April 2020 Summaries

ZEIT is now Vercel, a company that aims to provide the ultimate workflow for developing, previewing, and shipping Jamstack sites. The new identity aligns with the focus on simplifying deployments and empowering developers. With $21M in Series A funding from Accel and CRV, among other investors, Vercel plans to accelerate its mission to provide a streamlined workflow for 11M JavaScript developers. The company has built products like Next.js, which powers over 35,000 sites at companies like Uber, Nike, and Starbucks. Vercel's new focus on the "develop, preview, ship" workflow aims to enable teams to iterate rapidly and collaboratively, with features such as simpler pricing, environment variables, and cancelable deployments. The company has introduced a new brand identity that aligns with its benefits, including faster and better product collaboration across every team in an organization.

The new feature allows users to configure different Environment Variables for Production, Preview, and Development environments directly in the Project Settings Dashboard, providing more flexibility and ease of use for developers. This change enables team members to share Development Environment Variables with each other by pulling them into a local development setup using the newly introduced `vercel env pull` command. Additionally, users can manage their Environment Variables using new commands like `vercel env add` and `vercel env remove`, directly from the command-line. Overall, this update aims to simplify the process of managing environment-specific variables in Vercel projects.

The company has introduced new pricing plans for its platform, aiming to make the model as simple and tailored to users' needs as possible. The new plans include unlimited bandwidth, builds, and serverless function execution, eliminating unexpected bills. Personal accounts are now free forever in a "Hobby" plan, while teams will be charged $20 per member per month after a 14-day Pro trial. Custom pricing is available for enterprises with demanding applications. The new plans aim to provide clarity on expenses and ensure users don't worry about bandwidth usage.

The Vercel team has made several updates to their platform, including the addition of dark mode, improved error handling for Git repository imports, and enhanced documentation for API endpoints and project management features. The legacy Advanced plan has been discontinued, and teams can now customize invoices on the Billing page. Additionally, projects created after April 30, 2020, will no longer automatically receive Git Environment Variables unless explicitly set, and a new Preview Deployment Suffix feature is available on the Pro plan. These changes aim to enhance user experience, improve error handling, and provide more flexibility for teams.