I'm working on a check-in app for my wife's business to help her transition from Google Sheets to a more user-friendly mobile interface. The app will serve as a dashboard where clients can input their weekly data related to fitness, eating, etc., and my wife can provide notes on their progress. I'm building this mainly for learning purposes but I'm hitting some roadblocks.
For the front end, I'm using React along with shadcn, but I'm not sure about the backend. My experience has mostly been with WordPress, so I haven't had to manage a database yet. I've used Supabase in a React tutorial, but I found out it automatically archives the database after a week of inactivity. As a new dad, I can't always guarantee regular work on this project.
I've also tried Render but faced the same issue with them shutting down the database after a period of inactivity. I'm looking for a BaaS that won't be so aggressive about pausing my database while I learn, or should I consider setting it up locally? If a local setup is the way to go, how would I go about doing that? I do have WordPress hosting available, and I know I could create a WordPress site to manage users and custom database tables, but I've been warned about some potential drawbacks. Would that be acceptable for an MVP?
3 Answers
MongoDB is a versatile choice and offers a free tier similar to Supabase, although it does shut down after 60 days of inactivity. To keep it active, you can set up a cron job to ping the database every 59 days on a free VPS service. However, if you have a stable schema, DynamoDB’s free tier could be better since it provides 25 GB of free storage and no automatic shut-downs, but keep in mind it has a bit of a learning curve.
Turso is really user-friendly and has a generous free tier that should support your app's needs without aggressive shutdowns. It's definitely worth a try!
You could simply write a script to make periodic requests to either Supabase or Render to prevent them from archiving your database. Just set it up as a cron job on a free hosting site, and it should keep everything running smoothly!
That’s a solid workaround! It makes it super easy to keep your database live without having to check up on it constantly.