[scubadude]

>Why is everyone using Vercel and the likes anyway?

Because you literally connect to a git repo and your site is deployed, and scales with load. Compared to managing a VM, system and application packages, config, backups and then how do you scale that?

I have what is basically a demo running on Vercel free tier, there's no way I'm maintaining a VM for that lol.

If I had a serious site, same. If I had a team, then the equation would be different.

[coolThingsFirst]

I really do think that paying for convenience is a good business model. No one is forcing anyone to use it.