Introduction
Platforms are quickly evolving, and new ones are emerging as the industry is helping to unleash the creative powers of React developers by removing the burden of Ops from their plates. So, it only makes sense that you want to know the best serverless platform as a service (PaaS) for your aspiring React project as a developer.
There are already several great posts written on this topic. In this article, we take a different approach and offer a broader side-by-side comparison and recommendations depending on your application via our custom scoring template.
With that, let’s explore these top 6 Serverless PaaS options available on the market (along with one bonus one).
A note on our scoring system
Before offering our recommendations, we want to review how we scored these Serverless PaaS options.
Due to the vast number of languages and frameworks available, it was important to focus on just one framework (otherwise, you would end up with a book instead of an article!). In this case, we focused on the use case of an “emerging React project.”
When looking for a serverless PaaS for your React project, we believe a PaaS should be:
- Easy to get going, such as being able to work and deploy directly from a Git repo.
- Free to start, but scalable enough to support real-world production usage and commercialization.
- Easy to operate, such as being able to do A/B testing and have analytics.
With this in mind, we have chosen to compare the following platforms:
- Netlify
- Vercel
- AWS Amplify
- Cloudflare Pages
- Render
- Fly
- Github Pages (Bonus)
All of these platforms have the premise of working well within the criteria listed above.
If we’re missing one, feel free to tweet us
The breakdown
We reviewed these platforms based on 20 different dimensions and features. You can see all 20 scoring criteria here.
But, to keep this article short, we consolidated our scores into these three high-level categories based on the above scoring criteria.
| Netlify | Vercel | AWS Amplify | Cloudflare Pages | Render | Fly | (Bonus) GitHub Pages | |
| Getting Started | 6 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| Extending the App | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Operating the App | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Result | 15 | 15 | 13 | 13 | 10 | 7 | 3 |
When you add the scores, Netlify and Vercel have the highest ranking, followed closely by AWS Amplify and Cloudflare Pages. But each PaaS offers something unique, and while it may not have all the bells and whistles, might still be a better option. That’s why we’ve offered the following recommendations in the next section.
Recommendations
There is no one size fits all, so here is our recommendation based on which scenario we think these platforms stand out.
Go with Netlify if...
You value a simple, proven, all-encompassing experience and a strong community, but you can do without built-in analytics.
Go with Vercel if...
You value a simple, proven, all-encompassing experience with built-in app analytics, and you don't need to be part of a community
Go with AWS Amplify if...
You are already using the AWS ecosystem and/or are looking to scale out your app significantly with features and scale.
Go with Cloudflare Pages if...
You want a very capable experience focused on availability and performance, but can forego some of the simplifying options such as plugins and app templates.
Go with Render if...
You value a more bare-bone service with technical options and flexibility but a little less polish around the edges.
Go with Fly if...
You value simplicity and aren’t thinking about scaling yet.
(Bonus) Go with GitHub Pages if...
You are looking for simple static site hosting of a non-commercial static site project.
Conclusion
And that’s it! Pretty short, right? We wanted to ensure to get to the point quickly since the purpose of this article is to give you a jumping-off point to deploy your React app. This way, you can start exploring the PaaS that makes the most sense for your application.
As for how to get your code repo to production, check out these FAQs:
- Get Started with Neflify
- Get Started with Vercel
- Get Started with AWS Amplify
- Get Started With Coudflare pages
- Get Started with Render
- Get Started with Fly
- Get Started with GitHub Pages
We do hope that this was useful to you in your journey in finding the right production tool. But, before putting your application into production, make sure you have an error-monitoring system to monitor your code. Whether you use Airbrake Error and Performance Monitoring or a similar product, it’s important to make monitoring part of the tech stack before pushing your application into production.
Start error monitoring for free today and create an Airbrake Dev Account.