As the tech landscape evolves, choosing the right tech stack is like picking the perfect recipe for success. At Evowave, we’ve crafted a tech stack that’s powerful, efficient, and delightful, enabling us to build fast, modern, and visually stunning applications. Let’s dive into the tools and technologies we’re using in 2025—and why we believe they’re startup gold.
Frontend: Next.js 14 with React Query and Context API
💻 NextJs 14 is our secret weapon for building web applications that are lightning-fast and user-friendly. Here’s why:
- Server-side rendering (SSR) and static site generation (SSG) deliver outstanding performance.
- Built-in app directory and routing make development efficient and streamlined.
- Features like TurboPack and enhanced performance optimizations take the developer experience to the next level.
- The framework is constantly updated, with exciting new features in the pipeline, especially in NextJs 15.
For state management and data fetching, we rely on React Query and Context API. Here's where the magic happens:
- React Query is a powerhouse for remote state management, simplifying data synchronization, caching, and background updates. It’s packed with advanced features that make complex data flows effortless.
- Context API is our lightweight solution for sharing state across components. Paired with custom hooks, it’s simple, yet powerful—perfect for most commercial websites. 💡 This dream team lets us prefetch data like pros, ensuring seamless, fast, and highly responsive user experiences.
Backend: Supabase and NestJS
⚡ When it comes to the backend, we tailor our approach to the project’s needs, alternating between Supabase and NestJS:
Supabase Think of it as the ultimate backend-as-a-service solution. It offers real-time subscriptions, PostgreSQL database hosting, and built-in authentication. Combined with Next.js, it’s an unbeatable combo that speeds up development like nothing else. Plus, the paid tier provides exceptional value for the features it offers.
NestJS For larger, more complex projects, NestJS is our go-to framework for organization and scalability, built to support enterprise-grade applications with TypeScript. If you want a backend that scales with your app, NestJS is the perfect choice.
Together, these tools give us unmatched flexibility and power, allowing us to build whatever our projects demand, all while maintaining quality and performance.
UI Framework: shadcn/UI
🎨 For creating visually stunning and accessible interfaces, we swear by Shadcn/UI:
- Packed with customizable components built on Tailwind CSS.
- Simplifies maintaining a cohesive design system.
- Easy to customize, intuitive to use, and a joy for developers.
The result? User interfaces that are not only beautiful but also incredibly functional!
Why This Stack Works for Startups
🚀 This stack has been a game-changer for us because:
- It Balances Speed and Quality: Tools like Supabase and shadcn/UI reduce boilerplate code, allowing us to focus on building quality features without compromising on performance.
- It’s Lightning-Fast: Next.js 14 and React Query ensure our apps load quickly and deliver buttery-smooth interactions.
- It Scales Effortlessly: Whether it's a small MVP or a full-fledged enterprise app, NestJS and Supabase can handle the load as your project grows.
- It’s Beautiful and Functional: With shadcn/UI, our interfaces are both head-turners and highly functional.
🌍 In 2025, startups must strike the perfect balance between development speed, scalability, and high-quality user experiences. By combining Next.js 14, React Query, useContext, Supabase, NestJS, and shadcn/UI, we’ve built a stack that achieves just that.
If you’re gearing up for your next project, give this stack a shot. It might just become your secret weapon too..
💬🤔 What stack are you using for your projects in 2025? Let me know in the comments!
Top comments (50)
All good stuff until it’s not.
Next.js is fantastic yet we faced some issues with it.
1) if you host with Vercel all is fantastic until you start getting sky high bills. You can self host then but the migration can be costly
2) when self hosting memory leaks has been a major issue for us
I wonder what supabase bill would be for a relatively successful project. I ended up running away from Firebase to full blown GCP setup after years of pain
Nest.js is sleek yet you need a comparatively high level of experience to work with it properly. And it’s pretty slow among Node.js frameworks- one of the slowest in fact. But lots of good features
I wonder what is your experience with running projects on this tech stack in Production and what hosting setups you used and what bills your clients had to foot .
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Regarding NextJs, we’ve been running it in Docker on a VM (4-16gb of ram dpanding on the project), and it’s been working really well for us, except for occasional quirks. Since we don’t have SSR-heavy applications, it handles up to 200–300 concurrent users reliably.
As for Supabase, their $25 subscription covers most of our projects, and when we exceed that, we migrate to a self-hosted instance with Docker. The migration process is seamless, thanks to their detailed documentation.
For NestJS, we only use it when we have a backend team of 3+ developers. Frameworks like Express or Deno can offer too much flexibility, which often leads to messy codebases without strict team coordination. NestJS provides the structure and scalability we need for larger, more organized teams.
1) I didn't know you can migrate Supabase to a self-hosted instance (I never used it to be honest). Thanks for the tip.
2) For Next.JS we use much smaller RAM for VM and we're heavy on SSR due to the nature of our projects. What hosting did you use for it?
3) Express/Koa just need proper guardrails and code review. But I agree that NestJS offers some built-in guardrails which allow less code drift between team-members.
