Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A(vercel.com)
vercel.com
Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A
https://vercel.com/blog/zeit-is-now-vercel
202 comments
I was an early adopter of Now v1 and loved it. I evangelized it to all my clients, used it on every project - it was such a breath of fresh air that deploying a server was now so easy.
Ok, I get that serverless is a different paradigm. And I understand the arguments for it. But I refused to use Now v2 precisely because they violated their promises they had made -- but worse, turned it into "just another AWS". If I want serverless, I'll use AWS because frankly Zeit/Vercel's visibility into what is going on is just abysmal. And FWIW we now have several projects running on serverless -- using Next.js -- on AWS. Using the severless component, it requires NO special considerations and could easily be redeployed on a standard server in minutes. No vendor lock in, funny how that worked out? I expected to be locked in on AWS serverless. That didn't happen.
The icing on the cake was when they didn't officially deprecate v1, but made it so unstable, so unusable, that I got to the point of spending DAYS per week deploying and redeploying and redeploying our docker containers because their servers would randomly decide that the hosting server no longer had a network connection. If I see E_AGAIN one more time I'm going to spit.
And then they upped the price from $20/mo that we were paying for 4 containers, to $150. Thanks guys.
It left such a bad taste in my mouth that I spent a day, redid everything to deploy on AWS EB, and haven't looked back since. That was the LEAST amount of time I'd spent on that, in a given week, for about a 4 month period prior. To be fair, the guy running Zeit/Vercel's support is pretty solid. He did try to be helpful.
My experience with the technical leadership has been left lacking. We tried several times to contribute to Next.js and were treated like idiot children because how dare we trample on their kingdom. If you're not a tech bro, stay in your lane!
Look I'm just sharing my experience over there. It has been roundly negative. I'm sure others can come with anecdotes of it being roundly positive, good for you. Mine is just another anecdote but it's the only insight I have.
Although, the 1500+ comment thread on Spectrum when they announced v2 strongly suggests I'm not alone.
Ok, I get that serverless is a different paradigm. And I understand the arguments for it. But I refused to use Now v2 precisely because they violated their promises they had made -- but worse, turned it into "just another AWS". If I want serverless, I'll use AWS because frankly Zeit/Vercel's visibility into what is going on is just abysmal. And FWIW we now have several projects running on serverless -- using Next.js -- on AWS. Using the severless component, it requires NO special considerations and could easily be redeployed on a standard server in minutes. No vendor lock in, funny how that worked out? I expected to be locked in on AWS serverless. That didn't happen.
The icing on the cake was when they didn't officially deprecate v1, but made it so unstable, so unusable, that I got to the point of spending DAYS per week deploying and redeploying and redeploying our docker containers because their servers would randomly decide that the hosting server no longer had a network connection. If I see E_AGAIN one more time I'm going to spit.
And then they upped the price from $20/mo that we were paying for 4 containers, to $150. Thanks guys.
It left such a bad taste in my mouth that I spent a day, redid everything to deploy on AWS EB, and haven't looked back since. That was the LEAST amount of time I'd spent on that, in a given week, for about a 4 month period prior. To be fair, the guy running Zeit/Vercel's support is pretty solid. He did try to be helpful.
My experience with the technical leadership has been left lacking. We tried several times to contribute to Next.js and were treated like idiot children because how dare we trample on their kingdom. If you're not a tech bro, stay in your lane!
Look I'm just sharing my experience over there. It has been roundly negative. I'm sure others can come with anecdotes of it being roundly positive, good for you. Mine is just another anecdote but it's the only insight I have.
Although, the 1500+ comment thread on Spectrum when they announced v2 strongly suggests I'm not alone.
Now v1 was such an awesome abstraction, I was inspired to recreate the CLI on top of Kubernetes, to avoid any vendor lock-in. I also needed v1 capabilities like websocket support that went away with the v2 lambdas. This CLI utility has support for a few major cloud Kubernetes providers.
https://github.com/snowjs/cli
https://github.com/snowjs/cli
Concur, if you're looking for a replacement for the old Now v1, snowjs is a great option. Haven't used it extensively since we moved away from Now, but when I was investigating alternatives I came across this and gave it a go and was very pleased.
Ultimately we went another way but it is a solid project.
Ultimately we went another way but it is a solid project.
Oh damn. This is awesome, will have to give it a go.
This looks great!
I honestly don't understand this fetishization of "serverless" functions. It leads to so much vendor lock-in, tooling complexity, and straight-up lack of features.
I think there are legitimate use cases. E.g., I needed to help somebody with a little glue between Twilio and a SaaS tool. It was really nice to take a couple of functions, turn them into endpoints, and know that Amazon was going to worry about keeping them always available.
I agree it's so far wildly overblown, but I get that too. A lot of people are scared by ops, and "serverless" promises they don't have to think about it. For those of us comfortable with ops, even the name is an obvious lie. But for people who just have some code they want to run, getting it usefully deployed is still too hard.
Right now I feel like we're in a transitional era. The old model of individual single-purpose or multi-purpose servers is obviously inadequate. "Virtual server" is like "horseless carriage"; we know that the old paradigm is wrong, but we haven't found the new one. There are lots of contenders, but it seems like none of them have nailed it. The similar era for automobiles was circa 1900, where steam, electric, and internal combustion were all duking it out, with dozens of small manufacturers. I'll be very interested to see what we consolidate around.
I agree it's so far wildly overblown, but I get that too. A lot of people are scared by ops, and "serverless" promises they don't have to think about it. For those of us comfortable with ops, even the name is an obvious lie. But for people who just have some code they want to run, getting it usefully deployed is still too hard.
Right now I feel like we're in a transitional era. The old model of individual single-purpose or multi-purpose servers is obviously inadequate. "Virtual server" is like "horseless carriage"; we know that the old paradigm is wrong, but we haven't found the new one. There are lots of contenders, but it seems like none of them have nailed it. The similar era for automobiles was circa 1900, where steam, electric, and internal combustion were all duking it out, with dozens of small manufacturers. I'll be very interested to see what we consolidate around.
[deleted]
For me as a noob with very simple requirements, it’s very refreshing not having to care where and how my server code runs. Just add to a repo, push and forget. And if my code is written against some simple HTTP request interface, there shouldn’t be much trouble to move it elsewhere.
So, where do you host? What data store do you use?
Last thing we needed was a simple unsubscribe service for a database hosted on AirTable, a few lines of code. It totally makes sense to me to host such glue on Now.
I've recently had a simple requirement. To build a site with content gated behind a paywall.
There's no way to have SSR'd gated content without paying a gazillion bucks to either netlify or next for role-based redirects.
