One of the most impactful decisions in any software project happens before a single line of code is written: choosing the tech stack. Get it right and your team moves fast for years. Get it wrong and you’re rewriting in 18 months.
Our Decision Framework
We evaluate every stack decision against four pillars:
1. Does It Fit the Problem?
A real-time collaborative editor has different needs than a marketing website. We match the technology to the problem, not the other way around. MongoDB makes sense when your data model is genuinely flexible. PostgreSQL makes sense for everything else.
2. Can We Hire For It?
The best technology in the world is useless if you can’t build a team around it. We bias toward widely-adopted technologies with strong communities. React over Svelte for most client projects — not because React is better, but because the talent pool is 10x larger.
3. What’s the Maintenance Burden?
Every dependency, framework, and service adds maintenance overhead. We ask: will this still be supported in 3 years? Is the community growing or shrinking? Are breaking changes frequent?
4. What’s the Total Cost?
Cloud costs, licensing, developer time, onboarding new team members — the cheapest framework can become expensive if it requires specialized knowledge or has hidden infrastructure costs.
Common Patterns We Reach For
- MERN stack for data-intensive dashboards and tools
- Astro + Tailwind for marketing sites and landing pages
- Next.js for SEO-critical applications that also need interactivity
- PostgreSQL as the default database unless there’s a compelling reason otherwise
There’s no universal “best” stack. The best stack is the one that serves your specific project’s needs while keeping future options open.