Vercel Names First Cohort of Certified Solution Partners

Vercel has introduced its Solution Partner Certification program with an inaugural cohort of eleven agencies and consultancies. The certification is designed to signal deep expertise in the Next.js framework and the Vercel platform, offering customers a clearer path to teams that have demonstrated they can deliver production-grade work.

"The Vercel Partner Certification underscores what it takes to deliver at the forefront of the modern web. It gives customers a clear path to partners they can trust to move fast, innovate confidently, and build with Next.js and Vercel."

Jim King, VP Alliances at Verndale

The first certified partners are AKQA, Americaneagle.com, Artisan Studios, Blazity, Code and Theory, Grid Dynamics, Horizontal, Jakala, Monogram, UNRVLD, and Verndale. The group spans enterprise transformation, product development, and experience design work.

What the Certification Covers

To earn certification, partners must validate expertise across three core areas: the Vercel platform, which covers the developer experience layer, managed infrastructure, and observability and analytics tooling; Next.js development, including best practices and advanced architectural patterns; and the AI Cloud, which includes the AI SDK, v0.app, and Workflow.

Certification is not a one-time event. Partners must certify a minimum number of developers on their teams, with recertification required as major Next.js and Vercel releases land. This is intended to ensure that certified teams stay aligned with current platform capabilities and recommended patterns.

Why Customers Should Care

For customers, the certification distills vetting a delivery partner down to a few search results. Vercel's stated bar for certification includes technical implementation quality, design standards, and adherence to modern web development principles. Vercel says certified partners help customers:

  • Launch faster, with built-in attention to performance, reliability, and scalability best practices
  • Ship more complex projects, with clearer architecture guidance from validated teams
  • Reduce risk, through implementation approaches that have been vetted with Vercel's engineering team
  • Adopt new capabilities earlier, including AI Cloud products and features

Beyond the vetting itself, certified partners get preferred access to Vercel Professional Services and go-to-market teams. That connection is meant to help customers get matched with appropriate delivery teams during planning or procurement. Customers including the Minnesota Star Tribune, Boston Beer Company, Alchemy, and Stanley Black & Decker have already used certified partners for mission-critical Next.js builds.

"The common thread of our most impactful web projects has been a Vercel implementation. Iteration speed, front-end performance, and security come out of the box which gives us tangible, accelerated impact for our clients."

Kenton Jacobsen, Head of Engineering at Code and Theory

Certified partners are listed with a "Certified" flag in the public partner directory, and they take part in ongoing enablement to stay current. The program dovetails with Vercel's broader partner initiatives around enablement funds and Professional Services scaling.

How to Engage

Customers interested in exploring a certified partner can reach out to their Vercel account team or search the Partner Directory directly. For delivery teams not yet in the program, the Partner Programs team handles certification inquiries; existing Vercel partners can register their interest via the solution partner certification request page.