Even if I would go for CSR'd content for the gated part, I'd have to fiddle with JWT tokens.
To handle users, I'd have to use a 3rd party service such as oauth, since zeit doesn't support users, and netlify's model is severely limited.
For a CMS, I'd have to again go for a subscription model.
Data and APIs are also another issue. There is no way to use something like Strapi since that needs to have a real DB behind it.
Now, to orchestrate the users for role-base redirects, oauth, payment gateaway data and everything else... I've no idea where to even start.
There's no way to have SSR'd gated content without paying a gazillion bucks to either netlify or next for role-based redirects.
Even if I would go for CSR'd content for the gated part, I'd have to fiddle with JWT tokens.
To handle users, I'd have to use a 3rd party service such as oauth, since zeit doesn't support users, and netlify's model is severely limited.
For a CMS, I'd have to again go for a subscription model.
Data and APIs are also another issue. There is no way to use something like Strapi since that needs to have a real DB behind it.
Now, to orchestrate the users for role-base redirects, oauth, payment gateaway data and everything else... I've no idea where to even start.
Don't. Just use a real backend. btw, Hasura can work with Google cloud run and heroku. Check it out. It's similar to strapi.
Nhost (https://nhost.io/) is another option for Hasura.
have you used this in production ? any recco ?
Wouldn't WordPress with a couple of plugins solve the content with a paywall problem in about 15 minutes?
I'm not asking that flippantly. And I know there are plenty of reasons not to use WP, so I apologize if this is a dumb question.
It just seems like WP might solve that particular problem for you without much work. And it solves other problems too, like managing users and tracking revision history for every piece of content.
I think Digital Ocean has a one click setup for WordPress. WP isn't my favorite software to work with as a developer, but I use it when it's the right took for the job because for the most part, I've been able to deploy it and forget about it because it has just kept chugging along and getting the job done without any intervention from me.
I'm not asking that flippantly. And I know there are plenty of reasons not to use WP, so I apologize if this is a dumb question.
It just seems like WP might solve that particular problem for you without much work. And it solves other problems too, like managing users and tracking revision history for every piece of content.
I think Digital Ocean has a one click setup for WordPress. WP isn't my favorite software to work with as a developer, but I use it when it's the right took for the job because for the most part, I've been able to deploy it and forget about it because it has just kept chugging along and getting the job done without any intervention from me.
I use Wordpress for many clients because it's the simplest solution that also ensure they can find other developers to take over if I'm not there.
Wordpress is a dumpster fire and I hate it with a passion, though. Like, viscerally, almost as much as I dislike Drupal and Joomla. I'd use the term PTSD but that strikes me as insensitive.
But I still use it for many clients, because it's the simplest, easiest solution that other (and crucially, cheap!) developers can take over when I'm not there anymore.
Wordpress is a dumpster fire and I hate it with a passion, though. Like, viscerally, almost as much as I dislike Drupal and Joomla. I'd use the term PTSD but that strikes me as insensitive.
But I still use it for many clients, because it's the simplest, easiest solution that other (and crucially, cheap!) developers can take over when I'm not there anymore.
I don’t know if this would meet your needs, but I recently built a gated static site for personal use using Gatsby + Firebase for Auth and Hosting. Firebase Auth took 10 minutes to set up. I didn’t need a DB but I will use Firestore if needed in the future. All of it was quite easy and enjoyable to do.
Ghost? They recent rolled out inbuilt memberships. Wont work if you are selling one time access though.
You trade known deployment problems for unknown infra management problems. You reduce the complexity of contribution significantly.
If you’re at a company that wants to manage K8s, and you’ve chosen to invest in that direction, then serverless doesn’t make a lot of sense.
If your customers aren’t buying compute, then you should be wary of large investments that are outside your core focus.
Sure, there are quite a few problems with lambdas. But the abstraction you’re working at is much more atomic. And you don’t need FTEs to manage K8s and introduce a completely new set of problems.
Less is more (is the argument).
If you’re at a company that wants to manage K8s, and you’ve chosen to invest in that direction, then serverless doesn’t make a lot of sense.
If your customers aren’t buying compute, then you should be wary of large investments that are outside your core focus.
Sure, there are quite a few problems with lambdas. But the abstraction you’re working at is much more atomic. And you don’t need FTEs to manage K8s and introduce a completely new set of problems.
Less is more (is the argument).
You don't need serverless/FaaS for that. PaaS has existed for a long time, and many providers will now let you run any container image which is a lot more portable than custom frameworks. Zeit v1 actually did this.
I built an ETL on top of AWS Lambda.
I had to pull data from Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest on a schedule - once an hour. The pipeline took about 3 minutes to run. I used a CloudEvent cron to kick it off, a few lambdas, stored the raw data in S3, had another lambda massage that data, stored the final data into S3, and put a message into SQS letting my OLTP system know that it could bring it in.
Worked great. Were there other ways to build it? Sure. Could have done it on the same hosts that my OLTP system was running on. But the amount of memory it used for that 3 minutes doubled the amount that was needed on the host normally. Yes I could have optimized it. But my time was better spent figuring out other issues (I was sole developer on the project). So I just broke it into a bunch of different parts and kicked up to Lambda. Worked great. Never had any issues with it. Never worried about not having resources. I think it cost .2 to .8 USD each run? So ~600 USD a month at the high end. And it took me less than a day to break it up and get it running vs who knows how long to optimize.
So it definitely solved a problem I had in a very efficient way, and allowed me to speed it up just by spending money.
I had to pull data from Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest on a schedule - once an hour. The pipeline took about 3 minutes to run. I used a CloudEvent cron to kick it off, a few lambdas, stored the raw data in S3, had another lambda massage that data, stored the final data into S3, and put a message into SQS letting my OLTP system know that it could bring it in.
Worked great. Were there other ways to build it? Sure. Could have done it on the same hosts that my OLTP system was running on. But the amount of memory it used for that 3 minutes doubled the amount that was needed on the host normally. Yes I could have optimized it. But my time was better spent figuring out other issues (I was sole developer on the project). So I just broke it into a bunch of different parts and kicked up to Lambda. Worked great. Never had any issues with it. Never worried about not having resources. I think it cost .2 to .8 USD each run? So ~600 USD a month at the high end. And it took me less than a day to break it up and get it running vs who knows how long to optimize.
So it definitely solved a problem I had in a very efficient way, and allowed me to speed it up just by spending money.
To offer another perspective... I've migrated services to/from Now v2 (never used v1). While recently moving a Go service off (to a regular server) all that was changed was some bash that executed in a pre-deploy hook and the `now` command was swapped for a `scp`. `sed 's/package main/package handler/g'`. Of course, this is much simpler if the services are created with migration in mind.
