Hosting is part of the architecture.
Vercel is the default for Next.js marketing and product fronts: preview URLs on every pull request, production as an alias, environment out of the repo. APIs, sockets, and PHP do not have to live there.
Azure is the honest choice when the buyer already uses Microsoft 365 and Entra ID. App Service or a Linux VM, Blob storage, and SSO wired to the same tenant shorten procurement.
Hetzner is for teams who want European metal, a predictable invoice, and a Linux box they control. We harden it the same way we harden AWS: SSH policy, TLS, snapshots, and a restore we have already tested.
GitHub remains the system of record. Actions deploy to whichever host the brief selected. The host is a decision. The pipeline is not optional.
