Sovereign cells vs Vercel

Name: Aspian Cloud
Brand: Aspian Cloud

Vercel is a frontend cloud with a global edge network, and Aspian Cloud governs Vercel deploys as an integration. This page compares hosting on Vercel with hosting on a sovereign cell, for data that must stay in one country.

Checked on 7 November 2026 against Vercel’s own pages. Prices and features change; follow each source before relying on a row.

Side by side

Our column describes sovereign cells, the optional hosting add-on. Aspian Cloud’s change control works on Vercel too; see integrations.

Where apps run: Vercel
19 compute regions (US, Canada, Brazil, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Sweden, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Australia, South Africa); one African region (Cape Town, cpt1); none in Nigeria. Functions default to Washington DC (iad1); 126 CDN PoPs.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
Cells in Lagos, Abuja, London or the EU, or in your own data centre. Each cell holds apps, databases, logs and backups in one jurisdiction
/security
Deploy from GitHub: Vercel
Yes; the GitHub integration deploys every push by default, and pushes to the production branch go live on production domains.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
Builds a GitHub repository at an exact commit
/docs/deploys
Builds without a Dockerfile: Vercel
Yes; detects the framework preset (Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, FastAPI, Django and others) and sets build commands. A Dockerfile container preset is optional.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
Not yet. Today the build needs a Dockerfile at the repository root
/docs/deploys
Preview environments: Vercel
Yes; every branch push and PR gets a unique preview URL, posted as a PR comment.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
A preview for every branch
/cells
Managed Postgres: Vercel
No native Postgres any more (Vercel Postgres moved to Neon in Dec 2024); provisioned through Marketplace partners such as Neon, Prisma Postgres, Supabase and AWS Aurora.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
Postgres 17 with three instances and synchronous replicas; point-in-time recovery; signed restore drills
/cells
Rollback: Vercel
Instant Rollback re-points domains to an earlier production deployment without rebuilding. Hobby can only go back one deploy; Pro and Enterprise can pick any eligible deploy. Env vars are not rolled back.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
Release rollback is a reversible action that never waits for an approver. It never reverses a database migration
/docs/plans-and-approvals
Cheapest paid plan: Vercel
Pro, $20 per developer seat per month, including $20 of usage credit; pay-as-you-go usage beyond that.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
Shared cells are billed on usage by the hour, with a spend cap; change control is priced by tier
/cells
Billing currency: Vercel
Prices are in USD, with taxes added based on billing address. No naira billing found.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
USD, GBP, EUR or naira through Paystack or Flutterwave. No dollar card needed in Nigeria
/editions
Approval before production changes: Vercel
No multi-person or passkey approval gate. The closest controls are: turning off auto-assignment so a staged production build waits for a manual Promote; Rolling Releases (Pro: one project) with manual stage advance; and RBAC (Full Production Deployment permission). Deployment Protection controls who can view URLs, not who can approve deploys.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
Passkey approval bound to the exact plan hash; two people on Business and above. The requester can never approve
/docs/plans-and-approvals
Audit trail: Vercel
Enterprise only, owner role; CSV export, plus SIEM streaming or Audit Log Drains.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
Signed, hash-chained audit trail per organisation on every edition, checkpointed outside the database
/security
MCP for AI agents: Vercel
Official remote MCP server at mcp.vercel.com (OAuth) on all plans: docs search, projects, deployments, logs, analytics, and code deploys.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
MCP server where every tool has a risk class and reading customer content taints the agent key. Not yet offered as a hosted endpoint
/docs/mcp
Published SLA: Vercel
Enterprise only: 99.99% availability target for content serving, on a commercially-reasonable-efforts basis, with service credits. APIs and CLI are excluded.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
Proposed per edition, in draft awaiting legal review
/legal/sla
Certifications: Vercel
SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001:2022, PCI DSS v4.0 AoCs (SAQ-D service provider and SAQ-A merchant), HIPAA support for Enterprise (BAA), GDPR DPA, EU-US DPF, and TISAX AL2.
vercel.com
Aspian Cloud
None claimed. Evidence packs map platform records to NDPA 2023, UK GDPR and ISO/IEC 27001
/trust