I like to think of the builder options put in the `now.json` file as I would a webpack config.
I like to think of the builder options put in the `now.json` file as I would a webpack config.
people are in love with engineering but not shipping paid products. a rails | django | laravel developer is busy shipping. while someone is busy developing 1000s microservices. n that's before the complexity of react, redux n graphql
> It leads to so much vendor lock-in
Only if your chosen vendor designed for that lock-in. Google Cloud Run is serverless that just runs whatever container serving HTTP you throw at it, no "lambda functions" needed.
Only if your chosen vendor designed for that lock-in. Google Cloud Run is serverless that just runs whatever container serving HTTP you throw at it, no "lambda functions" needed.
No horse in this race, but isn't "serverless" via containers on AWS done with Fargate?
Serverless is just zoomer Common Gateway Interface for venture capitalists
Same here. Migration path to Heroku was easier than migration path to Zeit v2, and Heroku hasn't fucked me over by forcing me to migrate to an entirely new model yet.
I also went to Heroku. Icing on the cake was when I discovered that even on Heroku's free plan, we were getting significantly better performance than on Zeit's paid plan. Response times were more stable and had far less latency. Made me really happy and almost made it worth the frustration of having to migrate in the first place. Almost. Heroku has definitely improved over the years.
I might be missing something. How does this compare with netlify which I've been using sometime as my 'heroku' for static sites? With that I'm also getting the ability to post-process things, use lambda functions, even get get forms for free (up to a point) which is needed for almost every site. It also provides slick DNS. Has worked wonders with gulp/jekyll/etc builds. This does seem to do all of that with the exception of forms.
If this is just another choice that's good. Perhaps it's faster? I've deployed using zeit and it is a really smooth process but not much different than netlify's build that works with a git push. Either way, congrats on the funding!
Disclaimer: I don't work for netlify, though I did interview with them awhile back.
If this is just another choice that's good. Perhaps it's faster? I've deployed using zeit and it is a really smooth process but not much different than netlify's build that works with a git push. Either way, congrats on the funding!
Disclaimer: I don't work for netlify, though I did interview with them awhile back.
Main difference with Vercel / ZEIT is that unlike Netlify, it can more easily have SSR pages.
So like if you're using NextJS for instance, on Netlify you can only really use the static site generation features of NextJS, whereas with Vercel you have SSR pages as well as the API functions.
Also Vercel _can_ do full standard servers if needed, including for NodeJS https://vercel.com/docs/runtimes#advanced-usage/advanced-nod... or Python https://vercel.com/docs/runtimes#advanced-usage/advanced-pyt...
So like if you're using NextJS for instance, on Netlify you can only really use the static site generation features of NextJS, whereas with Vercel you have SSR pages as well as the API functions.
Also Vercel _can_ do full standard servers if needed, including for NodeJS https://vercel.com/docs/runtimes#advanced-usage/advanced-nod... or Python https://vercel.com/docs/runtimes#advanced-usage/advanced-pyt...
Vercel CEO here. We are incredibly delighted to bring the new brand to the world and share the news of our funding.
For everyone who's been on this journey with us so far, thank you, and we look forward to a lot more!
For everyone who's been on this journey with us so far, thank you, and we look forward to a lot more!
Gotta flip that triangle icon tho..
curious why was the name Zeit not preferred?
It's a German word and the name of one of Germany's biggest newspapers, and probably part of the name of dozens of businesses in all kinds of industries in Germany.
Using a made-up brand name is the standard way to avoid potential trademark conflicts, and at the same time be more easily findable via Google.
Using a made-up brand name is the standard way to avoid potential trademark conflicts, and at the same time be more easily findable via Google.
Yeah, not having your name instantly googleable in Germany (a big economy with a lot of developers) is probably a hindrance. Not to mention how stupid it would be to use in a sentence, imagine calling your product "Time", and a developer says e.g. "we're having issues with time.."
A lot of products sound stupid when used in a sentence before you get used to them.
We're having issues with zoom...
We're having issues with chrome...
We're having issues with word...
We're having issues with zoom...
We're having issues with chrome...
We're having issues with word...
The less nonsensical the word in context, the more confusing it is though. Do you dispute that "we're having issues with time" is much more vague and overloaded, than "we're having issues with zoom"?
A camera developer might find "having issues with zoom" as confusing as a dev dealing with timezones finds "having issues with time". Everyone has a different context that may make your name confusing to them.
[flagged]
[deleted]
Nazis used the German language, surprising.
Who cares. He was a philosopher and a interesting one. That’s like not reading Ezra Pound’s poetry even though it’s some of the best of all time.
American post-war propaganda did a number on you if you’re that whipped. Nietzsche (another German, oh no!) calls that the slave morality.
How will the investors recoup their investment? What are Vercel users going to give up to please your new overlords?
Vercel charges money for a service: https://vercel.com/pricing
That was from before the service raised external money. Something must give, and you Steve of all developers understand this equation well.
[deleted]
"Jamstack" has to be the worst name for an architecture ever. "Javascript", "APIs", and "markup"... uhhh you mean like what the entire web already runs on?
It stands for "Just Attempt Moving" off of our hosted service.
The goal was also probably (re)branding.
I'm a huge fan of Zeit/Vercel's products and design. I've interacted with their team on a few occasions and they've always been nice. Plus, their mechanical keyboard is super cool... [0]
I absolutely loved the name "Zeit", although I've read in this thread that it could have branding/SEO issues. I'm hoping Vercel will grow on me – right now, it sounds like a combination of "incel", "Verizon", and maybe some kind of geriatric medicine.
[0]: https://vercel.com/keyboard
I absolutely loved the name "Zeit", although I've read in this thread that it could have branding/SEO issues. I'm hoping Vercel will grow on me – right now, it sounds like a combination of "incel", "Verizon", and maybe some kind of geriatric medicine.
[0]: https://vercel.com/keyboard
[deleted]
As someone who has been involved in many branding projects, it is amusing to see all the negative commentary on the rebrand. This is human nature 101. Everyone always hates rebrands. In fact I am willing to bet that the executives who eventually bought into this new name also hated the new name when they heard it.
Whenever we presented a new name to a company that wanted to be rebranded, we always asked them not to provide any feedback on the name until they had given it a day or two to sink in. Almost invariably the feedback was, “I hated it when I first heard it, but it has really grown on me.”
Examples of names that would be very easy to criticize on first hearing that have become incredibly successful brands abound. Google is a stupid and juvenile-sounding name. Now it’s a verb. I won’t waste your time with more examples.
