Is serverless needed for my project

Before the invention of serverless computing, if you wanted to build a web application you had to
own the physical hardware required to run a server, which was unwieldy and costly.
Serverless computing allows you to purchase backend services whose price usually depends on
their usage. Similarly, your electricity bill depends on how much power you spend monthly.

The expression ‘serverless’ is fairly misleading because the backend services you use need to rely
on servers, although server space and infrastructure are handled by the vendor. The whole point of
this somewhat new technology is that you can do your work without worrying about servers at all.

This is all in theory. The truth is that you have to worry about a few things, so here are the main
pros and cons of serverless computing:

Choosing the right serverless provider early on determines the success of your project. You must
identify infrastructure that is appropriate for the size, demands, team skills, and scaling ambitions of
your product. Some of the most popular serverless providers are AWS Lambda, Azure Functions,
Cloudflare Workers, Google Cloud Functions, IBM Cloud Functions, Oracle Functions, Back4App,
Parse, Kinvey, and Knative.

Each of these providers has its advantages and disadvantages. For example, AWS Lambda’s main advantages are paying for what you use, no need to manage infrastructure, easy code deployment, and connection to the API gateway, but it also has disadvantages like the lack of control of the environment, and complicated call patterns and computational limitations.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you may benefit from serverless computing if you want to build lightweight and
flexible applications which are scalable and need to be updated quickly. Also, you can be more
dedicated to the end-user experience, for example moving some functionalities away from a server,
for reduced latency.

Furthermore, if your application has inconsistent usage, having serverless architecture will reduce costs. However, if you have an application with a constant or predictable workload the traditional setup is probably less expensive. You can read more about AWS Lambda, one of the providers we personally use, at Getting to know AWS Lambda.