Serverless Revolution

This post isn’t sponsored by Cloudflare or any other PaaS provider mentioned here. I just want to help any developer who has a project in mind bring it to the real world without spending a single penny.

The Solo Engineer’s Life

I’m Rolando Andrade, a Software Engineer with extensive experience across the software development lifecycle. Last August, I decided to start shipping my own projects—building apps and consulting to make a direct impact on my own terms.

When you work at a big company, you rarely worry about infrastructure costs. You ask your manager, and if the budget is there, you get what you need. But when I started shipping my own products, I discovered that infrastructure is neither easy nor cheap. Even with scripts and templates, you eventually have to manage changes, optimize costs, and deal with a lot of tedious operational overhead.

I’m just a Software Engineer. I want to build software in peace without navigating 10 complex pricing tiers based on dozens of constraints. Yes, I’m looking at you, AWS.

Running on the Edge

I’ve deployed applications on AWS, GCP, and Azure. If I had to pick a favorite, I’d go with Azure (mostly because it felt slightly more engineer-friendly). But really, they’re all cut from the same cloth: one hundred steps to deploy an application, and a hefty bill at the end of the month.

However, towards the end of last year while developing StepCode, I discovered Cloudflare’s free tier. Everything changed.

I deployed StepCode on Cloudflare Pages. The result? 2,000 monthly visits, incredible speed, enhanced security, and deployments triggered by a simple git push. All for free. I fell in love and started testing everything else Cloudflare and similar platforms had to offer.

DEVLog - October & November

Rolando Andrade's development log covering October and November.

rolandoandrade.me

Cloudflare Workers allow you to do almost anything. I’ve deployed serverless APIs built with Hono, and the @cloudflare/next-on-pages package allows deploying Next.js applications with a single command. Even better, AI Workers give you free access to run LLMs for up to 500 daily responses. That’s a game-changer for MVPs and hobby projects.

Okay, so you can deploy pages and APIs, but you need a database, right? Correct. Cloudflare offers D1, which I’ve been using seamlessly for the past month. Alternatives like Turso or Supabase are also fantastic. And for object storage, Cloudflare R2 is a solid contender against AWS S3 for most projects.

You Can Run Whatever You Want for Free

Start your project. Change the world. Don’t worry about costs. You can scale to 10k, 50k, or even 100k users without spending a dime. And if you exceed the limits? It’s often just $5 to upgrade. If I were starting today, here’s my stack:

• Frontend hosting: Vercel / Cloudflare Pages ($0/month)
• Backend hosting: Deploy an API on the edge with CF Workers ($0/month)
• Database: D1, Turso, Supabase, Convex ($0/month)
• Real time collaboration: PartyKit ($0/month)
• Key-Value fast storage like Redis: Cloudflare KV ($0/month)
• Blob storage: Cloudflare R2 and even S3 ($0/month)
• Security: Cloudflare ($0/month)
• Authentication: Clerk, Supabase ($0/month)
• AI: AI Workers ($0/month)
• Monitoring: Cloudflare ($0/month)
• Domain: Namecheap, Cloudflare, etc. ($12/year)

This list isn’t exhaustive—it’s just what I use and trust. If you know of other great alternatives, let me know, and I’ll update the list.

The Bottom Line

There are no excuses. You can scale your side project from 0 to 10k users without ever pulling out a credit card, all while maintaining top-tier product quality. Just design it, code it, and deploy it. Thank me later.

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