I don’t forget.