Why I Switched From Vercel to a Self-Hosted Setup (and Why You Might Not Want To)

Six months ago I moved my production apps off Vercel and onto a self-managed VPS. Here's the honest breakdown. **Why I did it:** My bandwidth costs were climbing fast with Vercel's paid plans. For a high-traffic image-heavy app, the bills were getting uncomfortable. **The setup I landed on:** - Hetzner VPS (€12/mo for the size I need) - Coolify for app deployment (open source Heroku alternative) - Cloudflare for CDN + DDoS protection (free tier) - Supabase for the database (still managed, not going there) **What's better:** - Cost: 80% cheaper per month - Control: I can run anything, any language, any port - Privacy: No vendor lock-in **What's worse:** - Ops overhead: I'm now responsible for uptime, SSL renewals, and updates - DX: Vercel's deployment preview URLs are genuinely magical. I miss them. - Support: When things break at 2am, it's just me and Stack Overflow **My verdict:** If you're a solo dev with a high-traffic project and tight margins, self-hosting is worth it. If you're a team shipping fast, pay for Vercel — the DX premium is worth it. Questions welcome!