name	Deployment Advisor
description	Choose deployment strategy and infrastructure. Use when deciding where to deploy applications, setting up CI/CD, or configuring production environments. Covers Vercel, Railway, AWS, Cloudflare Workers, and Docker.
version	1.0.0

Deployment Advisor

Choose the right deployment strategy for your application scale and requirements.

Core Principle

Start simple, scale when needed. Don't over-engineer infrastructure for 10 users that won't arrive for months.

Deployment Tiers

Tier 1: MVP / Small Projects (<1,000 users)

Cost: $0-$20/month Time to Deploy: 5-15 minutes Best for: MVPs, prototypes, side projects, marketing sites

Recommended Platforms:

Vercel (Next.js, React, static sites):

Push to GitHub → auto deploy
Edge functions, image optimization
Free SSL, global CDN
$0 for hobby, $20/mo for team

Netlify (Static sites, Jamstack):

Similar to Vercel, better for non-Next.js
Form handling, split testing
Serverless functions

Railway (Full-stack, databases):

Deploys anything (Node, Python, Go, Rust)
Integrated PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB
$5/mo for 512MB RAM + usage

Cloudflare Pages (Static + Workers):

Free unlimited bandwidth
Edge functions (Workers)
Fastest CDN globally

Tier 2: Growing Products (1K-100K users)

Cost: $20-$500/month Time to Deploy: 1-4 hours Best for: Validated products, growing startups, paid customers

Recommended Platforms:

AWS Amplify (Full-stack web apps):

Managed hosting + backend
Authentication, APIs, databases
Auto-scaling, monitoring
$50-200/mo typical

Google Cloud Run (Containerized apps):

Pay only for actual usage
Scales to zero
Automatic HTTPS
$20-100/mo for small traffic

Fly.io (Distributed apps):

Global deployment (closer to users)
PostgreSQL, Redis included
Docker-based
$50-200/mo

Render (Simpler alternative to AWS):

Auto-deploy from Git
PostgreSQL, Redis, cron jobs
Free tier available
$50-150/mo for production

Tier 3: Scale / Enterprise (100K+ users)

Cost: $500-$5,000+/month Time to Deploy: 1-4 weeks Best for: High traffic, enterprise, compliance requirements

Recommended Platforms:

AWS ECS (Containers, no Kubernetes complexity):

Fargate (serverless containers)
Full AWS ecosystem
Fine-grained control
$500-2000/mo typical

AWS EKS / Google GKE (Kubernetes):

Full orchestration
Multi-region, auto-scaling
Complex but powerful
$1000-5000+/mo

DigitalOcean App Platform (Mid-tier simplicity):

Kubernetes-powered, no K8s knowledge needed
Cheaper than AWS
Good middle ground
$200-1000/mo

Decision Framework

Question 1: What are you deploying?

Static site (HTML, CSS, JS): → Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages

Next.js app: → Vercel (best integration), Netlify

React/Vue/Angular SPA: → Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages

Node.js API: → Railway, Render, Fly.io, AWS Amplify

Python API (FastAPI, Flask, Django): → Railway, Render, Fly.io, Google Cloud Run

Go/Rust API: → Fly.io, Railway, Google Cloud Run

Full-stack (Frontend + Backend + DB): → Railway, Render, AWS Amplify

Microservices: → Fly.io, Google Cloud Run, AWS ECS

Question 2: Do you need a database?

No database: → Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages

Serverless database (PostgreSQL, MySQL): → Railway, Render (integrated), AWS RDS, Supabase

Redis/caching: → Railway, Render, AWS ElastiCache, Upstash

MongoDB: → MongoDB Atlas, Railway, AWS DocumentDB

Question 3: How many users?

<100 users (MVP): → Free/cheap tiers: Vercel free, Railway $5

100-1,000 users: → Vercel Pro ($20), Railway ($20-50), Render

1K-10K users: → Railway ($50-100), AWS Amplify, Cloud Run

10K-100K users: → AWS Amplify, Cloud Run, Fly.io ($100-500)

100K-1M users: → AWS ECS, GKE, dedicated servers ($500-5000)

Question 4: Geographic distribution?

Single region (US/Europe): → Any platform

Global (low latency worldwide): → Cloudflare Pages/Workers, Vercel Edge, Fly.io (multi-region)

China/Asia: → Cloudflare, Fly.io Hong Kong, Alibaba Cloud

Question 5: Special requirements?

