Backend as a Service

Backend as a Service, or BaaS, is a key piece to simplifying your deployment of backend services, without managing the infrastructure yourself.

Headless CMS

CMS stands for Content Management System. Headless CMS' are back-end-only CMS that separate the content management from the presentation layer (website front-end). This means that the content can be managed in one place, but it can be displayed on any device or platform, using any technology.

These are different from traditional CMS, which include both content management and presentation, but don't allow for data to be displayed on any other platform other than what the CMS was originally designed for.

Headless CMS allow you to have more flexibility in how you display your content, as you can use whatever you want.

tip

For it to be a real headless CMS, it should completely manage the security and infrastructure of the CMS. This means you only need to focus on the content, and not on keeping the CMS up-to-date patching any issues or vulnerabilities.

links:

• https://jamstack.org/headless-cms/
• https://www.oberlo.com/blog/markdown-editors
• https://seedium.io/blog/netlify-vs-strapi/
• https://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/9-challenges-of-scaling-a-headless-cms/

Headless CMS Types

There are API based, and Git based CMS. Most are API based where you access the content through API. Git based ones manage it in a git repository, either theirs or your own.

Sanity

Free to start out but will quickly start billing you by usage - only 10GB/mo bandwidth for free. This is a popular headless CMS.

• Free for 3 non-admin users and unlimited free admin users
• Netlify Integration for site rebuilds from within Sanity
• Pricing Info
• Astro and Sanity Blog
• Next.js and Sanity Starter
• Astro and Sanity Starter
  • And a Youtube guide

Storyblok

• Free option with 1 user
• Netlify Integration for site rebuilds from Storyblok
• Astro Integration @storyblok/astro
  • npm install @storyblok/astro
• https://www.storyblok.com/tp/add-a-headless-cms-to-astro-in-5-minutes
• https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2023/02/building-future-proof-high-performance-websites-astro-islands-headless-cms-storyblok/
• https://dev.to/jgierer12/astro-storyblok-ssr-preview-for-instant-visual-editing-3g9m

Sanity vs Storyblok

This is my comparison of their free plans (monthly). Their plans can change over time so best to double check on their websites.

Sanity	Storyblok
500k CDN Requests
10 GB Bandwidth (+$1 / 5GB)	250GB Bandwidth
3 non-admin seats	1 seat (+$9 / seat)
Unlimited admin seats	No distinction between user and admin
2 datasets	1 project
5 GB assets (+$1 / 2GB)	2500 assets, up to 15MB each
10k documents	25k stories
custom preview environment	2 preview environments

Tina

Tina is a git based CMS which edits the contents of your git repository. It has a decent free option with 2 users.

• Great support with Next.js, Docusaurus, but can integrate into any SSG (including Astro)
  • Tina info on Astro
    • Add to astro guide
  • Astro docs on Tina
• Tina docs on how to use graphql with the filesystem
• How media works with Tina CMS
• Contextual editing with Tina
• Tina Github repo

Forms

Article on forms without backend.

More to come... basic text below

        Prismic - headless CMS
            Free option for 1 user and pretty cheap for a few users
            https://prismic.io/pricing

        Netlify CMS -  git based CMS
            https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/cms/netlify-cms/
            https://www.netlifycms.org/
            https://jamstack.org/headless-cms/netlify-cms/
            https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/add-to-your-site/
            https://aalam.vercel.app/blog/astro-and-git-cms-netlify

        Stackbit? - CMS or something that automates using Netlify CMS or something???
            https://www.stackbit.com/
            https://app.stackbit.com/login?redirect=%2Fdashboard

        Wordpress
            https://developers.wpengine.com/
            GraphQL Plugin: https://www.wpgraphql.com/
            https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/03/23/migrate-your-wordpress-site-to-the-jamstack/
            https://css-tricks.com/wordpress-and-jamstack/
            https://pagepro.co/blog/migration-from-wordpress-to-jamstack/
            Astro theme:
                https://astro.build/themes/details/astro-wordpress-starter/

    Netlify Forms
        https://www.netlify.com/products/forms/
        https://blog.logrocket.com/how-to-send-emails-react-app-netlify-functions/

