Payload on Vercel with cacheComponents and PPR

[birdzai]

The irony is brutal - Payload is marketed as a "Next.js-native CMS" and Vercel is the default deploy target — but the combination of cacheComponents and PPR creates a structural trap:

• Payload's getPayload() init is heavy by design (Drizzle schema, DB connection, collection setup, Lexical editor)
• PPR + cacheComponents works so well that the Lambda never gets traffic, so Vercel can't keep it warm
• The better your caching, the colder your functions, the worse your first interaction (I'm getting upwards of 20 seconds latency on some page loads)

There is a fundamental tension between "cache everything to the CDN" and "serverless needs traffic to stay alive."

Sure, I could do something like the cron hack to keep the lambda warm, but there is still that heavy initial hit after a redeploy.

I solved it by deploying to Railway instead, which sidesteps the whole problem: one persistent process, always warm, no tradeoffs.