Whenever we presented a new name to a company that wanted to be rebranded, we always asked them not to provide any feedback on the name until they had given it a day or two to sink in. Almost invariably the feedback was, “I hated it when I first heard it, but it has really grown on me.”
Examples of names that would be very easy to criticize on first hearing that have become incredibly successful brands abound. Google is a stupid and juvenile-sounding name. Now it’s a verb. I won’t waste your time with more examples.
Related: ConvertKit rebranded to seva and then fairly promptly rolled the decision back based on customer feedback. https://convertkit.com/staying-convertkit gives details. I was pleased at the reversion, though for completely different reasons: I think the rebrand was foolish purely because it went from a memorable name with meaning (even if that meaning didn’t exactly match the purpose for all of their customers) to a four-letter word that’s meaningless to most people and says nothing at all about the company or product.
wow, i wasnt even aware of that rebrand. seva sounds so awful, whereas im already super invested in the ConvertKit story. good reversal of decision there.
As a person who has never heard neither ConvertKit nor Seva, both sound absolutely equal to me. 0 preference as a passer-by.
What value is there in renaming anything? You've said that out that "Google is a stupid and juvenile-sounding name." but you imply it doesn't matter - so what's the point?
Isn't rebranding what companies do when they run out of ideas (one of my old employers changed its name at least 3 times because... why? I doubt they have a viable product yet. A name change isn't going to help).
Isn't rebranding what companies do when they run out of ideas (one of my old employers changed its name at least 3 times because... why? I doubt they have a viable product yet. A name change isn't going to help).
Pure speculation but: "Zeit" is a super common German word. So if you want to protect your brand internationally but there's a major newspaper in one of the biggest economies that is also called exactly "Zeit" - that's kind of bad. Vercel is much more unique. You can't get https://twitter.com/zeit because it's the newspaper. You can't get zeit.de because it's the newspaper. You could get zeit.com but you'd compete with the newspaper for it. Picking a brand that doesn't have as much baggage could be convenient down the line.
> What value is there in renaming anything? You've said that out that "Google is a stupid and juvenile-sounding name." but you imply it doesn't matter - so what's the point?
To be clear, my sentence was slightly syntactically incorrect: what I meant was, "Google is a stupid- and juvenile-sounding name." It's not a stupid name, but it is stupid-sounding, at least until you get used to it. But it's far from a stupid name. For instance: it's spelled the way it sounds, it's memorable, and it sounds like a verb. Those are all pluses, and yes, they matter.
I once worked for a company called Internet Enterprises. Terrible name. It sounds like a shell company with dusty offices on a service road off a highway.
I once owned a design agency called factor[e] design initiative (I didn't found it or name it). Poor brand story: the "e" was chosen because at the time (late 90s) "e" was like "i" from a few years ago. No other good reason. It was spelled all lower-case, like e. e. cummings (annoying for a company). It had weird punctuation marks in it. And how do you pronounce it? I would commonly hear "factory" or "factor-E" (correct). I used to joke it was "fac-TOR-ay" (say that with an Italian accent).
A few years in, we rebranded to Parallel. Much better: regular spelling and capitalization, dictionary word and a good brand story (alignment / working "in parallel" with clients, etc.) At times, in conversations with clients, they would inadvertently use the brand: "We'd like to work in parallel with you..."
This stuff matters—a lot! It's easier to attract customers and employees with a great brand. And the brand provides a consistent touch point - a "north star" if you will - for what the company stands for.
To be clear, my sentence was slightly syntactically incorrect: what I meant was, "Google is a stupid- and juvenile-sounding name." It's not a stupid name, but it is stupid-sounding, at least until you get used to it. But it's far from a stupid name. For instance: it's spelled the way it sounds, it's memorable, and it sounds like a verb. Those are all pluses, and yes, they matter.
I once worked for a company called Internet Enterprises. Terrible name. It sounds like a shell company with dusty offices on a service road off a highway.
I once owned a design agency called factor[e] design initiative (I didn't found it or name it). Poor brand story: the "e" was chosen because at the time (late 90s) "e" was like "i" from a few years ago. No other good reason. It was spelled all lower-case, like e. e. cummings (annoying for a company). It had weird punctuation marks in it. And how do you pronounce it? I would commonly hear "factory" or "factor-E" (correct). I used to joke it was "fac-TOR-ay" (say that with an Italian accent).
A few years in, we rebranded to Parallel. Much better: regular spelling and capitalization, dictionary word and a good brand story (alignment / working "in parallel" with clients, etc.) At times, in conversations with clients, they would inadvertently use the brand: "We'd like to work in parallel with you..."
This stuff matters—a lot! It's easier to attract customers and employees with a great brand. And the brand provides a consistent touch point - a "north star" if you will - for what the company stands for.
To run from a bad reputation
To expand in to a market that already has a well known company by that name
Hard to rank for it for search purposes
Brand is about a specific niche that you want to expand out of
To expand in to a market that already has a well known company by that name
Hard to rank for it for search purposes
Brand is about a specific niche that you want to expand out of
There are various types of rebranding that may or may not involve renaming. However, with respect to renaming specifically, it often also comes about because your company name now bears no relationship to what you actually do.
To take a random example from a past life, NL Industries used to be the Nation Lead Company but, while they still have some involvement in pigments, they don't actually do anything related to lead any more AFAIK. (This is a major reason companies switch from a descriptive name to just some letters.)
To take a random example from a past life, NL Industries used to be the Nation Lead Company but, while they still have some involvement in pigments, they don't actually do anything related to lead any more AFAIK. (This is a major reason companies switch from a descriptive name to just some letters.)
After the renaming you mentioned of NL, was there any lasting measurable business effect such as change in turnover, profit, new customers, anything at all?
I have no idea. They did it decades ago.
I will say that it's easy to say that none of this stuff matters at all. And it's very hard to quantify among a zillion other variables. Is it crucial in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. But things like brand awareness and brand perception can matter--at least at the margins.
I will say that it's easy to say that none of this stuff matters at all. And it's very hard to quantify among a zillion other variables. Is it crucial in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. But things like brand awareness and brand perception can matter--at least at the margins.
>Isn't rebranding what companies do when they run out of ideas (one of my old employers changed its name at least 3 times because... why?
This is what I figure. That or they want people to forget about lousy things they've done. Dunno if it was ever true, but hearing the rumour that Kentucky fried chicken switched to KFC to avoid being associated with fried chicken and the health issues surrounding trans fats that were a big deal at the time sort of stuck with me.