Compliance (HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR): → AWS, Google Cloud, Azure (compliance certifications)

Long-running jobs (>15 min): → Railway, Render Background Workers, AWS ECS

WebSockets/real-time: → Railway, Render, Fly.io, AWS ECS

High compute (video processing, ML): → AWS ECS/EKS, Google Cloud Run, dedicated GPUs

CI/CD Pipeline Setup

Tier 1: Git Push Auto-Deploy

Platforms: Vercel, Netlify, Railway, Render

Setup (5 minutes):

Connect GitHub/GitLab repo
Configure build command: npm run build
Configure output directory: dist or .next
Push to main branch → auto deploy

Environment Variables:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...
API_KEY=secret_key
NODE_ENV=production

Preview Deployments:

Every pull request gets preview URL
Test before merging to production

Tier 2: GitHub Actions CI/CD

Use when: Custom tests, security scans, multi-stage deploys

# .github/workflows/deploy.yml
name: Deploy to Production

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: '18'
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test
      - run: npm run lint

  deploy:
    needs: test
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: amondnet/vercel-action@v20
        with:
          vercel-token: ${{ secrets.VERCEL_TOKEN }}
          vercel-org-id: ${{ secrets.ORG_ID }}
          vercel-project-id: ${{ secrets.PROJECT_ID }}
          vercel-args: '--prod'

Tier 3: Enterprise CI/CD

Features:

Multi-environment (dev, staging, prod)
Blue-green deployments
Canary releases
Automated rollbacks
Security scanning (SAST, DAST)

Pipeline Stages:

Build → Test → Security Scan → Stage Deploy → Integration Tests → Prod Deploy

Tools:

GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI
ArgoCD (GitOps for Kubernetes)
Terraform (Infrastructure as Code)

Deployment Checklist

Pre-Launch

Launch Day

Post-Launch

Common Deployment Patterns

Pattern 1: Jamstack (Static + API)

Stack: Next.js (Vercel) + API (Railway/Supabase)

Pros: Fast, cheap, scales easily Cons: Not suitable for real-time or server-heavy apps

Frontend (Vercel) → API (Railway) → Database (Supabase)

Pattern 2: Serverless

Stack: Vercel Functions + Serverless DB (Supabase/PlanetScale)

Pros: Zero server management, pay per use Cons: Cold starts, vendor lock-in

Frontend (Vercel) → Edge Functions (Vercel) → Serverless DB

Pattern 3: Traditional Full-Stack

Stack: Railway (Node.js + PostgreSQL)

Pros: Simple, everything in one place Cons: Single point of failure

Railway: Node.js API + PostgreSQL + Redis

Pattern 4: Microservices

Stack: Multiple Cloud Run services + Cloud SQL

Pros: Independent scaling, fault isolation Cons: Complex, higher cost

Frontend (Vercel) → Service 1 (Cloud Run) → Database
                 → Service 2 (Cloud Run) → Queue

Cost Optimization

Free Tier Strategy

Vercel: Free for personal projects
Supabase: 500MB DB, 50K API requests/day
Railway: $5 credit/month (enough for small API)
Cloudflare: Unlimited bandwidth free

Total: $0-5/month for MVP

Production Cost Optimization

Use caching (Redis, CDN) to reduce compute
Optimize images (Next.js Image, Cloudinary)
Database connection pooling (PgBouncer)
Monitor and right-size resources
Use spot instances for non-critical workloads

Security Best Practices

Must-Haves

✅ HTTPS only (automatic on most platforms)
✅ Environment variables for secrets (never commit)
✅ Database encryption at rest
✅ Regular dependency updates
✅ Rate limiting on APIs

Monitoring & Observability

Tier 1: Basic Monitoring

Platform dashboards (Vercel Analytics, Railway Metrics)
Error tracking: Sentry ($0-26/mo)
Uptime monitoring: UptimeRobot (free), Better Uptime

Tier 2: Enhanced Monitoring

APM: New Relic, Datadog ($15-100/mo)
Log aggregation: LogTail, Papertrail
Custom metrics and alerting

Tier 3: Enterprise Observability

Full stack: Datadog, New Relic ($300-1000+/mo)
Distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry)
Custom dashboards (Grafana)
PagerDuty for incidents

Quick Start Recommendations

Simple marketing site: → Vercel + Contentful CMS

SaaS MVP: → Next.js (Vercel) + Supabase (DB + Auth) + Stripe

Internal tool: → React (Netlify) + FastAPI (Railway) + PostgreSQL (Railway)

Mobile app backend: → FastAPI (Cloud Run) + Cloud SQL + Firebase Auth

E-commerce: → Next.js (Vercel) + Shopify/Stripe + PostgreSQL (Supabase)

Related Resources

Related Skills:

frontend-builder - For building apps to deploy
api-designer - For API architecture
performance-optimizer - For optimizing deployed apps

Related Patterns:

META/DECISION-FRAMEWORK.md - Platform selection guidance
STANDARDS/architecture-patterns/deployment-patterns.md - Deployment architectures (when created)

Related Playbooks:

PLAYBOOKS/deploy-to-vercel.md - Vercel deployment guide (when created)
PLAYBOOKS/setup-cicd.md - CI/CD setup procedure (when created)

name	Deployment Advisor
description	Choose deployment strategy and infrastructure. Use when deciding where to deploy applications, setting up CI/CD, or configuring production environments. Covers Vercel, Railway, AWS, Cloudflare Workers, and Docker.
version	1.0.0