We are preparing to deploy a MERN-stack application (PWA) for a client. The app will be a public-facing real estate platform for listing, buying, and selling homes. While presenting a user experience much like a website, it retains the scalability and functionality of a web application.
I am weighing the pros and cons of using Microsoft Azure over Heroku, especially now that Heroku no longer supports mLAB for connecting Mongo databases. See more Suggestions and feedback always welcome.
Fair enough. I will give Digital Ocean some continued consideration as well. Thank you for the advice!
Even if the integration is no longer available on Heroku, you can still startup a MongoDB hosted database and deploy it on one of the regions that Heroku uses for good latency (e.g. AWS Oregon for North America) https://www.dropbox.com/s/k2y2xbpoy95b09l/Pasted_Image_9_14_20__11_55_PM.png?dl=0
I really like how simple the Heroku interface is, how reliant their services are, and in general how great their CLI tools work.
The Azure control panel has grown to a point where it's very convoluted, and in general it's a bit more expensive than the rest. They also stopped their entrepreneur incentive program (Spark?) so there's little incentive to start something new on it.
Depending on what I'm building I usually go for: a) Vercel + Serverless functions if it's a React SPA b) Heroku, for NodeJS/Express + Postgress + Any FE framework you like c) DigitalOcean if I need full control of the server
That said... if latency is REALLY important then go with Azure. If you have tradeoffs, go for the ones that make your customer's experience better, even if you're annoyed at Azure's interface, or have to pay a few extra bucks
Hope that helps
This is definitely useful information to be aware of. Thank you for your input. Right now we are leaning toward Heroku but these recommendations for Digital Ocean are also something to consider. Thank you for your advice, I appreciate it!