Side

First, like many others, I thought I could manage everything by myself. I had a private server for my app, and a MongoDB instance running on it. Everything seemed perfect. Then, as we grew, I discovered that having only one self-hosted instance was a good way to grow some gray hairs prematurely.

It all began when I tried to set a replica-set with a password protection. Setting a password prevented my instances to sync with each other and not having one was basically giving away free read/write access to our database. Such a nightmare! It was not even finished because, when I thought I was close to getting it, my instances just started to freak out and the primary decided to go secondary and the other way around. Then our production app went down. It was then that Compose became the obvious choice. I hate MongoDB setup and documentation and was really happy to give it away to somebody else.

Funny story. What got me to convert and become a customer was when I discovered that, in some placeholder on the website, it read "bow-ties are cool". I thought that myself and the Compose team had similar tastes in humor, or a common interest in Dr. Who. I mentioned Compose on Twitter and asked about it. It was the Dr. Who. What's funnier though, is that after they answered, I went back to my Compose app and discovered that my deployment name was "bow-ties"!

That whole story may seem like nothing, but it's a glimpse into how lasting connections are made. Even over the internet and halfway across the world, you guys got me with the small details. In the end, it's the ability to provide a good service and the little details that makes a product special in your eyes. That's Compose.

— Hugo Michalski, Side (formerly WeSlash)