Account Setup

Your first deploy on Vercel takes about 30 seconds. Everything after that is about making it smarter: putting compute close to your data, isolating changes before they hit production, and building environments that match how your team actually ships.

Connect and deploy

Click Add New > Project in the dashboard, choose your Git provider, and import a repository. Vercel detects the framework and fills in sensible build defaults. Click Deploy.

That's it. Your site is live.

Set your function region

Static assets and cached responses are served globally from Vercel's CDN. But your serverless functions run in a specific region. By default, that might not be close to your database.

Head to Settings > Functions and pick the region closest to the services your app depends on. If your database is in Frankfurt, select Frankfurt. This cuts cross-region latency on every dynamic request.

After changing the region, redeploy for it to take effect.

Production vs. preview

Every project gets two kinds of deployments out of the box:

Production is the live site your users see. It updates automatically when you push to your main branch.
Preview creates an isolated deployment for every branch and pull request. You get a unique URL to review changes before they reach production.

Preview URLs are protected by default. Anyone visiting a preview link needs to sign into Vercel first. You can switch to password protection if you need to share with people outside your team.

When the pull request looks good, merge it. Production updates automatically.

Custom environments

If your team's release process has more stages, you can create custom environments beyond production and preview.

Go to Settings > Environments > Create Environment. Give it a name (like "staging"), enable branch tracking, and point it at a specific branch. Whenever changes land on that branch, the environment rebuilds automatically.

Each environment gets its own set of environment variables, so you can wire staging to a staging database without touching production config.

Recap

Deploy by importing a Git repo. Vercel handles the rest.
Function regions should be close to your data, not your users. The CDN handles the user side.
Preview deployments give every PR an isolated URL with built-in access protection.
Custom environments let you add stages like staging or pre-production, each with their own branch tracking and variables.