Vercel is the gold standard for frontend deploys. If you need a preview environment with a real backend and a real database on every branch, here is why teams switch to Nexos.
Netlify mastered static-site deploys and edge functions. If your app needs a real backend, a real database, and a real environment per pull request, Nexos is the alternative that fits.
Railway is a great home for production services with attached databases. Nexos is purpose-built for the branch-preview workflow — one URL per branch, a real database per preview, per-second billing.
Fly gives you full control over VMs, regions, and networking. Nexos gives you zero-ops branch previews that just work. Here is how they differ and when each fits.
Render is a polished Heroku successor with a generous free tier. Its preview-environment story is solid but expensive at scale. Nexos is built specifically for this workflow at a fraction of the cost.
Heroku invented review apps. Fifteen years later, the idea is still great; the pricing and the product around it are not. Nexos is what review apps look like if you build them today.
Most preview platforms share a single database across every branch. Here is why that breaks down at scale, and how per-branch databases change the preview workflow.