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In this section we'll look at

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how we can deploy our Next.js app to production.

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And there are a few ways we can do that.

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One factor to consider is

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if we need all the Next.js features,

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or if we can export our Next.js app

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as a static website.

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All the Next.js features we used so far

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are compatible with exporting our website statically,

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so for our Blog application

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all the options are available to us.

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But if we use some of the more advanced features

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that we'll cover in the second part of the course,

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things like API routes

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or Incremental Static Regeneration,

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then we cannot create a statically exported website,

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we'll need to run it as a fully-featured Next.js app.

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In any case, the simplest way

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to run our application in production

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is to deploy it to a platform

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that supports Next.js out of the box.

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Vercel is the company that develops

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the Next.js framework,

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and it offers a serverless platform

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where we can easily deploy our projects.

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It's not the only platform that does that,

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Netlify also supports Next.js deployments.

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Now, if we want to run our application

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on our own servers we can also do that.

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In fact, we've already seen how that works locally

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when we ran our Blog in production mode

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with the "next start" command.

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All we need is basically a server

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with Node.js installed.

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This could be a server running in the cloud,

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like in Amazon EC2, Google Cloud,

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or any other cloud computing provider,

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or it could even be on hardware that

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we keep on premise.

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Even though it's usually more convenient

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to rent some servers in the cloud these days.

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Either way, the downside of running

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your own Next.js servers

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is that you need to set up the machines,

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maintain them, keep them up to date,

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think about how to scale if your traffic grows,

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and so on.

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While a platform like Vercel

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is a fully managed service.

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So these options are available

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for all Next.js applications.

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But, as I mentioned, if we don't use any

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of the more advanced Next.js features

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we can also export our application

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as a static website.

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And this means we can deploy it

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to pretty much any hosting platform.

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We can upload it anywhere

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that can host static websites,

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like Firebase Hosting, Amazon S3,

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or any of the dozens of other

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hosting solutions available out there.

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Or, again, we could run it on our servers,

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but in this case, since it's a static website,

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we don't need a server with Node.js,

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we can run any standard web server,

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like Nginx or Caddy,

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or some other open source software.

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Now, in the rest of this section

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I'll show you an example for each one of

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the four main options we have available.

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We'll start by deploying to Vercel,

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which as I mentioned is the simplest solution.

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It's fully managed and supports all Next.js features.

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Then we'll see how to statically export our website

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and host it on Netlify,

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just as an example of the many possible

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static hosting solutions.

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Then I'll show you one way to run your own web server

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by installing Nginx on a virtual machine

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running in Digital Ocean.

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And finally we'll see how to set up

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our own Next.js server,

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which I left as last

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because it's also the most difficult one,

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but I'll show you how to install Node.js

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and run our Next.js application,

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again using a Digital Ocean server.

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Be aware that running your own servers requires

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some knowledge of system administration,

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so unless you have specific reasons

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to do otherwise,

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I strongly recommend choosing

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a hosted solution like Vercel,

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that in fact we'll cover in the next video.