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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

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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

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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

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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

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CI/CD Pipeline Setup

Tier 1: Git Push Auto-Deploy

Platforms: Vercel, Netlify, Railway, Render

Setup (5 minutes):

1. Connect GitHub/GitLab repo
2. Configure build command: npm run build
3. Configure output directory: dist or .next
4. 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

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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'

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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)

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Deployment Checklist

Pre-Launch

• Environment variables configured
• Database migrations tested
• SSL/HTTPS enabled
• Custom domain connected
• Error monitoring set up (Sentry, Rollbar)
• Analytics configured
• Backup strategy defined

Launch Day

• Deploy to production
• Verify all pages load
• Test critical user flows
• Check error monitoring dashboard
• Monitor performance metrics
• Have rollback plan ready

Post-Launch

• Monitor logs for errors
• Check performance (response times)
• Verify analytics tracking
• Review cost/usage
• Document any issues
• Plan scaling strategy

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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

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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

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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

Recommended

• Security headers (helmet.js for Node)
• DDoS protection (Cloudflare)
• Automated vulnerability scanning
• Audit logs for sensitive operations
• Backup and disaster recovery plan

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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

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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)

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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)