In a couple of recent projects we had an opportunity to try out the new Serverless approach to building web applications. It wasn't necessarily a question if we should use any particular vendor but rather "if" we can consider serverless a viable option for building apps. Obviously our goal was also to get a feel for this technology and gain some hands-on experience.

We did consider AWS Lambda, Firebase from Google as well as Azure Functions. Eventually we went with AWS Lambdas.

PROS

No servers to manage (obviously!)
Limited fixed costs – you pay only for used time
Automated scaling and balancing
Automatic failover (or, at this level of abstraction, no failover problem at all)
Security easier to provide and audit
Low overhead at the start (with the certain level of knowledge)
Short time to market
Easy handover - deployment coupled with code
Perfect choice for lean startups with fast-paced iterations
Augmentation for the classic cloud, server(full) approach

CONS

Not much know-how and best practices available about structuring the code and projects on the market
Not suitable for complex business logic due to the risk of producing highly coupled code
Cost difficult to estimate (helpful tools: serverlesscalc.com)
Difficulty in migration to other platforms (Vendor lock⚠️)
Little engineers with experience in serverless on the job market
Steep learning curve for engineers without any cloud experience

More details are on our blog: https://evojam.com/blog/2018/12/5/should-you-go-serverless-meet-the-benefits-and-flaws-of-new-wave-of-cloud-solutions I hope it helps 🙌 & I'm curious of your experiences.

Michal Nowak

Tools Used

Most Used

By Layer

Application & Data

Utilities

DevOps