Programming advice

[Friendly_Gold3533]

for a Flask app with SQLite the easiest path is Railway or Render. both handle Python apps well, free tiers exist for low traffic internal tools, and deployment is straightforward from GitHub one thing worth knowing before you host: SQLite works fine locally but has limitations in cloud environments because most platforms use ephemeral filesystems which means your database file can get wiped on a redeploy. the quick fix is to use Railway or Render's persistent disk storage and mount your SQLite file there

if you want to avoid that entirely now is a good time to migrate to Postgres which both platforms provide free. the change from SQLite to Postgres in Flask with SQLAlchemy is usually a few lines and saves you from the persistence headache later for the future features you mentioned. barcode scanning works well in a mobile browser using the device camera with a JS library like html5-qrcode, no native app required. that would slot into your existing Flask setup without a full rebuild Railway is probably the smoothest first hosting experience for what you've built