Personally, I'd trust the company that's kept the same boring name for a decade over one that's renamed themselves several times in the same period.
This is what I figure. That or they want people to forget about lousy things they've done. Dunno if it was ever true, but hearing the rumour that Kentucky fried chicken switched to KFC to avoid being associated with fried chicken and the health issues surrounding trans fats that were a big deal at the time sort of stuck with me.
Personally, I'd trust the company that's kept the same boring name for a decade over one that's renamed themselves several times in the same period.
Yeah, a rebranding will always sound weird at first. The question is whether the upside is better in the long-term - time will tell. Vercel does sound good (though does sound close to parcel for me and also reads like vermicelli a bit).
For "Zeit" I am biased, since I speak German and it translates to "time" (and there's a large circulation newspaper called "Zeit"... well, actually "Die Zeit" which reads funny in English - but actually fits for this rebranding :-) ).
When "Open BC" (Germany's LinkedIn, BC stands for Business Club) renamed itself to "Xing" 14 years ago, it felt really weird to me. Though I think by now most people on the Xing platform won't even remember the old name. And in 5 years time, people who weren't even born when it was rebranded will start joining the platform.
For "Zeit" I am biased, since I speak German and it translates to "time" (and there's a large circulation newspaper called "Zeit"... well, actually "Die Zeit" which reads funny in English - but actually fits for this rebranding :-) ).
When "Open BC" (Germany's LinkedIn, BC stands for Business Club) renamed itself to "Xing" 14 years ago, it felt really weird to me. Though I think by now most people on the Xing platform won't even remember the old name. And in 5 years time, people who weren't even born when it was rebranded will start joining the platform.
>For "Zeit" I am biased
Biased which way, did you think it was good or bad?
Biased which way, did you think it was good or bad?
Neither, really. Just for me it has a meaning already. Like if a service is called "Time" or "Hour". It's not bad or good, I just already associated with something else.
Hmmm, perhaps they had a trademark issue in Germany? That explains a rebrand cleanly. Of course they did.
Hm, not sure how big of an issue that could be. Though, yes, it might pop up sometime in the future. Similar to Apple - "Apple Corps (owned by Beatles) vs. Apple Computer": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
"As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business, and Apple Corps agreed not to enter the computer business."
"As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business, and Apple Corps agreed not to enter the computer business."
My personal opinion is that every great company can have one re-brand in their lifetime, and many have. To name a few: BackRub, Cadabra, Doorbot, Justin.tv
For what little it’s worth, I’d never heard either name before and I think they are both terrible.
Yes but that doesn't mean Vercel is a good name either.
But what if this one specifically is a bad rebranding?
[deleted]
It's one day later now, and "Vercel" is still a stupid name!
Honest questions, which rebranding you know worked? I mean, really.... I get the idea and even agree with it. It is just very hard to do it well.
Is Google a rebrand?
The software was named Backrub, before they started the company. I wouldn't call it a rebrand, since they never used that as a company name. Almost every product has a pre-release name that was never used as a brand.
BackRub
I had a ton of trouble getting a simple gatsby.js website running on Zeit. Kept getting useless error messages that were impossible to debug.
Tried Netlify and it worked without any changes to my code. The Zeit UI might be slicker, but it definitely isn't easier to use imo.
Tried Netlify and it worked without any changes to my code. The Zeit UI might be slicker, but it definitely isn't easier to use imo.
I always found the name incredible confusing since there is a major German newspaper called ZEIT: https://www.zeit.de/
I wonder whether the rebrand is because of that. If they want to operate in Germany the new name is definitely better.
I wonder whether the rebrand is because of that. If they want to operate in Germany the new name is definitely better.
Odd for them to change branding when zeit is so well known everywhere. And given their products have simple and non googleable names, people have been tagging now and next with zeit so it's googleable.
Good to see free personal plan tho.
Good to see free personal plan tho.
Does anyone not directly involved in this kind of tech struggle to understand 'what on earth it does'? I understand vaguely from the marketing copy, but it's still pretty fuzzy.
Here is their front page copy:
"Develop. Preview. Ship. Vercel is the optimal workflow for frontend teams. All-in-one: Static and Jamstack deployment, Serverless Functions, and Global CDN."
This doesn't really say a whole lot.
Then we have these little bits:
"Zero config Works out of the box with any web framework."
Great, but what is it, and what does it do?
"instant static deploys Push to Git and your website is live. Zero configuration required."
So this is starting to make some sense - does this mean this technology will grab my github changes to push specific files to where I've hosted them? They ask me to 'import a project' and yet I have idea what that means.
Here is the 'intro' in docs: [1]
"Vercel is a cloud platform for static sites and Serverless Functions that fits perfectly with your workflow. It enables developers to host Jamstack websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and requires no supervision, all with no configuration."
That explains next to nothing.
Terminology like 'Jamstack' is still very new and niche, I suggest outside of certain bubbles, very few people understand what that means, so the site is using language that is foreign to most readers. This is not going to work very well.
...
It would be nice to think I'm a little slow, but I don't think I am - I think a large portion of today's marketing and communications is a little rubbish: it fails to explain within any reasonable detail 'what it is, what it does, why I would want it' and provide ultra-basic 'hello world' examples that explain the nature of the system.
This is a problem.
There are new techs released every day, I'm tired of struggling through weird non-explanations of various platforms just to get the basic idea of even what it does, this is something companies should focus on.
[1] https://vercel.com/docs
Here is their front page copy:
"Develop. Preview. Ship. Vercel is the optimal workflow for frontend teams. All-in-one: Static and Jamstack deployment, Serverless Functions, and Global CDN."
This doesn't really say a whole lot.
Then we have these little bits:
"Zero config Works out of the box with any web framework."
Great, but what is it, and what does it do?
"instant static deploys Push to Git and your website is live. Zero configuration required."
So this is starting to make some sense - does this mean this technology will grab my github changes to push specific files to where I've hosted them? They ask me to 'import a project' and yet I have idea what that means.
Here is the 'intro' in docs: [1]
"Vercel is a cloud platform for static sites and Serverless Functions that fits perfectly with your workflow. It enables developers to host Jamstack websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and requires no supervision, all with no configuration."
That explains next to nothing.
Terminology like 'Jamstack' is still very new and niche, I suggest outside of certain bubbles, very few people understand what that means, so the site is using language that is foreign to most readers. This is not going to work very well.
...
It would be nice to think I'm a little slow, but I don't think I am - I think a large portion of today's marketing and communications is a little rubbish: it fails to explain within any reasonable detail 'what it is, what it does, why I would want it' and provide ultra-basic 'hello world' examples that explain the nature of the system.
