I’ve taken quite a bit of courses in JavaScript and React, also doing some bootcamps in which all the projects used databases. It was easy enough setting up local Postgres databases, but when I began deploying those projects like to Vercel for example, of course the environment variables got more complex. I couldn’t reasonably host the databases out of my local computer, so I began exploring hosted databases. That quickly got expensive or very cumbersome with databases being regularly deleted. I used Railway, Google Cloud, and had used AWS DynamoDB from an early serverless course. MongoDB has gotten mind-boggling to me.
I don’t want to have to become a backend genius or hard-core full-stack developer. At this point all I really want to be able to do is give people access to my projects in working condition so they can see they actually do work when connected to a back end database. I just don’t want to spend an arm and a leg to do that. Even Vercel changes sometimes make my projects not work, requiring constant attention.
One alternative I tried was Supabase, where I could self host one database instance for free, but would have to manage individual projects to display them working.
At the start, Railway was pretty cool, but it soon limited my database instances, vanish them, and also started getting expensive. I have a webhosting account now that lets me create my own MySql databases, but I have little experience managing those. I really love using Postgres locally, but the hosting services I have used make it almost impossible to set up Postgres on their services.
In one of my bootcamps we used TablePlus (free version) to manage our databases. I thought it was pretty cool.
I’d be very grateful for any ideas and suggestions.