Vercel alternatives: your own cloud on a Hetzner VPS
Tutorial · · 6 min read
Vercel is an amazing tool to launch projects quickly. The developer experience is unparalleled: you do a git push, and your Next.js, React, or Svelte app is live in seconds with SSL and a global CDN.
However, its model is usage-based. The Pro plan costs $20 per month per developer and includes $20 of credit; anything above that is billed on top (Vercel pricing, checked on 2026-10-14). As soon as your app needs a database, long background jobs or lots of traffic, the bill stops being predictable.
The alternative? A fixed-price VPS on Hetzner Cloud, running your apps, your database and your cron jobs on the same machine.
Why a Hetzner VPS over Vercel?
Hetzner remains one of the best price-to-performance options in Europe, although it raised prices in 2026 and some entry plans are not always available: check Hetzner's website before choosing. For a fixed monthly fee, a VPS gives you:
- No execution time limits like those of serverless functions.
- Included monthly traffic (20 TB in its European locations).
- Complete freedom to run local databases (PostgreSQL, Redis), message queues and heavy cron jobs on the same machine.
The trade-off is the terminal: configuring SSH, upgrading packages, monitoring the server, taking backups and dealing with SSL certificates is on you.
How SecuryBlack helps today
SecuryBlack is a dashboard for your own VPS: you pay for the server and SecuryBlack provides the management layer.
Step 1: Create your Hetzner VPS
- Sign up on Hetzner and create a new project.
- Spin up a cloud server running Ubuntu LTS.
- Copy the public IP address of your new VPS.
Step 2: Connect it to SecuryBlack
- Sign up on SecuryBlack (free during the beta).
- Add a server and run the install command from the dashboard on your VPS.
- The Rust agents review your security (SSH, firewall, Fail2ban) and suggest fixes that you apply with one click.
- From then on you see metrics, uptime, cron heartbeats and backup status in one dashboard.
Step 3: Git deploys (beta)
Connect your GitHub repository and every git push builds your app on your own VPS, publishes it on your domain with Let's Encrypt SSL and goes back to the previous version if the healthcheck fails.
It's already in beta and free while the beta lasts. It doesn't support docker-compose or persistent volumes yet; if your app needs them, keep deploying the way you already do (Docker Compose, Coolify, Dokploy…) and use SecuryBlack to monitor and protect the server.
Monitoring and protection included
Unlike basic hosting, SecuryBlack gives you in one dashboard:
- Live Docker logs from your containers.
- Security auditing: which ports are exposed, and alerts when an insecure configuration is detected.
- Lightweight metrics: CPU, memory, disk and network for your VPS with OxiPulse, an open source Rust agent.
- Encrypted backups and heartbeats, with an alert if a backup doesn't arrive.
If you want a predictable bill and to stop worrying about serverless limits, your own VPS with SecuryBlack is a natural move. And with GitHub deploys, already in beta, you get a Vercel-like experience on your own server.