This is a problem.
There are new techs released every day, I'm tired of struggling through weird non-explanations of various platforms just to get the basic idea of even what it does, this is something companies should focus on.
[1] https://vercel.com/docs
Congrats on the funding, but I'd like to know what prompted the name change. ZEIT sounded mysterious and edgy, while Vercel sounds like a company selling expensive handbags (to me).
The name change makes a lot of sense to me, tactically (no matter what you think of the new name).
ZEIT is associated with full-stack hosting including backend servers, which they no longer want to focus on to. To solidify their pivot to frontend hosting in their users mind, they rename to strip all previous connotations from their brand.
ZEIT is associated with full-stack hosting including backend servers, which they no longer want to focus on to. To solidify their pivot to frontend hosting in their users mind, they rename to strip all previous connotations from their brand.
Names are like colors and shapes, and their new one doesn't really indicate that they're innovators. Zeit was cool because german names in tech are quite rare, it was showing that they did things differently. Vercel sounds like a lame web 1.0 thing, it's more rigid, rolls way harder off the tongue.
Focusing on backend servers or not is just a implementation detail as a hosting company that want's you to not care about the underlying tech, the name itself is way more important at their size.
Focusing on backend servers or not is just a implementation detail as a hosting company that want's you to not care about the underlying tech, the name itself is way more important at their size.
[deleted]
EDIT: Not sure why, but from the article:
> Vercel strongly connects to the words versatile, accelerate, and excel.
> Vercel strongly connects to the words versatile, accelerate, and excel.
Self-delusional marketingspeak. To me 'Vercel' sounds like a brand of cheap batteries.
And to me it sounds like a plasma-physics simulation package running on supercomputers.
\shrug\
\shrug\
Batteries is what came to my mind. Like Duracell.
Sounds boring and enterprisey to me.
I connected it to none of those words. Instead, I connected it to a) some kind of telephone company that is dodgy b) incels.
Vercel sounds like something about vermin and incels.
Lmao... this is what I heard when I read the word the first time too. "Incel..?"
That's just marketing speak. It doesn't actually explain why they changed their name.
I mean it’s a complete and total wild ass guess but the obvious reason to change one’s name is if you’ve identified another entity that is using that name in a way which could prevent you from global exclusive use of the brand.
It’s the kind of thing that could easily have come up in due diligence for the large recent investment.
It’s the kind of thing that could easily have come up in due diligence for the large recent investment.
Doing a quick search of TESS2 for trademarks look they already have the trademark registered for ZEIT (registered in 2017). So it was probably for other reasons. Which is a shame, because Zeit is very concise, easy to remember, and has a strong brand today - at least with their initial audience.
Sounds like they're trying to go for a more corporate customer with their new name.
Sounds like they're trying to go for a more corporate customer with their new name.
It’s a big world out there.
Yeah but that's why they chose Vercel not why the name ZEIT had to be changed in the first place
That's not the "reason" though, that's the rationalization
To me, it sounds like a medication.
Nextjs is most likely going to be the new Ruby on Rails. javascript all the way down, static rendering, PWA, server side rendering...everything baked in.
This is a big backing for Next.
However rebranding to Vercel is bad.
This is a big backing for Next.
However rebranding to Vercel is bad.
That's the objective of Blitz.js [1]: build on top of Next.js for a rails-like experience, but made by an independent open-source community.
[1] https://blitzjs.com/ - https://github.com/blitz-js/blitz
[1] https://blitzjs.com/ - https://github.com/blitz-js/blitz
Pretty slick!
I thought about making "higher level" frameworks by combining "lower level" frameworks myself.
How did you do it? I mean, it's not just wrapping the libraries, but also the CLIs.
I thought about making "higher level" frameworks by combining "lower level" frameworks myself.
How did you do it? I mean, it's not just wrapping the libraries, but also the CLIs.
[deleted]
This is very cool.
One suggestion - I highly recommend you mention that you're leveraging nextjs. There is a certain buy-in that nextjs has that would be hard elsewhere.
In fact I would say that I would totally pay an annual subscription for this (even on "starter marketplaces" like themeforest).
One suggestion - I highly recommend you mention that you're leveraging nextjs. There is a certain buy-in that nextjs has that would be hard elsewhere.
In fact I would say that I would totally pay an annual subscription for this (even on "starter marketplaces" like themeforest).
This is literally the first listed feature :)
It's not my project, you can probably talk about it with its creator: https://twitter.com/flybayer
That's also the objective of Kretes [1], a programming environment for TypeScript & Node.js (soon Deno) with built-in support for plain SQL and GraphQL
[1]: https://kretes.dev/
[1]: https://kretes.dev/
Ruby on Rails is still the new Ruby on Rails. JS solutions still need another five years to catch up, unfortunately.
What do you feel like JS solutions are still missing?
Ruby on Rails is opinionated. JavaScript is the exact opposite.
The data access layer in JS leaves a lot to be desired (especially compared to Rails)
React almost felt like a winner for single page apps, but there was never a great "flux" pattern to use, and now they've completely ruined that ecosystem with Hooks.
Also SPA's have become so big and bloated it's time to go back to something that you can build progressive web apps with like jQuery.
The data access layer in JS leaves a lot to be desired (especially compared to Rails)
React almost felt like a winner for single page apps, but there was never a great "flux" pattern to use, and now they've completely ruined that ecosystem with Hooks.
Also SPA's have become so big and bloated it's time to go back to something that you can build progressive web apps with like jQuery.
Agreed. I've shipped projects in ASP.Net MVC, Rails, Django, Grails, and Express, and to paraphrase Alan Kay[1], NextJS is the first javascript server-side framework worth criticizing.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab...
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab...
I've been a customer for 3 years. `now` has felt like such a great evolution of the Heroku experience, which seemed to stop evolving after it got acquired by Salesforce.
Zeit focused on all types of applications when it started, not just static frontend and FaaS. I wish it would return to supporting apps beyond JAMstack.
Zeit focused on all types of applications when it started, not just static frontend and FaaS. I wish it would return to supporting apps beyond JAMstack.
Python works great on Now once you figure out how to deploy it there.
The lack of detailed documentation around Python does make me nervous that they may drop support for it some day though.
My notes on running a Python app on Now v2: https://github.com/simonw/til/blob/master/zeit-now/python-as...
The lack of detailed documentation around Python does make me nervous that they may drop support for it some day though.
My notes on running a Python app on Now v2: https://github.com/simonw/til/blob/master/zeit-now/python-as...
Yeah they had Go support and yanked it. I don't use go but was surprised. Seems like at times they are hoping to be all things to everyone and at times trying to be really focused (although we might disagree with where they are focusing).
