There are some types of legal action that service providers can get, which both force the service provider from droppig you, and also forbid the service provider from telling you why or what has happened. Eg, this happens in banking with SARs; when they drop a client for suspected money laundering, not only can't they tell that to the client, they can't even tell their own support agents.
I don't know anything about your sites or your activities, but based on the behavior described, something like this has probably happened to you.
Which of your products do you view as most likely to have led to the termination?
I don’t mean, which do you agree or consider just cause for leading to it. But as the operator of them, you are best positioned to estimate which one(s) a risk-avoidant corporation would be most likely reacting to, and knowing more about your actual circumstances would be valuable anecdata for others trying to help (as well as those reconsidering Vercel!).
I'm not entirely sure about the cause, but here are some possibilities:
1. I run a SaaS browser extension that lets users export table data from any website. It can bypass some download restrictions, and I’m not sure if this has ever caused complaints.
2. A few months ago, I launched a free expired-domain valuation tool. It identified some high-value domains abandoned by governments and international organizations, as well as domains linked to gambling and scams. I’m not sure if any of this may have breached regulations.
This is one reason why I avoid Next.js. Don't design your future projects around specific platforms. Things happen. Make sure you can pick up your code and go somewhere else.
Edit: Strange I would get so many downvotes for this. Care to explain? I think the effective Next.js lock-in is well documented. Yeah you can technically run it on arbitrary platforms with substantial work and continued maintenance, but you're working against the tide.
>Strange I would get so many downvotes for this. Care to explain?
The terminally online developer cares very much about signaling his love of artisanal webshit. He makes his chosen flavor of the month JavaScript framework, and by extension, the "platform" used to host it, part of his identity. Maybe his favorite mustachioed "influencer" shills it on YouTube with a coupon code for 50% off your first month, or maybe an idol with 700k Twitter followers says it's the framework (and not his fanboys) that makes him $200k monthly passive income from side projects. Branded laptop stickers are a guarantee, maybe even a hoodie. So when he encounters a rational, level-headed observation like yours, he takes it as a jab at his beloved Vercel Inc., benevolent maintainer of Next.js valued at $3.25bn with the best customer support in the industry, and hits "downvote". His job is done.
It seems unlikely.
The CEO of Vercel recently criticized Cloudflare regarding traffic quality issues.
I think Vercel built its entire web hosting business on top of AWS.
There is indeed an upload feature, but users’ avatars, files, and other uploads aren’t shared with the community—they can only be accessed by the users themselves.
What I find hardest to understand is: if there’s an issue with a website, why shut down all of my sites?
User-uploads are the #1 cause of this if the developer is not doing anything otherwise against TOS. Users will upload things you don't expect in ways you don't program for. And the files they upload can be immediately spotted by any big storage provider due to the known file hashes.
So, when you do relaunch with another service provider, I recommend putting all user-uploads on a system that sanitizes/reviews the file before saving and therefore it would never allow a file in with a known hash flag.
The experience you're having is a reason to choose use a hosting provider that allows multiple user account per human/company. (Many providers have a very strict limit of one account per human/business and enforce sub-accounts.)
As you're seeing, an issue on one sub-account or site can sometimes bring down an entire account and all related sites.
Hope you are provided backups, they likely do have them, but you may need a lawyer to get more info and you'd need to get in touch before the typical backups get rolled over/deleted.
There are some types of legal action that service providers can get, which both force the service provider from droppig you, and also forbid the service provider from telling you why or what has happened. Eg, this happens in banking with SARs; when they drop a client for suspected money laundering, not only can't they tell that to the client, they can't even tell their own support agents.
I don't know anything about your sites or your activities, but based on the behavior described, something like this has probably happened to you.
Thanks! I didn’t know any of this—learned something new.
Which of your products do you view as most likely to have led to the termination?
I don’t mean, which do you agree or consider just cause for leading to it. But as the operator of them, you are best positioned to estimate which one(s) a risk-avoidant corporation would be most likely reacting to, and knowing more about your actual circumstances would be valuable anecdata for others trying to help (as well as those reconsidering Vercel!).
I'm not entirely sure about the cause, but here are some possibilities:
1. I run a SaaS browser extension that lets users export table data from any website. It can bypass some download restrictions, and I’m not sure if this has ever caused complaints.
2. A few months ago, I launched a free expired-domain valuation tool. It identified some high-value domains abandoned by governments and international organizations, as well as domains linked to gambling and scams. I’m not sure if any of this may have breached regulations.
This is one reason why I avoid Next.js. Don't design your future projects around specific platforms. Things happen. Make sure you can pick up your code and go somewhere else.
Edit: Strange I would get so many downvotes for this. Care to explain? I think the effective Next.js lock-in is well documented. Yeah you can technically run it on arbitrary platforms with substantial work and continued maintenance, but you're working against the tide.
Next.js was once very useful to me, and now I am converting all my projects to Open NextJs.
>Strange I would get so many downvotes for this. Care to explain?
The terminally online developer cares very much about signaling his love of artisanal webshit. He makes his chosen flavor of the month JavaScript framework, and by extension, the "platform" used to host it, part of his identity. Maybe his favorite mustachioed "influencer" shills it on YouTube with a coupon code for 50% off your first month, or maybe an idol with 700k Twitter followers says it's the framework (and not his fanboys) that makes him $200k monthly passive income from side projects. Branded laptop stickers are a guarantee, maybe even a hoodie. So when he encounters a rational, level-headed observation like yours, he takes it as a jab at his beloved Vercel Inc., benevolent maintainer of Next.js valued at $3.25bn with the best customer support in the industry, and hits "downvote". His job is done.
I agree. There are too many platforms these days that support just uploading a Docker container. You can take those anywhere.
Maybe Vercel is pivoting away from your use case to focus on larger organizations.
Maybe Vercel lost the data.
Maybe Vercel saw a regulatory issue.
My advice is to keep building on a different platform.
Good luck.
Thank you for your concern. Some of the websites have been restored and are now running on Cloudflare.
For what it is worth, according to Wikipedia, Vercel uses Cloudflare.
It seems unlikely. The CEO of Vercel recently criticized Cloudflare regarding traffic quality issues. I think Vercel built its entire web hosting business on top of AWS.
What a disappointment to hear
More and more companies have zero meaningful support when things go sideways
I'm guessing one or more of your sites allowed user-uploads in some fashion or another and someone put a file that is hash-flagged in a serious manner
There is indeed an upload feature, but users’ avatars, files, and other uploads aren’t shared with the community—they can only be accessed by the users themselves.
What I find hardest to understand is: if there’s an issue with a website, why shut down all of my sites?
User-uploads are the #1 cause of this if the developer is not doing anything otherwise against TOS. Users will upload things you don't expect in ways you don't program for. And the files they upload can be immediately spotted by any big storage provider due to the known file hashes.
So, when you do relaunch with another service provider, I recommend putting all user-uploads on a system that sanitizes/reviews the file before saving and therefore it would never allow a file in with a known hash flag.
The experience you're having is a reason to choose use a hosting provider that allows multiple user account per human/company. (Many providers have a very strict limit of one account per human/business and enforce sub-accounts.)
As you're seeing, an issue on one sub-account or site can sometimes bring down an entire account and all related sites.
Hope you are provided backups, they likely do have them, but you may need a lawyer to get more info and you'd need to get in touch before the typical backups get rolled over/deleted.