Deploy beyond Vercel: Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, Fly.io

I spent five years using Vercel for pretty much everything. Clinic websites, dashboards, landing pages. It works well. But last year I started exploring alternatives when my edge functions costs began climbing. Turns out there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there that nobody talks about.

Let me be honest: Vercel is still the best choice for most of my projects. But there are specific cases where another platform wins.

Vercel: still the standard

Vercel is the safe choice. Simple deploy, Git integration is flawless, serverless functions work great. For me the problem was never quality. It’s cost.

With the free tier you can ship a site in minutes. But once you start using edge functions or heavy traffic, the bill grows fast. A simple revalidation function can cost $10-15 per month if you’re getting decent traffic.

Vercel Pro runs $30-40 USD monthly (pricing varies, that’s what I paid in 2025). You pay for requests beyond a monthly limit. For a clinic website with low traffic? Total overkill.

Cloudflare Pages: the underdog that deserved more attention

I started using Cloudflare Pages and honestly I was surprised. Pages is free (totally free) for static sites and even for applications with serverless functions. You only pay if you want premium features.

Here’s the key thing: Cloudflare has edge workers that run almost anywhere in the world. Latency is absurdly low. For a clinic website in a major city? Probably served from a nearby data center.

Worker Functions cost $0.50 per million requests. For context: your 100k monthly requests cost basically nothing. Not exaggerating.

Downside? The interface is confusing if you’re coming from Vercel. Documentation is massive. But once it clicks, it flows well. I used Cloudflare Pages for related reading on deploy options and it was rock solid.

Netlify: simplicity without hidden costs

Netlify is the middle ground. Not as cheap as Cloudflare Pages, but more accessible than Vercel. Free tier includes 300 build minutes per month. For most sites? Plenty.

Serverless functions on Netlify are priced by execution. 1 million invocations per month runs $5-7. More expensive than Cloudflare, but still way below Vercel.

What I like: the experience is simpler. You’ll find fewer surprises than Cloudflare. The interface is intuitive. Perfect for devs who want deploy without headaches.

Netlify is my recommendation when a client wants something cheap but wants solid support backing it up. The company has real expertise.

Fly.io: when you need containers

Fly.io is different. It’s not a ready-made deploy platform. It’s actual infrastructure as a service. You deploy Docker containers. But they abstract away the complexity nicely.

Pricing is fair. You pay per machine-hour. A shared machine runs $1-2 monthly. For a container running 24/7? Insanely cheap compared to AWS or Google Cloud.

When would I use it? When I need to run heavier code. Image processing in the background. Long-running workers. Fly.io shines here because containers can run for minutes, they don’t have the 10-second timeout of edge functions.

The downside is that it’s genuinely more technical. You’ll be working with Docker, machine config, etc.

Quick summary for decision making

Vercel when: your project needs everything integrated, you don’t want to think about infrastructure. Product launches, growing SaaS.

Cloudflare Pages when: static site or light functions, your budget is tight, you want maximum speed. Clinic site, portfolio, landing page.

Netlify when: you want simplicity but need serverless functions, you don’t mind paying a bit more than Cloudflare.

Fly.io when: you need to run code that takes time, a container makes sense for your specific project.

And here’s the thing: none of these is better for everything. I use Cloudflare Pages for my personal portfolio, Vercel for some larger clients, and Fly.io when I need real processing power. The secret is knowing your options.

Railway: another interesting option

Forgot to mention Railway. It’s not exactly PaaS like the others, more like simplified infrastructure.

Deployment is via GitHub. You put a railway.json file, push, Railway sees it, creates a container and deploys.

Pricing is per hour of resources. An app running on 256MB RAM and 0.5 CPU runs about $2-3 monthly. Super cheap.

Downside: less mature than Vercel or Netlify. Interface is more technical. Docs are good but not as complete.

When would I use it? When you need something in between. Not as simple as Vercel, not as technical as AWS, but more flexible than raw Pages.

But here’s the detail: Railway is good for apps that don’t need to scale massively. A simple API, a periodic worker. Scale to hundreds of requests per second? Railway gets expensive near Vercel levels.

That’s why every developer needs to know several options. There’s no one-size-fits-all in 2026. What works for your portfolio doesn’t work for a scaling SaaS.

Different rendering per platform: practical tips

Vercel uses serverless functions in /api folder with Next. Cloudflare Pages uses Functions. Netlify uses Functions too but integration is different.

If you want platform-agnostic code, test locally on each. Your imports might not work the same.

My tip: decide the platform early. Pick a framework that runs well there. Going Vercel? Use Next. Cloudflare? Use Astro. Fly? Use Node/Docker.

When to migrate

Client growing, costs rising? Maybe time to migrate.

Vercel to Cloudflare: easy migration. Both use Git deploy, both auto-build. Just adjust function structure.

Vercel to Fly: more work. Need to containerize, write Dockerfile. But once done, it’s super automated.

Estimated monthly cost table

(Assuming 100k requests/month, 10GB storage, 2 CPU-cores if needed)

Platform	Base	Requests	Storage	Total
Vercel Free	$0	$0 (capped)	$0	$0-30
Cloudflare Pages	$0	$0.06	$0.003	$1-2
Netlify	$0	$5	$0	$5-8
Fly.io shared	$0	$0	$0	$2-4
Railway	$0	$0	$0	$2-5

(Rough estimates, varies by actual usage)

• Compare costs with my actual request volume
• Test Cloudflare Pages deploy on next project
• Review current Vercel spending
• Evaluate if I actually need edge functions
• Document platform choice reasoning for clients

Pick the platform that makes sense for your situation, not for the hype.