What Vercel gives an internal app
Everything in this section comes from Vercel’s documentation, read on the date above.
- Sign-in in front of a deployment. Vercel Authentication is available on all plans. It can cover production domains as well as previews.
- Who gets through. The same page lists logged-in team members, logged-in project members, and logged-in Vercel users who have been granted access. A visitor who is not signed in meets a Vercel login.
- Free viewer seats. The Pro plan includes unlimited read-only Viewer seats at no charge.
- SAML single sign-on. SAML is available on Enterprise, and on Pro as an add-on listed at $300 a month. Directory Sync is on Enterprise.
- Other protections. Password Protection is $20 a month per protected project on Pro. Trusted IPs is on Enterprise.
For an engineering team shipping a web front end, that is a short path to a protected URL.
Where the two differ
intrium is pre-launch. The right-hand column describes the product as planned.
| Vercel | intrium (planned) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is built for | Engineering teams shipping web apps | Companies where non-engineers build internal apps with Claude Code |
| Who can open an app | People with a Vercel login who are on the team or have been granted access | Members of an Okta or Google group that IT chooses. Viewers need no account with intrium. |
| Database credentials | Environment variables that project members set and can manage | A read-only credential IT registers once, supplied when the app runs. The builder never sees it. |
| IT’s view | Projects in a Vercel team | A catalog of every app with a named owner and a last-used date |
| Checks on deploy | Whatever you add to your own build | A scan for secrets and dependency problems on every deploy |
| Where it runs | Vercel | Hosted by intrium to start. Your own AWS account is planned as the Enterprise option. |
Two things we have not verified and so do not claim: whether a long-running Streamlit or Dash server fits on Vercel today, and what Vercel’s bring-your-own-cloud option covers. Vercel’s function limits are documented here. If either matters to you, check with Vercel.
When Vercel is the better choice
- The people building are engineers who already use it.
- The app is a web front end with short-lived server functions.
- The viewers are a small team who can each have a Vercel login.
- The app does not read production data, or your engineers already manage those credentials properly.
When to look for something else
- Most builders are analysts, operations staff or product managers, and you do not want to make each of them a member of an engineering platform.
- Access should follow identity provider groups you already maintain.
- The app reads Postgres or Snowflake, and policy says builders must not hold that credential.
- IT needs one list of every app, its owner and when it was last used.
That set of requirements is what intrium is being built for.