Over the years, I’ve built multiple side projects—some flopped, some gained traction, and one even got acquired (LectureKit, which I sold for $6,750). Throughout all of them, I’ve stuck to a tech stack that’s simple, scalable, and most importantly—fast to set up.
I’m a big believer in not reinventing the wheel. The more I reuse tools I already know, the less time I spend debugging infrastructure and more time I spend actually building. Even if something isn’t the absolute cheapest option, you shouldn’t undervalue your time.
Here’s what I use for all my projects:
Hosting & Infrastructure
AWS Lambda & EventBridge – For serverless functions, web scraping & event scheduling (less maintenance, scales automatically).
AWS S3 & CloudFront – For storing assets and serving them via a CDN.
Railway – I host my Node.js backend & APIs here because it’s easy to set up, doesn’t cost much, and saves time compared to configuring my own servers.
Database & Storage
MongoDB Atlas – Free tier is great for getting started, managed hosting saves me time.
AWS S3 – Used for storing images, scraped data, and backups.
Frontend & Full-Stack Apps
Next.js & Vercel – Quick to deploy and great for full-stack apps. If a project starts generating revenue, I switch to AWS Amplify for more control.
Backend & APIs
- Node.js with Fastify – Faster and lighter than Express, making it my go-to for APIs.
This is exactly the setup I used for CaptureKit, my latest project.
- AWS Lambda powers the web scraper.
- Fastify runs the API efficiently, hosted on Railway.
- Next.js is used for the dashboard and project collaboration features.
This stack lets me ship fast, scale when needed, and minimize costs early on. I don’t spend time optimizing things that don’t need optimization yet.
If you’re building a side project, don’t overcomplicate things. Pick tools you already know and focus on getting the product in front of users.
What’s your go-to tech stack for side projects?
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