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Serverless vs Zeit Now: What are the differences?

Introduction

Serverless computing and Zeit Now are both popular options for deploying and running applications in the cloud. While they have some similarities, there are key differences that set them apart from each other. This article will outline and explain these differences in detail.

  1. Deployment Options: One of the main differences between Serverless and Zeit Now is the deployment options they offer. Serverless is a framework that allows developers to build and deploy applications that run on serverless architecture, such as AWS Lambda or Azure Functions. On the other hand, Zeit Now is a deployment platform that supports various serverless providers, including AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions. This means that while Serverless limits the deployment to serverless architectures, Zeit Now provides more flexibility by allowing developers to choose from multiple serverless providers.

  2. Pricing Model: Another significant difference is the pricing model of Serverless and Zeit Now. Serverless pricing is typically based on the number of invocations, duration of the function execution, and resources used. This means that developers are billed for the actual usage of their serverless functions. In contrast, Zeit Now follows a simpler pricing model based on the number of deployments and the amount of bandwidth used. This makes Zeit Now more straightforward and easier to estimate the costs.

  3. Ease of Use: Both Serverless and Zeit Now aim to provide an easy and simple way for developers to deploy and manage their applications. However, there are subtle differences in their ease of use. Serverless is feature-rich and offers various tools and plugins that cater to different use cases. It allows developers to define their infrastructure as code and provides built-in support for monitoring, logging, and debugging. Zeit Now, on the other hand, focuses on simplicity and minimal configuration. It provides a seamless deployment experience with just a single command and has built-in support for static websites. This makes Zeit Now an excellent choice for developers who prioritize simplicity and quick deployments.

  4. Community and Ecosystem: Both Serverless and Zeit Now have vibrant communities and an ecosystem of plugins, libraries, and integrations. However, Serverless has a larger and more mature ecosystem due to its early prominence in the serverless space. It has a vast collection of plugins and integrations for various serverless providers and technologies. Zeit Now, being a newer player, has a smaller ecosystem but is rapidly growing and gaining popularity. It has its own set of integrations, including seamless integration with Next.js, a popular React framework. Developers should consider the ecosystem and community support when choosing between Serverless and Zeit Now.

  5. Vendor Lock-in: Vendor lock-in is an important consideration when selecting a deployment platform. Serverless, being a framework, can be used with different serverless providers, which provides some flexibility and decreases vendor lock-in. However, as it relies on specific serverless architectures, there is still some degree of lock-in to those platforms. On the other hand, Zeit Now supports multiple serverless providers, providing more flexibility and reducing the risk of vendor lock-in.

In Summary, Serverless and Zeit Now are both viable options for deploying applications in the cloud. Serverless offers a feature-rich framework specifically designed for serverless architectures, while Zeit Now provides a simpler and more flexible deployment platform that supports multiple serverless providers. The choice between the two largely depends on the specific needs of the project, the desired level of flexibility, and the preference for either a comprehensive feature set or a minimalist deployment experience.

Decisions about Serverless and Vercel
Tim Nolet

When adding a new feature to Checkly rearchitecting some older piece, I tend to pick Heroku for rolling it out. But not always, because sometimes I pick AWS Lambda . The short story:

  • Developer Experience trumps everything.
  • AWS Lambda is cheap. Up to a limit though. This impact not only your wallet.
  • If you need geographic spread, AWS is lonely at the top.
The setup

Recently, I was doing a brainstorm at a startup here in Berlin on the future of their infrastructure. They were ready to move on from their initial, almost 100% Ec2 + Chef based setup. Everything was on the table. But we crossed out a lot quite quickly:

  • Pure, uncut, self hosted Kubernetes — way too much complexity
  • Managed Kubernetes in various flavors — still too much complexity
  • Zeit — Maybe, but no Docker support
  • Elastic Beanstalk — Maybe, bit old but does the job
  • Heroku
  • Lambda

It became clear a mix of PaaS and FaaS was the way to go. What a surprise! That is exactly what I use for Checkly! But when do you pick which model?

I chopped that question up into the following categories:

  • Developer Experience / DX 🤓
  • Ops Experience / OX 🐂 (?)
  • Cost 💵
  • Lock in 🔐

Read the full post linked below for all details

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Pros of Serverless
Pros of Vercel
  • 14
    API integration
  • 7
    Supports cloud functions for Google, Azure, and IBM
  • 3
    Lower cost
  • 1
    Auto scale
  • 1
    Openwhisk
  • 23
    Simple deployment
  • 16
    Free tier
  • 13
    Free SSL
  • 12
    Simple setup
  • 8
    Easy custom domain setup
  • 4
    Build and deploy via git push
  • 4
    One tap build
  • 3
    SSR
  • 1
    SSG
  • 1
    Student

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Cons of Serverless
Cons of Vercel
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 1
      Pricing Unclear

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    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Serverless?

    Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.

    What is Vercel?

    A cloud platform for serverless deployment. It enables developers to host websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and require no supervision, all with minimal configuration.

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    What companies use Serverless?
    What companies use Vercel?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Serverless or Vercel.
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    What tools integrate with Serverless?
    What tools integrate with Vercel?

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    What are some alternatives to Serverless and Vercel?
    AWS Lambda
    AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.
    Terraform
    With Terraform, you describe your complete infrastructure as code, even as it spans multiple service providers. Your servers may come from AWS, your DNS may come from CloudFlare, and your database may come from Heroku. Terraform will build all these resources across all these providers in parallel.
    Zappa
    Zappa makes it super easy to deploy all Python WSGI applications on AWS Lambda + API Gateway. Think of it as "serverless" web hosting for your Python web apps. That means infinite scaling, zero downtime, zero maintenance - and at a fraction of the cost of your current deployments!
    Kubernetes
    Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.
    Azure Functions
    Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.
    See all alternatives