I agree with Nextjs not being all it's pent up to be. I at least respect the article for confining it to the frontend box. You would have to be some sort of glutton for punishment to use Nextjs as your backend.
For the backend, NestJS is alright but there are way faster, simpler, yet just as full featured NodeJS backend frameworks. I would even rather choose Deno2 over NestJS for a backend if I were to start something right now.
what Node.js frameworks would you choose if not Deno or Nest?
Anything light that prioritizes Typescript and can generate some sort of contract from your backend code that can be used by all language-agnostic clients and micro-services alike, especially on a code-intellisense level.
By contract, I mean the OpenAPI/swagger (rest), GraphQL or gRPC (protobuf) type specs.
Personally, I prefer openApi/swagger contracts for most general APIs. There are a lot of lightweight frameworks that meet this requirement. Given the rate of creation of new NodeJS frameworks, I want this post to stand the test of time by not listing anything specific here 😂... otherwise I would have mentioned a NodeJS framework I built myself.
what's your take on the MERN stack ? and about the database ... which is better to use mysql/postgres or mongo db ?
No one can really answer that question for you without more information. Postgres is generally a safer bet if you don't know what your project could become, because it can also double as an indexable document database similar to mongodb thanks to JSON/JSONB
what's your take on the MERN stack ? and about the database ... which is better to use mysql/postgres or mongo db ?
I've worked with Next, Nuxt, Angular, plain React and plain VueJS. I have 3 years on NextJS. 2 on Nuxt, and Nuxt takes the cake. The only reason NextJS and React are more popular is because of posts like this.
What technology was the best for you? It would be very interesting to hear an honest answer from an experienced developer.
I believe his vote will before for Nuxt as that is what he already stated
I give this comment 10x like.
I really like NestJS and have built a really robust CMS using it but with MongoDB as my database and Astro ( in SSR mode with the node adapter and custom middlewares ) for my front-end. I like the simplicity of Astro and I am able to use components from all the other frameworks in Astro. I have used NextJS on a few projects, especially when working on a project that involves Payload CMS. I just find Astro to be the better of the two in my developer experience and in the final product I am able to produce. The way Astro does hydration really makes the pages load fast especially those that you choose to have run in SSG mode.
Thanks for the post and your view and opinion of the products you discussed.
Ok, thanks for sharing the info, cant wait to get started building some amazing stuff using Next JS,
Great article!!!. Just that I have tried severally to access the supabase website but to no avail. Please I need help with this. supabase.com doesn't open on my laptop or phone and has stalled my progress on a project.
Thanks! Try opening their website in an incognito tab—it might help if the issue is related to cached data or browser extensions. If that doesn’t work, you could also try accessing it from a different network or device to rule out any connectivity issues.
@melvin_ukaibe_b744fb16de4 kindly use a VPN
A few years ago, I started experimenting with Strapi and later transitioned to using NestJS. Recently, I revisited Strapi to implement a microservice at work. I highly recommend checking it out—it's an open-source Headless CMS that's both easy to use and highly extensible!
Why supabase with next Js as backend services. Why not firebase? Why not mongo DB? I am interest to learn next.js + mongo DB as backend services. Is it right or wrong decision for myself for 2025?
Supabase with Next.js is a great choice because it’s built on PostgreSQL, which is excellent for relational data and complex queries. It offers built-in features like authentication, real-time updates, and storage, making development faster and easier. Unlike Firebase, which uses a NoSQL structure and can lead to vendor lock-in and unpredictable costs, Supabase is more migration-friendly and scalable. While MongoDB is a solid choice for unstructured data, it lacks the out-of-the-box features that Supabase provides, requiring additional setup for similar functionality. If you’re working on unstructured data, NextJs with MongoDB is a fine choice, but for relational and scalable apps, Supabase with Next.js is more future-proof for 2025.
Just some personal reflection on this - Firestore is a great thing and it's cheap with a Vendor lock-in. Where you start paying with GCP is traffic. Firestore still stays cheap but you are already locked in :)
The good thing about Firestore - you can not care less about scalability issues - it's very-very scalable. Both reads and writes. And you don't have SQL which becomes annoying. Yet you can offload data into BigQuery if you need OLAP.
With Postgres you may run into scalability issues if you don't have a managed Instance which is frequently not cheap. I haven't looked at Supabase Postgres so cannot be objective here.
So, Can I introduce myself as a full stack developer if i have the above stack that we are talking about. Can I get a full stack job in start up if a have above stack?
LOL - Good luck my friend.
Because the new take for startups is to hire script kiddies that use frameworks and langs that prohibit inexperienced devs from doing anything that could break the codebase. Instead of using frameworks that allow for growth and are just as fast for development the idea is that using something like NextJS is the best idea over something like asp .net or Actix/Axum with Rust lang. Its just sad really (IMO).
I'm writing this down,
I've always been in love with Next.js but this post just provided more clarity as to which tools to use along with it
Thanks a lot Rayen.
Use tools you are familiar with for projects that require a full attention to details. Learning is good, but it takes more time and effort to reach the same goal with the tech you are not used to...
Good article
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