Render also doesn't require pay for play.
This is something that big hyperscallers are yet to understand, free to play and then one is hooked, it is much easier to go to the next step.
"Hosting a hobby project for free without credit card is tough (rant) & here's how I did it (Hugging face)"[0]
I remember trying to evaluate all the options and trying to find a good enough option and there were very few options aside from Vercel and Render or rewriting your application to fit cloudflare workers.
HF spaces is a good option that I had found back then. Also, I recommend having a separate backend service like supabase with HF as if your server is inactive for 24-48 hours, the storage could get wiped out so backend should be seperated.
One of the biggest things that I am proud of was how I broke the nat of intel tiber jupyter using applying a custom patch of bearssh and before it, using junest and ssh and ppng.io, all because I wanted to play minecraft with my friend without credit card :-D
Nowadays, I have a few cheap vps's which makes things so much simpler but I remember that struggle and vercel/render used to help in most cases thus they are so popular.
So I seriously agree with what you are saying based on my experience as well. Though I have to wonder?: I think that the reason that small companies aren't attempting this is because of reasons of scam/spam, but what reasons are there for AWS and others to not do so.
What are the reasons that you think that they don't already provide such service, or do you feel as if this is the natural continuation of it and soon we are gonna see AWS or large hypercloud provider providing free very small compute similar to vercel/render?
Also thanks for making me remember again the blog that I had written :-D
[0]: https://smileplease.mataroa.blog/blog/hosting-a-hobby-projec...
Whereas Vercel, Render and co, got to offer such accounts for free due to VC money and trying to get people on board, while fighting against the big names for customer eyes.
I remember reading about vercel trying to move away from AWS or railway successfully doing so. Their long term end goal still is to migrate away from AWS to capture more juicy margins (or is it? Vsauce music plays)
So with that in mind, has AWS and others realized that providing free credits would be more disruption to actual people paying right now and more loss than whatever Vercel is fighting for?
And if that's the case, then to the investors funding Vercel... Do they know that as well?
Also, I think Vercel has gotten to the point where they are handling spam good-ish but the other alternative railway (not entirely free without credit card yes but still an alternative) still relied on GCP (yes even after their migration/colocation) and GCP's opaque black structures shut down all of railways because of a few accounts doing something malicious.
That is the cost of doing business on someone's else computers and also suppose somebody is creating a new vercel competitor, then they are intentionally targeting themselves as a free alternative and are gonna get free users who intentionally might not pay while facing spam/scam/reputation issues and would need constant maintanence and support. (For example: a guy X creates a scam site targeting Y company at this new Z vercel alternative, the Y company has to contact Z and Z will contact it back and Z has to fix the issues X caused, and there are many more X than what Z can handle)
I am more-so interested though that if Vercel is really a great idea (lure free users etc.) then why aren't others trying the same now and flooding free compute. Is it that the investors who wish to invest in such companies would have better returns in investing in Vercel anyway and have better chances in beating the traditional hyperscalers over establishing a new competitor over Vercel and then over AWS etc.?
If we were to try to arrive at an conclusion or for me to try to learn something new, what could it be?:
Is it that AWS/GCP/Azure are intentionally not becoming a Vercel alternative because they can get away by doing so and its more profitable for them to do so?, and that it's not profitable or even possible for others to do so as well unless they have deep pockets to burn through.