	Vercel	Aspian Cloud
Where apps run	19 compute regions (US, Canada, Brazil, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Sweden, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Australia, South Africa); one African region (Cape Town, cpt1); none in Nigeria. Functions default to Washington DC (iad1); 126 CDN PoPs. vercel.com	Cells in Lagos, Abuja, London or the EU, or in your own data centre. Each cell holds apps, databases, logs and backups in one jurisdiction /security
Deploy from GitHub	Yes; the GitHub integration deploys every push by default, and pushes to the production branch go live on production domains. vercel.com	Builds a GitHub repository at an exact commit /docs/deploys
Builds without a Dockerfile	Yes; detects the framework preset (Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, FastAPI, Django and others) and sets build commands. A Dockerfile container preset is optional. vercel.com	Not yet. Today the build needs a Dockerfile at the repository root /docs/deploys
Preview environments	Yes; every branch push and PR gets a unique preview URL, posted as a PR comment. vercel.com	A preview for every branch /cells
Managed Postgres	No native Postgres any more (Vercel Postgres moved to Neon in Dec 2024); provisioned through Marketplace partners such as Neon, Prisma Postgres, Supabase and AWS Aurora. vercel.com	Postgres 17 with three instances and synchronous replicas; point-in-time recovery; signed restore drills /cells
Rollback	Instant Rollback re-points domains to an earlier production deployment without rebuilding. Hobby can only go back one deploy; Pro and Enterprise can pick any eligible deploy. Env vars are not rolled back. vercel.com	Release rollback is a reversible action that never waits for an approver. It never reverses a database migration /docs/plans-and-approvals
Cheapest paid plan	Pro, $20 per developer seat per month, including $20 of usage credit; pay-as-you-go usage beyond that. vercel.com	Shared cells are billed on usage by the hour, with a spend cap; change control is priced by tier /cells
Billing currency	Prices are in USD, with taxes added based on billing address. No naira billing found. vercel.com	USD, GBP, EUR or naira through Paystack or Flutterwave. No dollar card needed in Nigeria /editions
Approval before production changes	No multi-person or passkey approval gate. The closest controls are: turning off auto-assignment so a staged production build waits for a manual Promote; Rolling Releases (Pro: one project) with manual stage advance; and RBAC (Full Production Deployment permission). Deployment Protection controls who can view URLs, not who can approve deploys. vercel.com	Passkey approval bound to the exact plan hash; two people on Business and above. The requester can never approve /docs/plans-and-approvals
Audit trail	Enterprise only, owner role; CSV export, plus SIEM streaming or Audit Log Drains. vercel.com	Signed, hash-chained audit trail per organisation on every edition, checkpointed outside the database /security
MCP for AI agents	Official remote MCP server at mcp.vercel.com (OAuth) on all plans: docs search, projects, deployments, logs, analytics, and code deploys. vercel.com	MCP server where every tool has a risk class and reading customer content taints the agent key. Not yet offered as a hosted endpoint /docs/mcp
Published SLA	Enterprise only: 99.99% availability target for content serving, on a commercially-reasonable-efforts basis, with service credits. APIs and CLI are excluded. vercel.com	Proposed per edition, in draft awaiting legal review /legal/sla
Certifications	SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001:2022, PCI DSS v4.0 AoCs (SAQ-D service provider and SAQ-A merchant), HIPAA support for Enterprise (BAA), GDPR DPA, EU-US DPF, and TISAX AL2. vercel.com	None claimed. Evidence packs map platform records to NDPA 2023, UK GDPR and ISO/IEC 27001 /trust

When Vercel fits better

Global CDN (126 PoPs) plus 19 compute regions, including Cape Town and London, for public-facing frontends whose users are worldwide.
First-party Next.js platform: framework-aware builds, per-PR previews, instant rollback and rolling releases come with no setup.
Mature attestations (SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI AoC) and a large Marketplace ecosystem for databases and AI tooling.

Moving from Vercel

Take your things out of Vercel

Export env vars with vercel env pull <file> --environment=production or vercel pull. Values stored as Secret (sensitive) cannot be read back and come out as placeholders, so keep those secrets in your own vault. vercel.com
Postgres lives with the Marketplace provider (Neon, Supabase and others), so dump it with pg_dump using the injected connection-string env var, or with that provider's own tools. vercel.com
Build config lives in the repo (vercel.json / vercel.ts, framework preset), so the source moves as-is. Vercel-specific features (rolling releases, deployment protection) need equivalents on the new platform. vercel.com

Bring them to Aspian Cloud

Add a Dockerfile at the repository root if you do not have one, and make the server listen on the port in $PORT. See Deploy with a Dockerfile.
Export your environment variables to a file on your machine. Secret values go into Aspian Cloud as write-only secrets and are never shown again.
Take a pg_dump of each database. We restore it into your cell and run a restore drill, so the first Trust Page fact about the new database is a tested restore.
Deploy to a preview first. Low-risk changes like previews never wait for an approver.
Point your domain at the new app with a domain_change plan. It is an irreversible action, so it needs a passkey approval.

We plan the move with you. Talk to us.