    SendGrid - email sending service
        https://sendgrid.com/
        Integrates nicely with Netlify forms
        https://slawinski.dev/blog/start-sending-emails-using-netlify-lambda-functions-and-sendgrid/
        *pretty good free plan*

    MailChimp - email and marketing tool
        https://mailchimp.com/
        https://carouth.com/articles/netlify-function-mailchimp/
        *better for more integrated full business solution (paid)*

    SendGrid v Mailchimp: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/small-business/email-marketing/sendgrid-vs-mailchimp/

    Email JS - send email directly from your js code
        https://www.emailjs.com/
        Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Cr00UYokU @ 2:58:00
        To use:
            Login
            Under "Email Services", link to an email service you wish to use (like gmail)
                It will use this email to send messages to whatever email you desire
            Under "Email Templates" create a new template
                For your website forms, whatever you "name" them like `name="email"`, you can use {{email}} in EmailJS to get that data
                    https://www.emailjs.com/docs/user-guide/dynamic-variables-templates/
        React:
            https://www.emailjs.com/docs/examples/reactjs/
            Install: `npm install @emailjs/browser --save`

    Algolia DocSearch - Search Provider
        https://www.algolia.com/
        Searchbar provider that uses keyword search. Pretty cheap at $1/month/1000 requests and storage. Pay as you go
        Free with Netlify I believe
        They provide you the information you need to put in your code for it to work.
            Integrates super nice with Docusaurus

    DataStax - database as service?
        https://www.datastax.com/

    Peek - Booking software, advertised for experiences
        https://www.peek.com/

    Backend As A Service
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXmYUalHyYk

        Firebase
            Nice to implement, but hard if you want to change providers in the future
            Probably the easiest to get started
            It basically locks you into Google
            Cloud Firestore - the DB this uses
                NoSQL

        AWS Amplify
            Lambda - server side functions
                https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/welcome.html
            DynamoDB - the DB this uses
                Auto creates GraphQL API
                Has no-code solution for setting up data relationships
                Can make searchable with elastic search
                    This is a missing feature in Firebase
            Cognito - Authentication. Feels more mature than Firebase offering
                Can create user groups to control who has access to what
            This also suffers from vendor lock-in

        Supabase
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CuTxeioKF4
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7M_4Kc8DGc
            Has main things like Database, Authentication, Storage, and Edge Functions (serverless)
            Open source!
            No hosting, so you'll have to host yourself on something like Netlify or Vercel
            Has free tier, limited to only 2 projects
                Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity
            Paid starts at $25/mo. Can have up to 100,000 users
            Postgres - the DB this uses
                flexible and standard way to monitor data
                no vendor-lock in as Postgres is standard and you could host it anywhere
                Relational databases are easy to work with
                Works nicely with Auth for row level authentication
                Has fulltext search

        NHost
            Open source Firebase alternative with GraphQL
            Similar pricing to Supabase
            First class support for React
                Provides hooks to perform authentication with single line of code
            Postgres - the DB this uses
                Best feature - the Postgres DB is also a GraphQL API. This uses Hasura
                Sometimes you'll need to go to Hasura directly to perform actions
                    Security rules
                To access DB in app, you'll be working with Apollo (library) and GraphQL
                    This has a learning curve

        Appwrite
            Same infrastructure pieces as NHost and Supabase
            SDKs for both web and mobile
            Not a commercial product yet, so you self-host using one line docker deploy to DigitalOcean
            Database is SQL as NoSQL, based on MariaDB
                NoSQL API to work with traditional SQL DB
                Doesn't support GraphQL yet

        MongoDB Realm
            Syncs data from MongoDB Atlas to any web or mobile platform
            Mostly focused on Mobile development
            More advanced from a dev perspective, but it makes sense to use if you're already using MongoDB
                Can generate GraphQL api for DB
            Has authentication but it is more limited than other platforms

Examples
    Astro framework w/ Netlify w/ Supabase (and PolyScale)
        https://www.netlify.com/blog/querying-supabase-from-the-edge-with-polyscale/
    Netlify + Supabase
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7M_4Kc8DGc