Self-hosted app backend

Problem

Product teams need a backend on day one: sign-in, a database, file storage, and an API the client can call. A hosted backend-as-a-service ships that fast, then takes the data, the bill, and the exit path. Building the same stack from scratch — identity, Postgres, object storage, realtime, generated APIs — burns months before the product exists.

The organization still needs that convenience. It also needs the data to stay inside its perimeter, the cost to stay predictable, and the stack to run the same way in every environment.

System Design

This project is a self-hosted backend platform. A relational database is the source of truth. Auth sits in front of it. Object storage holds files. Realtime and auto-generated APIs expose the data to apps. A reverse proxy with HTTPS is the only public door.

Everything deploys as one stack on your infrastructure. Configuration is environment variables. Volumes keep database and files across restarts. No tenant on someone else's cloud.

Architecture Decisions

• One self-hosted platform instead of wiring auth, database, storage, and APIs by hand
• Relational database as the system of record, not a proprietary document store
• Auth, storage, and realtime as first-class services next to the data
• Reverse proxy with automatic HTTPS
• Secrets in environment variables, not in git
• Persistent volumes for data and objects
• Repeatable deploy so local, staging, and production match

Tradeoffs

• You own backups, upgrades, and uptime
• More moving parts than a managed BaaS — traded for data control and no per-seat lock-in
• A single-host stack is simple to run but is not multi-node high availability
• You keep Postgres flexibility; you give up the vendor's global edge network

Production Behavior

Set the domain and credentials, then deploy on your own hosts. Clients talk to one HTTPS endpoint for auth, queries, storage, and realtime. Data never leaves the network you operate.

Back up the database and object volumes on the same cadence as any system of record. Built for teams that want Firebase-like speed without handing the backend to a public cloud.