Hi folks! 👋

In this post, I'll walk you through how I picked a hosting platform for my coding interview SaaS.

When I need to make a choice regarding a particular technology, I start by asking myself: "What have I already used that will also work here?".

This time I needed something that can run code in the cloud and can provide a fast feedback loop between writing and deploying code.

🔥 Option 1: Firebase

I started with Firebase. I already used it in the past, and it looked like the right candidate. Firebase has Cloud Functions, and at first glance, it seems reasonable enough.

However, one thing I didn't like. Although it has a local simulator, I felt I still needed a way to quickly have every changeset available in the cloud while having the production version unaffected. Unfortunately, I didn't find an out-of-the-box way of doing this in Firebase. One option could be having a separate staging account, but it felt like too much hassle and not enough flexibility.

▲ Option 2: Vercel

Moving on to another option, I tried in the past - Vercel (former Zeit). At first glance, it might feel that this platform limits you in how you're supposed to build stuff. However, I didn't really find it too annoying. I was ok to write code in Javascript, and they have decent support for it. But going back to the deployment problem from above, Vercel solves quite elegantly. In fact, it's their value proposition: "Vercel: Develop. Preview. Ship.". First, they got integrations with all major Git platforms. And second, they provision a new deployment on each git push. And that's what I needed. So, long story short, this was my choice.

🤔 What about other platforms?

There are Netlify, Heroku, and others. Simple answer - I found something that solves my problem well enough, and I didn't want to waste any more time playing around with other toys.

In the next post, I'll share with you what I landed with as a data store.

☝️ One last thing

I share more behind-the-scenes including financial aspects of my SaaS on my Twitter. Don't hesitate to give it a look! 💫

Stay curious! ✌️