Wait, they don't support Go? It advertises that on their pricing page... https://vercel.com/pricing
And it's listed in their support docs here... https://vercel.com/docs/runtimes#official-runtimes
And it's listed in their support docs here... https://vercel.com/docs/runtimes#official-runtimes
Do one for fly.io! :D
Already done! https://github.com/simonw/datasette-publish-fly
They wrote about it on their blog: https://fly.io/blog/making-datasets-fly-with-datasette-and-f...
They wrote about it on their blog: https://fly.io/blog/making-datasets-fly-with-datasette-and-f...
^ The re-brand makes much more sense in this light - a young company that can still only focus on 1 product, needs a name that is associated with their current product, and not now v1 and v2.
But that was not the reason given - strange to cause such confusion.
But that was not the reason given - strange to cause such confusion.
I really liked the zeit brand. Vercel not so much.
I hope that the name grows on me, either way I dont care as long as the tech is great.
Have anyone used both https://redwoodjs.com and Nextjs and share their experience?
ive tried out both. next.js focuses very much on the SSR/SSG job, whereas Redwood both stretches further in front of the stack (with Cells and a Form library) and further back in the stack (with Prisma/GraphQL). next is a lot more mature (5yrs?) whereas redwood is new. that help?
Redwood doesn't hide their tutorial behind an account like Nextjs does, they're more user friendly. And it was impressive how smooth it went considering the underlying complexity of the tech stack.
The Next tutorial is now available without log-in, so the statement above isn't true anymore. Thanks Vercel!
Interested in this, too.
Awesome. I normally work on just web apps but had to build a website recently that had some complex bits in some pages but mainly a marketing site. The experience with nextjs and deploying with zeit was brilliant. Docs are good, everything works well, just an all round good experience. Please don't break it!
A shame they changed the name, I liked "Zeit". The re-branding reminds me of the browser IDE "Hyperdev" which changed to "Gomix" and finally to "Glitch"... Everytime the name changes, people care less... but I'm no businessman
> [1] ...Therefore, all new plans include unlimited Bandwidth, Builds, and Serverless Function Execution
Also, the new pricing is a bit more approachable, when I last looked it seemed a bit expensive for Serverless functions.
[1] https://vercel.com/blog/simpler-pricing
> [1] ...Therefore, all new plans include unlimited Bandwidth, Builds, and Serverless Function Execution
Also, the new pricing is a bit more approachable, when I last looked it seemed a bit expensive for Serverless functions.
[1] https://vercel.com/blog/simpler-pricing
I’m surprised to see so many people nagging about the brand. As one user pointed out, there’s a big newspaper brand with that name already. And otherwise, who cares, really? Same company. It’s not a soccer team.
“We decided to retain our signature triangle logo, although we have simplified it.”
Is this satire? Can’t tell.
Is this satire? Can’t tell.
Same with this:
> Vercel strongly connects to the words versatile, accelerate, and excel.
It also "strongly connects" to the words "vermin" and "decelerate".
> Vercel strongly connects to the words versatile, accelerate, and excel.
It also "strongly connects" to the words "vermin" and "decelerate".
Also, "verizon" and "incel".
It sounds like a new car name. 2020 Toyota Vercel. Wasn't there a model called the Tercel?
Also "vermicelli" (even closer in sound to "вермишель" in Russian) :P
To me it sounds like some corporate pharma company...
sounds like "varicocele"
They removed the gradient present on the full logo (which you sometimes see).
It's not. It was previously considered signature because it was a prism with a gleam on one corner. Post-simplification, I would still consider it signature, but definitely not unique.
I thought the same. I wondered if I was crazy.
one of our clients uses netlify, does anyone have experience with the two platforms and how they compare on price at the enterprise levels?
Vercel/ZEIT is typically a bit cheaper in the long run for popular sites with the fixed costs. If your traffic is really light, then Netlify probably is.
If deploying a Next.js site, it makes sense to deploy on top of the platform made for it (ZEIT/Vercel)
If deploying a Next.js site, it makes sense to deploy on top of the platform made for it (ZEIT/Vercel)
glad you renamed it. The Zeit i know, was able to serve Docker images
Looks like React's originators (Jordan Walk and Pete Hunt) are funders.
Congrats Guillermo and team!
Great to see this company growing :)
I liked Zeit but had to switch because there was no way to get IP addresses to whitelist, so Vercel customers are likely to get hacked, because they’re forced to secure their database with only a password, and no firewall. Apparently you can fix this with an “enterprise” subscription, which is a huge red flag. Open source doesn’t get secure data? Vercel is likely to get hit with huge lawsuits over that, and I’m staying well clear until it’s fixed
What lawsuits? Don't virtually all open-source licenses in existence disclaim any warranty or fitness for a particular purpose?
True, and I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t care about them getting sued, I care about the fact I can’t protect customers’ data if I use Vercel
Can speak first hand that you are right!
Can't you connect via SSL?
Might the name change come from one of lead investors named 'Accel', who wanted to align the name of zeit more with their own brand? Vercel/Accel?
I honestly don't understand why you would do that though, as you just threw one of the most well known brand names in JS ecosystem out of the window.
Doesn’t come from us
I absolutely love the company and am a happy customer, but for the love of time, why give up such a good pun for a name?
(For people not familiar with the german language, zeit means time. And 'time now' is simply an amazing name for a product that enables you to ship, well, now)
(For people not familiar with the german language, zeit means time. And 'time now' is simply an amazing name for a product that enables you to ship, well, now)
What does a rebrand signal? That investors are unhappy and that the founders need to align the brand with the vision...
Or is there a more positive reason to rebrand? I would think you don't rebrand if things are going super well, right?
Or is there a more positive reason to rebrand? I would think you don't rebrand if things are going super well, right?
Other than the practical reasons (Zeit is a common German word) their product and focus has changed quite a bit.
They started as serverless docker and changed to CDN + edge cloud functions to specialized hosting for front end projects.
They started as serverless docker and changed to CDN + edge cloud functions to specialized hosting for front end projects.
congrats team! 21m series A is hefty even before coronavirus. Good to have locked it in.
I've been following this frontend-gets-fullstack-abilities trend for a while. I think Next.js is the best expression of this idea, and is truly the crown jewel of Vercel and also the React ecosystem.
