Hi all,
I’d like to clarify whether a specific setup falls under “commercial usage” as defined in the Fair Use Guidelines, before deploying on Hobby.
Setup:
- Project A (planned for Hobby): an internal admin panel, accessible only to me/my team. No public visitors, no external logins, no ads, no payment processing. Its only function is to let me edit configuration data (content settings, feed sources, etc.), which gets written to a Firestore database.
- Project B (hosted separately, NOT on Vercel): a separate public-facing app that reads that same Firestore data and serves it to end users. This is the deployment that carries ads and is commercial.
The Fair Use Guidelines define commercial usage as “any Deployment that is used for the purpose of financial gain of anyone involved in any part of the production of the project.” Since Project A has no visitors, no monetization, and no direct customer interaction — but the data it manages is later used by a separate, non-Vercel-hosted commercial product — I want to confirm:
Does Project A (the internal, visitor-less admin tool) qualify as personal/non-commercial use under Hobby, given it has no direct financial-gain mechanism itself, even though it supports a commercial product hosted elsewhere?
Would appreciate input from anyone who’s dealt with a similar split, or from the Vercel team if you’re able to weigh in. Thanks!