Azure Static Web App Vs Vercel For Deploying Next.js Website
Azure Static Web App Vs Vercel For Deploying Next.js Website
If you're looking to host your Next.js website there'll be two main options you'll come across for web hosting: Vercel and Microsoft Azure Static Web App.
Both offerings are Serverless, meaning you do not have the hassle of configuring a Linux server. If you have never had to do that before, I can assure you, configuring a Linux server for web hosting is a nightmare.
I conducted some tests on an identical Next.js web application using the paid offerings from both Vercel and Microsoft Azure Static Web App.
Testing Setup: We deployed identical Next.js applications to both platforms using their paid tiers to ensure fair comparison of performance and features.
Performance
Using the PageSpeed Insights tool from Google, Vercel was superior in performance for Next.js web hosting. From my personal experience, the page load from Microsoft Azure Static Web App was 4.2 seconds. An awful page load experience.
If you were like me, you might look at the above and focus on the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric as a possible explanation for the poor Next.js web application experience on Microsoft Azure Static Web App.
Following SEO guides from Vercel, I disabled lazy loading on images above the fold. An example of that code is below, where the priority value is set on the image to disable lazy loading:
Performance Tip: Always set priority=true on images that appear above the fold to improve your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) scores.
Contrast that with the performance from Vercel:
The difference is dramatic! Vercel consistently delivers superior performance for Next.js applications.
Deployment Tools
To deploy a Next.js website to any hosting provider you will need to deploy via some sort of Git operations tool such as GitHub or Azure DevOps. My personal preference is Azure DevOps, but if you've primarily been using GitHub it makes sense to stick with GitHub actions.
Vercel Options
- ✅ GitHub Actions only
- ❌ No Azure DevOps support
- ✅ Seamless Git integration
- ✅ Automatic deployments
Azure Static Web Apps
- ✅ GitHub Actions support
- ✅ Azure DevOps Pipelines
- ✅ More CI/CD flexibility
- ✅ Enterprise integration
On Git operations tools, you are limited to using only GitHub actions when deploying your Next.js website to Vercel. With Azure Static Web apps you can choose between GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps Pipelines for deploying your Next.js website.
Pricing
Both options from Vercel and Microsoft offer free options. There is only one paid option from Microsoft for Azure Static Web Apps and that's the Standard option which is approximately USD $19.95 per month.
Pricing Breakdown: Microsoft has one paid option for Azure Static Web Apps - the Standard tier at approximately USD $19.95 per month. You can add Microsoft's 'Edge' functionality for additional cost.
You can add Microsoft's 'Edge' functionality for an additional cost. This is supposed to cache your web application across datacentres around the world, much like a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Functionality
Additional functionality from Microsoft on Azure Static Web apps includes logging, application monitoring, firewall and network management. Logging can help you debug your application and understand performance issues via a service called Application Insights. At least it's supposed to anyway. When I had Application Insights enabled for my Azure Static Web App hosting a Next.js website, I did not see any logs coming through.
Real Experience: Application Insights didn't provide the expected logging functionality during our testing, which was disappointing for debugging purposes.
You might care about firewalls and network features if you don't want your Next.js website to be publicly available on the internet. For example, you've built a web application for a specific client and you want to restrict access to only that client, you can set network rules to only allow traffic from your client's address space.
Conclusion
Personally, my recommendation would be to stick with Vercel for deploying your Next.js website if you are creating a personal project or a website for a small business.
Our Recommendation: Choose Vercel for superior performance and developer experience. Consider Azure Static Web Apps only if you need enterprise-level network controls.
I think the use case for deploying a Next.js website to Azure Static Web App would be if you were a larger enterprise who needed more control over who can access your app and collaborating with larger teams. If that was the case, then Azure would be a great option.
Choose Vercel if:
- Performance is your priority
- You want the best Next.js optimization
- You're building for small to medium businesses
- You prefer simplicity and speed
Choose Azure Static Web Apps if:
- You're part of a larger enterprise
- You need advanced network controls
- You require private access restrictions
- You're already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem
Need help choosing the right hosting platform for your Next.js project? Contact firstSites for expert guidance on web development and deployment strategies.