Please share clear information about external databases

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Happy New Year! :tada:

I’m currently developing a social networking service.

I have completed the app about three weeks ago, submitted it to the App Store, and tested it, but I received reviews from most users saying that the app performed too poorly to be comfortable to use. Also, when I was reworking the pitch for the product, I realized that it had somehow deviated from the product I really wanted to create. So, last week, I started building a new product from scratch again.

Based on the mistakes I made last time, this time I want to improve the performance of the app. I have tried most of the performance improvement methods available on the web for the last app I created.

What I have not been able to try is external databases.Since I am a designer-leaning entrepreneur who is not technically savvy, I was hesitant to use an external database. However, this is the only way I have left, so I will give it a try. :muscle:

I’ve checked almost all the posts about external databases on the forum here, but there are so many technical words that I couldn’t understand them completely.

So I would like to ask you all to tell me a few things.

(1) Is Xano the best database?
(2) Is it better to keep user data in internal or external database?
(3) If I use an external database, will I be able to use push notifications? Also, are there any other things that are not possible with an external database compared to an internal database? (E.g. List within a list)

It would be appreciated if you could explain the reasons for these answers as clearly as possible, even for a beginner who is not familiar with external databases.

Thank you very much. :hugs:
Also, I appreciate you reading my poor English so far.

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Hi @hotdesk I’m sure you’ve found a solution by now but wanted to chime in.

  1. Xano is a great backend but you should give it a shot first if you haven’t already (We have a generous free plan so you can try it out).
  2. It depends. I know Adalo is doing lots and lots to improve performance. The nice thing about a separate backend is you can process all your data and perform all your complex logic on the backend which has a dedicated server. However, if you are doing simple operations for example, just getting a list of 100 items with no transformations, often times it can be faster to have the data in the same place.
  3. I can’t speak to any Adalo limitations with external databases but I would assume things like push notifications should still be quite possible (but once again, I’m not an expert here just my best guess!)
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