Problems with backend

[trim holly]

Hey all!
I'm trying to incorporate some backend to my project (just a simple highscore list for a game), using NodeJS, ExpressJS, MongoDB and MongoDB Atlas. I can't get things to work when I deploy it to Netlify. I have now learned that Netlify is mainly for frontend stuff. Does this mean I need to deploy my project somewhere else? If so, which service should I use for projects that involve backend stuff?
I appreciate all answers, thanks!

[rose bear]

Correct. Netlify cannot manage server-side projects, so you need to deploy the backend stuff somewhere else. Out of the free options available, I think https://render.com/ is the easiest to deploy on for a first timer, although it is a little slower than the others.

Other options include:

1. https://railway.app/
2. https://vercel.com/dashboard
3. https://www.heroku.com/ (not free)

[trim holly]

Thanks for your help as always. I have already spent like 10 hours trying to get this to work, and would probably have spent another 10 hours before giving up if it wasn't for you 😅
I'll try Render!

[rose bear]

👍

[proven bronze]

I use Digital Ocean for all of my projects that require a back-end. I think they have a free tier that lets you run one small server. https://www.digitalocean.com/

[trim holly]

Thank you for the recommendation. I still haven't managed to deploy it successfully, and I see Render is only free for a month. I will try Render first, and see if I can get it deployed. After that I will look for other options. This is my first time playing with backend stuff, so I want to make sure I got things working first

[dusky gust]

Doesn't Atlas come with a free tier? you could just make calls to the free mongo instance on Atlas unless I'm missing something. Mongo doesn't need to live where your middleware lives.

[trim holly]

I still needed to deploy the site somewhere

Aaaand, here it is finally, after 2 days of struggling 😂
Try to get on the high score list, and I will remove the fake scores once there are 3 legit ones there 🙂

https://pyramids.onrender.com/

Now it's 2:47 am. I finally deserve some sleep

[trim holly]

And to the person who cheated in my game: Thank you!
I had to figure out how to do it myself, and now I know 😎

[burnt merlin]

Im doing this on one of my sites

[trim holly]

Render is super slow sometimes. I need to find another solution, now when I know it's working

[dusky gust]

I had an interesting experience with Render a long time ago. I had gotten their free credits from some course and hosted a site with them. I forgot to shut it down. I assumed they'd stop it after my credits got exhausted but nope, the site kept running and they sent me a bill. Just be careful with shutting down sites, they seem to be pretty strict with billing.

[trim holly]

Thanks for the heads up. As long as I don't provide any card or billing info, I doubt they can bill me, right?

[dusky gust]

I don't think they can, luckily I didn't have a card, or they could've just quietly kept billing me lol... I dunno... I just found it annoying they kept sending me messages and one of the Render ppl were taking the course with me and they assured me it was taken care of but then I kept getting messages to add a card lol... haven't checked them out since then.