By Thomas M
Founder at UnitHub
I’m building a property management SaaS platform called UnitHub using Next.js, PostgreSQL, and Prisma ORM. We’re currently evaluating DigitalOcean App Platform for deployment.
I have a few questions about best practices:
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Database connections: What’s the recommended way to handle PostgreSQL connection pooling with Prisma on App Platform? Should I use PgBouncer or rely on Prisma’s built-in connection management?
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Environment variables: Is there a recommended approach for managing secrets and environment variables across staging and production environments on App Platform?
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Static assets and file uploads: We handle property images and documents. Should I use DigitalOcean Spaces for object storage, or is there a better approach for handling file uploads in a Next.js app on App Platform?
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Auto-scaling: How well does App Platform handle traffic spikes? Our platform sees higher usage during business hours and we want to ensure tenants can always access their dashboards.
Any advice from folks who have deployed similar SaaS applications on DigitalOcean would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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Heya, @unithub
I’ll try to address the questions you listed bellow:
If you plan to use DigitalOcean’s Managed PostgreSQL, the most “DigitalOcean-native” option is to use the connection pools (PgBouncer) and wire your app to the pool endpoint rather than the direct DB endpoint. DigitalOcean explicitly supports creating and connecting to Postgres pools from App Platform and exposes the values via bindable environment variables.
The cleanest approach on App Platform is to treat staging and production as separate apps (separate app specs, separate env vars, separate databases). DigitalOcean’s docs cover env var management (including “bindable variables” for app-provided values), and DO also publishes guidance on multi-environment setup.
DigitalOcean explicitly recommends Spaces Object Storage (or Managed Databases) for persistence, and notes App Platform local storage should be temporary only.
App Platform supports both fixed scaling and autoscaling; you configure it in the app spec or via the UI/CLI/API. It’s generally good at handling predictable business-hours peaks, but the practical limiter tends to be “what else scales with it”: database connections (again), background jobs, and any third-party rate limits.
Hope that this helps!
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