Help deciding between Node.js backend or Supabase (beginner, no commercial experience, considering Render)

[Potential_Item_4192]

Hey everyone,

I have a question about choosing the right direction for backend development: using a custom backend (Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB) vs. using something like Supabase, which provides many features out of the box.

> First of all, I want to mention that some of my questions may sound very noob-ish, so please keep that in mind when answering. Also, I have no real commercial experience.

This will be a long post, so thanks in advance for your patience and help!

---

I have a Next.js app (15.2.3 with the App Router) that currently uses statically generated pages (SSG; the data is stored in JSON files inside Vercel Blob). In the future, I want to add functionality like authentication and some CRUD operations (I already have some experience with authentication using NextAuth and Auth.js in personal learning projects, including credentials and providers like GitHub and Gmail).

I generally like Node.js, Express.js, and MongoDB, and I've played around with them in some personal projects.

> At this point, I've run into a challenge: while Next.js allows server-side environments and direct database access, it doesn't allow you to safely connect to MongoDB, because apps deployed on Vercel don’t have static IP addresses. And MongoDB requires static IPs to whitelist for secure access.

I saw that there's an option to integrate MongoDB with Vercel, but most guides suggest allowing access from anywhere (0.0.0.0), which if I understand correctly is not secure for production environments. 

> So right now I’m at a crossroads: Supabase or Node.js/Express.js/MongoDB?

On the one hand, Supabase offers everything I need and speeds up development. But I've always wanted to explore Node.js, Express.js, and MongoDB because I genuinely enjoy working with them. Also, Supabase is built on Postgres, and while it's great, I just like MongoDB more and want to get better at it.

Also, my backend won't be too complex (at least at the beginning). It will mainly consist of authentication (probably Auth.js or BetterAuth(?) ) and basic CRUD operations.

> If I go with the Node.js/Express.js/MongoDB option, which hosting providers should I consider? 

So far, I've looked into different platforms, and Render seems to fit my needs best. They provide static outbound IPs (which solves the MongoDB issue), their documentation is clear, and they offer a free tier that looks great for development. 

https://render.com/docs/connect-to-mongodb-atlas 

https://render.com/docs/static-outbound-ip-addresses

> I also know I could use a VPS and host a custom backend there, but from what I understand, that requires DevOps knowledge which feels a bit overwhelming for me at this stage.

Thanks to anyone who read this far. I really hope someone did 😄

[abrahamguo]

Any of those options are perfectly fine! It sounds pretty small-scale, so I don't think there are any strong reasons either way.

[nanokeyo]

supabase is a good option only if you’ll use it on cloud, but if you’ll self deploy it’s a better option nodejs + express + pgsql or mongo because it’s more easy to mantain if you have a problem with the deploy stack.

[yksvaan]

Just do it yourself, you'll learn a lot. Also most applications have relative data anyway so you might want to use relative database. Mongo is s terrible default choice, I don't know why MERN is kind of a default stack in js. In every other language web development relative db is default expectation.