Unlike other React distros like Gatsby or Create-React-App, Next.js is the first "hybrid" framework that lets you choose whether to deploy static or serverless pages on a per page level. This means you can ship features without being locked into app level architectural choices. Even static pages get a "Preview" mode, solving a key pain point for content workflow. (all with the caveat that you must use a hosting setup capable of supporting these features, and naturally Vercel is the best place to do that if you don't want to roll your own). A few months ago Dan Abramov noted[0]:
> The next wave of techniques won’t be about putting everything on the client. Or doing everything on the server. It will let you move code between them without friction, and adjust the tradeoff to the use case. Take advantage of both. The Middle Way.
I see Next.js as the way most of the ecosystem will experience this colocation of client and server concerns.
The other trend I see is that React is continuing to work on integrated client-and-server experiences. (Note: everything I discuss here are experimental projects by the React team, so should not be taken as an official roadmap). React Suspense's introduction [1] was strongly tied to Relay, which introduces a compiler that offers stronger client-server guarantees for working with GraphQL [2]. React Flight will offer streaming server side rendering [3], while React Blocks will offer a generic way to suspend on queries without such strong coupling to GraphQL [4].
I expect that Next.js will also be the first place most React devs experience these improvements (they may be more under the hood by the time it rolls out), and naturally Vercel benefits.
Lastly, it's also fun to speculate on the future of Vercel outside of being "hosted Next.js". Guillermo's blogpost [5] has the appealing tagline "AWS for frontend developers". How many of those great logos that run Next.js is Vercel actually capturing? Is Vercel appealing enough to them that they also host non-Next.js projects with Vercel? Can we view Vercel as a "No Code backend"? Can Vercel deepen its 3rd party integrations to become a true marketplace/aggregator of frontend demand for backend/api services? What, fundamentally, is Vercel selling other than bandwidth, serverless functions, and devops-as-a-service software? Maybe that's plenty.
---
references
0: https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1193001108102373376
1: https://reactjs.org/blog/2019/11/06/building-great-user-expe...
2: https://dev.to/zth/relay-the-graphql-client-that-wants-to-do...
3: https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/dtsi1q/react_fligh...
4: https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1239013168682274816
5: https://rauchg.com/2020/vercel
I've been following this frontend-gets-fullstack-abilities trend for a while. I think Next.js is the best expression of this idea, and is truly the crown jewel of Vercel and also the React ecosystem.
Unlike other React distros like Gatsby or Create-React-App, Next.js is the first "hybrid" framework that lets you choose whether to deploy static or serverless pages on a per page level. This means you can ship features without being locked into app level architectural choices. Even static pages get a "Preview" mode, solving a key pain point for content workflow. (all with the caveat that you must use a hosting setup capable of supporting these features, and naturally Vercel is the best place to do that if you don't want to roll your own). A few months ago Dan Abramov noted[0]:
> The next wave of techniques won’t be about putting everything on the client. Or doing everything on the server. It will let you move code between them without friction, and adjust the tradeoff to the use case. Take advantage of both. The Middle Way.
I see Next.js as the way most of the ecosystem will experience this colocation of client and server concerns.
The other trend I see is that React is continuing to work on integrated client-and-server experiences. (Note: everything I discuss here are experimental projects by the React team, so should not be taken as an official roadmap). React Suspense's introduction [1] was strongly tied to Relay, which introduces a compiler that offers stronger client-server guarantees for working with GraphQL [2]. React Flight will offer streaming server side rendering [3], while React Blocks will offer a generic way to suspend on queries without such strong coupling to GraphQL [4].
I expect that Next.js will also be the first place most React devs experience these improvements (they may be more under the hood by the time it rolls out), and naturally Vercel benefits.
Lastly, it's also fun to speculate on the future of Vercel outside of being "hosted Next.js". Guillermo's blogpost [5] has the appealing tagline "AWS for frontend developers". How many of those great logos that run Next.js is Vercel actually capturing? Is Vercel appealing enough to them that they also host non-Next.js projects with Vercel? Can we view Vercel as a "No Code backend"? Can Vercel deepen its 3rd party integrations to become a true marketplace/aggregator of frontend demand for backend/api services? What, fundamentally, is Vercel selling other than bandwidth, serverless functions, and devops-as-a-service software? Maybe that's plenty.
---
references
0: https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1193001108102373376
1: https://reactjs.org/blog/2019/11/06/building-great-user-expe...
2: https://dev.to/zth/relay-the-graphql-client-that-wants-to-do...
3: https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/dtsi1q/react_fligh...
4: https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1239013168682274816
5: https://rauchg.com/2020/vercel
Congratulations on the funding Guillermo!
Judging by the comments so far, the name change backlash is of unseen-since-Qwikster proportions…
From unbrandable to unpronounceable.
Literally just discovered Zeit, what I liked about it was the ability to choose different run-times, with a generous free tier, with none of the existential baggage of the other PAAS's options out there. Sigh, oh well.
Everything you liked about ZEIT is present in Vercel! You can read more about it in our rebrand field book: https://www.notion.so/Vercel-Launch-1cab2369ab1c4d8db1987b68...
Everything I liked about Zeit was Now v1, so, not really?
It took me awhile to come to terms with the truth that "You are not their target customer." Fair enough.
Except that they built their brand off the backs of people they no longer want using their platform...
Except that they built their brand off the backs of people they no longer want using their platform...
But, even if you were their target customer... Would you feel comfortable using their service, knowing that at least once before they decided their current customers are no longer their target customers, and screwed them all over?
The name "Zeit" was very confusing for Germans. "Zeit" is the regular word for time and there's also a newspaper called "Die ZEIT".
I'm German and I know of no Germans who where confused by their branding.
LOL, really? source? Is Germany a big market for them? Apple is also a regular word... its's the name of a fruit in English
> Is Germany a big market for them?
It's a big market for most internationally operating companies, seems a smart move to take that into account early.
> Apple is also a regular word... its's the name of a fruit in English
And it caused them pretty big problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
I'm sure they've thoroughly vetted "Vercel" against potential trademark conflicts.
It's a big market for most internationally operating companies, seems a smart move to take that into account early.
> Apple is also a regular word... its's the name of a fruit in English
And it caused them pretty big problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
I'm sure they've thoroughly vetted "Vercel" against potential trademark conflicts.
Just great to see how this company grows and produces awesome developer tools, frameworks and platforms to improve the developer and user experience.
Congrats Guillermo!! Vercel is awesome, can't wait to see where you take the business. Keep up the great work.
[deleted]
Congrats Guille .. Vamos!!
I use ZEIT for my side projects now. It is extremely efficient and time saver.
[deleted]
ZEIT always sounded me something from Templars.
Fool me once...
1: https://web.archive.org/web/20181107092845/https://zeit.co/n...
2: https://web.archive.org/web/20181107092845/https://zeit.co/n...