I really don't want to restart with the hassle of configuring a js project from scratch. Done it already a thousand times, and that's a thousand times too many :)

This is the key. For small apps, it's far more effective to pay the premium to not deal with any DevOps. Once an app gets bigger, it'll make sense to spend more time optimizing cost.

I feel like Vercel is the new Heroku circa 2015. I'm hoping it won't follow Heroku's trajectory, but who knows.