Michael R.

When it came time to deploy our latest full-stack application, my team and I made the decision to use the Heroku platform for the first time. After conducting significant research and consulting with several senior developers in the industry, we concluded that Heroku would provide the best support for our application, which was built with MongoDB and Express on the back end and React on the front end.

Granted, Netlify definitely provides a better platform for applications that are primarily front-end, but Heroku has proved to be a strong contender as well. The deployment went quite smoothly, all things considered. The installation of the Heroku command line, while a bit intimidating at first glance, actually proved very beneficial for controlling builds, adding plugins, and managing the deployment process.

I have no regrets over the choice to use Heroku; in fact, I would go so far as to recommend the platform for supporting any small to medium full-stack application you may be working on. If nothing else, the documentation provided by Heroku is far superior to that of many similar platforms, and that alone can be a lifesaver in the event of a snag during deployment.

Even after swelling to a considerable size from extensive data and object storage, MongoDB maintains its performance levels almost impeccably.

Another benefit is the ability to remodel the schema significantly without affecting React Native's performance or behavior at runtime. Since Mongo is NoSQL, it uses a clean, JavaScript-based query language (MQL).

This design means that MQL uses the same JSON syntax as MongoDB documents and APIs. Pass a JS object that partially fits the target, and Mongo returns the desired value.

This decision is a follow-up to my previous request for advice

We ultimately decided to use Heroku for the production build of the full-stack web application we built for Ormica LLC. React.js, Node.js, Express.js

The deployment had its share of issues; all of these I experienced firsthand. It would seem that Heroku takes a stricter view than even most development environments to the slightest syntax issue or the tiniest bug. Not to mention their engineers are unavailable on weekends, even if you are using a paid subscription, which I found quite surprising.

But, as I have before, I will again give credit to their documentation for being extremely detailed and intuitive. Additional credit goes to Mars Hall for the use of his trusty heroku-cra-node template as the baseline for the application.

At the end of the day, I still recommend Heroku for their thorough documentation, infallible uptime, and extensive plugin options.

Just be aware that if you missed anything in your code, the Heroku build engine is going to find it for you. Every. single. time. Which, from an objective point of view, is actually a good thing. Thanks for reading!

Since you are using a MERN stack, you could consider integrating Next.js into your frontend and rendering your pages on the server-side. This does require a slightly more advanced configuration, but with worthwhile benefits. With server-side rendering, you will obtain quicker load times, less configuration, and components with built-in routing.

Next.js is fully supported by React; the framework is even featured in React's list of recommended toolchains for building server-side PWA's with Node. I recommend at least having a look at their documentation and/or toying with some of the examples on GitHub to better understand the framework and decide if it will work for you.

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.

Anything that interacts with the Internet, websites, applications, etc., while it may be more complex to build, will be easier to maintain in the long run. React offers more flexibility, a much larger support base for knowledge and opinion, and is just as stable asVue.

To make the best comparison in my opinion, think of React as the Android OS and Vue more like iOS. While Vue may be advantageous in some cases, it is limited by constricting parameters. On the other hand, while React may be more complex and incorporate more open-source/third-party constructs, it is supported by over 50,000 npm packages and allows for the use of JSX. Which I might add, once learned, becomes second nature to employ and offers more flexibility.

I have not used Firebase for nearly as many applications as I have MongoDB and MongoDB Atlas; that being said, I have used them both and I would definitely recommend MongoDB Atlas or MongoDB over Firebase for supporting a web-based application.

Firebase does have some great features and integrates decently for Android applications, especially when using Android Studio. However, MongoDB offers a considerably larger amount flexibility and customization for web-based applications.

You also have the option to use Mongo command line, which you can easily download/install, and MongoDB Compass which provides a nice GUI command interface. They can be used separately or together to control data and communicate with MongoDB Atlas.

This decision whether to use Atlas will depend primarily on your equipment and budget, but cloud storage solutions are generally far more scalable and inexpensive in the long term.

Additionally, Mongo provides excellent documentation and support for all of their products, including the schema itself. Hope this helps!

I am seeking general high-level advice on which language/framework is more popular and/or recommended for building cross-platform mobile applications. (Android & iOS)

IDE building environment in this scenario would most likely be Visual Studio with some help from Android Studio.