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Thoughts, after a sip or two.

VOID Validates

On Evan You, Cloudflare, and Choosing Your Lock

Honest Dev say: "The orange cloud collects everyone eventually."

Two months ago I wrote Lock Me In, Orange Cloud. It got some heat. Some appraisals, some backlash. Some developers were genuinely frustrated that someone would willingly lock themselves to a vendor and write about it publicly.

Fair enough. People feel how they feel.

What Just Happened

On March 13, 2026 at Vue Amsterdam, Evan You — the creator of Vue, Vite, and founder of Voidzero — launched a new product: VOID.

  • What It Is
    • A deployment platform for Vite apps.
    • Powered by Cloudflare's infrastructure. KV. Queues. All the good stuff.
    • Built by the same person who created the tools half the frontend world depends on.
  • What It Means
    • The creator of Vite looked at every cloud provider available and said: "Cloudflare."
    • Not AWS. Not Vercel (💩). Not some multi-cloud abstraction layer.
    • Cloudflare. Directly. Tightly coupled.

The Quote

Evan You had this to say about the vendor lock-in criticism:

"I want to be very upfront about VOID being tightly coupled to Cloudflare. The lock-in is what makes the DX possible. If you don't want the lock-in, then it's not for you, and that's fine! Vite will forever be platform agnostic — use it with Nitro v3, or Adonis — the choice is yours, and VOID just gives you another option!"

Read that again. Slowly.

  • "The lock-in is what makes the DX possible."
    • Tight integration requires tight coupling.
    • That has always been the trade-off.
  • "If you don't want the lock-in, then it's not for you, and that's fine!"
    • Simple. Pick what works for you. Move on.

The Interesting Part

So here we are. Evan You, one of the most respected developers in the ecosystem, is building an entire product tightly coupled to Cloudflare. By design. On purpose.

  • What I find interesting
    • This is the same premise I wrote about two months ago.
    • Not the same conclusion. The same premise. Lock-in is a trade-off, not a sin.
    • Different people are arriving at the same answer independently.

Not Just VOID

VOID is not even the first to go this route. RedwoodJS recently reinvented themselves as RedwoodSDK. Entirely on Cloudflare.

  • Their tagline: "Server-first React, running on the Cloudflare platform. Simple to build. Easy to maintain."
  • The pattern
    • Framework creators are looking at the landscape and choosing Cloudflare.
    • Not grudgingly. Not as a compromise.
    • As the foundation. The whole thing.

When one company does it, it is a choice. When multiple do it, it is a trend. Interesting trend.

Pick Your Poison

This has always been the point. Everyone is locked into something. You just pick what works and go with it.

  • If Cloudflare gives you great DX, security, performance, and pricing — use it.
  • If it does not fit your needs — do not use it.
  • If you want to self-host on a VPS — do that.

Everyone makes their choice. Everyone moves on. That is how it should be.

Non-Conclusion (The Sequel)

I still have no advice. I am still not telling anyone what to do. Just reporting on what is happening.

Does it mean I am right? No. Does it mean Evan or the team at Redwood are correct? Not necessarily. But it is telling. People are noticing what Cloudflare is offering, and they are building on it.

I wrote a thing two months ago. The guy who made Vue and Vite just launched a product on the same idea. I had a sip or two and thought that was worth sharing.

Lock me in, Orange Cloud. Evan and Redwood are in here too now ❤️‍🔥

Still locked in. Still shipping. (The basket is getting crowded).