[SOLVED] General inquiry about Appwrite

hi all!

appwrite sounds amazing, have few questions around how to properly use it

appwrite handles auth, databases, functions and storage

but appwrite doesn't handle hosting?

so if frontend app is built upon appwrite, we almost completely eliminate need for backend? if there is a more complex function required that cannot be done on frontend, we can use functions?

what if frontend app is hosted on digitalocean or railway app, what is the latency? server location? bandwidth with constant talking between appwrite and frontend app since they are not on same internal network?

and how would we handle tasks that need to be executed some time in the future?

appwrite has sdk to talk to databases so we cannot use orms like drizzleorm or sqlachemy?

self hosted would be a solution for latency and bandwidth but seems quite complex for smaller projects if its self hosted on DigitalOcean what cost can we expect since all we wanna do is reduce latency and bandwidth

last things can appwrite handle different user permissions, rate limiting etc or do we implement this inside code?

thanks!

1. You need to host the frontend on vercel, netlify, Cloudflare pages, etc. All the backend = Appwrite. That means the user can interact directly with appwrite without going through the server where the frontend is hosted (you don't need Server Side Rendering except if you need SEO)
2. Yes, Appwrite will be your backend, technically the backed still exists, but it's Appwrite. You can use Appwrite functions for all things you don't want to be run in frontend and manipulated by users
3. The server location is Frankfurt, but there will be support for more regions in the future. There should not be any issue if frontend is hosted on DigitalOcean. The latency will be from the Appwrite server to user so it doesn't matter at all the frontend server location in backend processes. As said, the user can interact directly with appwrite without going through your frontend server.
4. You can schedule functions to be executed every X hours, days or minutes
5. On self-hosted you can connect to the database appwrite is using and do whether you want, however I think appwrite SDK will be enough for most cases so you will not need anything, but you can still use it if it's compatible with MariaDB. In cloud, you can't connect directly to the DB.
6. In the case of self-hosting the cost will depend on the amount of resources you need, obviously it will depend on the traffic and complexity your app has. You will not reduce latency if hosting on DO or bandwidth
7. Appwrite itself with the SDK will handle sessions and the backend has rate limits

Respect your concerns regarding latency and bandwidth, as said, it depends if you will use or not SSR. If you don't need SEO or something specific, I would choose using the SDK and performing everything client side since it will be a lot easier and give you less issues.

In client side rendering, what will have less latency is having the frontend server close to your users and done

awesome! thanks pretty much addressing everything i had questions about

much appreciated

Tell me if you have any other doubts regarding this or you didn't understand something so I can explain it further 😄

In the case everything is clear, can I mark this as solved?

yes please:) thank you

thank you for fast answer as well

[SOLVED] General inquiry about Appwrite