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Where to migrate

We've put together a shortlist of replacements for these core Val Town features:

  1. Website
  2. SQLite
  3. Blob
  4. Cron
  5. Email
  6. Access
  7. AI

The following table summarizes providers that have the biggest feature overlap with Val Town. We've provided more information on each and additional alternatives below. If there's a provider missing that you'd like to migrate to, let us know—we'd be glad to help you migrate and update this guide accordingly for others.

Website SQLite Blob Cron Email Access AI FaaS
Cloudflare ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Render ✓ ✓
Vercel ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Netlify ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Supabase ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Railway ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Note: A checkmark in the table indicates that the provider includes the feature as a built-in product, but in many cases it would be straightforward to set up that feature using an external service—e.g. using Resend for email on Vercel; using SQLite on Render Persistent Disks.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare is the most feature-equivalent platform to Val Town. Some of us on the Val Town team have decided to move our own vals to Cloudflare, including the Val Town blog and docs.

Vercel

Vercel is a very popular hosting provider. It has almost all of the features from Val Town built-in, or near at hand via their Marketplace.

There are many web hosting providers, including but not limited to:

Turso

Turso is the underlying provider for Val Town SQLite.

Cloudflare D1

D1 is Cloudflare's managed SQLite database, which you can query from Cloudflare Workers and Pages projects. Cloudflare also offers SQLite-backed Durable Object Storage.

To use SQLite, you may also consider libraries like node:sqlite, bun:sqlite, and better-sqlite3 with your preferred hosting provider.

There are many alternatives for blob/object storage, including but not limited to:

There are many alternatives for cron jobs, including but not limited to:

Val Town allowed you to programmatically receive email and run arbitrary code. Alternatives include but are not limited to:

Val Town offered transactional email with the std/email library. Alternatives include but are not limited to:

Val Town Access and OAuth allowed restricting *.val.run URLs to you and your team, or specific people you shared a val with (like Google Doc sharing permissions). Alternatives include but are not limited to:

Lovable

Lovable is the ostensible leader in the vibe coding space. Apps and websites created using Lovable are React applications, and it has a Supabase integration for PostgreSQL data storage (along with integrations for payments, AI, analytics, and more). Lovable has an import tool for migrating existing projects from other platforms.

Replit

Like Val Town, Replit existed before ChatGPT as an in-browser coding and deployment platform. Nowadays the Replit experience is similar to that of Lovable, creating fullstack React apps and websites via a chat interface. Replit also has a Figma-like design view, and integrations for data storage, authentication, analytics, and more.

v0

v0 is Vercel's vibe-code and -design tool. It is a good landing spot if you would like to work with the Vercel ecosystem, using Next.js and/or Vercel Blob and Cron Jobs, for example. They have an integration with Neon for PostgreSQL data storage. v0 integrates with Vercel's AI Gateway, if having a wide selection of LLMs is important to you.

ChatGPT Sites

ChatGPT Sites is OpenAI’s quick live website tool. Unlike the fullstack platforms above, ChatGPT Sites is more suited to simpler static sites, and it is still a beta product (which OpenAI seems to not be heavily invested in). It could be a fit if you only need to migrate simple sites and already use ChatGPT / don't want yet another tool.

Claude Artifacts

Claude Artifacts are most similar to ChatGPT Sites on this list, but even simpler—meant for prototypes and ephemeral personal or shared tools. Artifacts can only be published to claude.ai/artifact/* URLs, and you cannot link custom domains. Artifacts can be HTML pages, slide decks, documents, or design files, and you can store data in an Artifact.

If you'd like to read more about the five tools above, Pete tested each out and wrote an opinionated review. There are many other vibe coding tools, including but not limited to:

An adjacent category of tools worth mentioning are in-browser code editors. These tools range from lightweight social coding playgrounds (i.e. write and run code, share a URL) to heavier sandboxes. Popular options include:

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