Next.js Deployment

We’ve reached the end of the road. We have a fast, optimized, and functional application. Now the big question arises: Where do we host it?

If you search on Google, 99% of the tutorials will tell you: “Use Vercel” (the creators of Next.js). Vercel has a wonderful PaaS platform. It’s a one-click solution.

But depending on a single provider is a risk. Furthermore, the costs of Serverless platforms can skyrocket if your app scales. Sometimes, the right solution is a €5/month VPS or an S3 bucket.

Today we’re going to see how to take Next.js out of its “home” and deploy it on any infrastructure 👇.

Understanding the Build

Before uploading anything, we must understand what Next.js generates.

This folder contains:

To start the application in production mode, we don’t use npm run dev. We use:

npm run start

Strategy 1: The Node.js Server (VPS)

If you have a VPS (DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS EC2) with Linux, you can deploy Next.js “bare-metal”.

The problem is that if you close the SSH terminal, the server shuts down. To keep it alive, you need a process manager like PM2.

npm install -g pm2
pm2 start npm --name "my-next-app" -- start

Strategy 2: Docker

Docker allows us to package our application, with its exact version of Node.js and its dependencies, in an immutable container.

The trick to keep the Docker image from weighing 1GB is to use a Next.js feature called Standalone Output.

const nextConfig = {
  // This tells Next.js to generate an isolated build with
  // ONLY the node_modules needed for production.
  output: "standalone",
};

export default nextConfig;

# STAGE 1: Dependencies
FROM node:22-alpine AS deps
WORKDIR /app
COPY package.json package-lock.json ./
RUN npm ci

# STAGE 2: Builder
FROM node:22-alpine AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=deps /app/node_modules ./node_modules
COPY . .
RUN npm run build

# STAGE 3: Runner (Tiny final image)
FROM node:22-alpine AS runner
WORKDIR /app
ENV NODE_ENV production

# Copy only what's needed from the builder
COPY --from=builder /app/public ./public
COPY --from=builder /app/.next/static ./.next/static
COPY --from=builder /app/.next/standalone ./

EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]

Strategy 3: Static Exports (SSG)

Sometimes, you don’t need a server. If your website is a Blog, a Landing Page, or corporate documentation, you don’t need Node.js running 24/7. You can pre-render everything to HTML and CSS.

// next.config.mjs
const nextConfig = {
  output: "export", // 👈 The key
};