A friend of mine is creating Uber-like app for a small company with 200 to 1000 cars. The app will operate in a single city with that number of cars. The app will work like Uber, with user registration, booking a cab, maps, etc.
Do you guys think AWS Amplify or other such solution will be a good idea to back the app? How much would be the server costs at the peak of app’s traffic?
@AstonJ can I post the same on ElixirForum? Because there I’ll get more users to talk about it.
We only have Elixir related threads there now @pillaiindu 
I’ve not heard of AWS Amplify before but it looks like it’s just for the backend of existing apps?
The Amplify Framework provides a set of libraries and UI components and a command line interface to build mobile backends and integrate with your iOS, Android, Web, and React Native apps. The Amplify CLI allows you to configure all the services needed to power your backend through a simple command line interface. The Amplify library makes it easy to integrate your code with your backend using declarative interfaces and simple UI components.
If so and there’s only going to be 200 to 1000 cars, maybe use Rails or Phoenix as an API only app?
I made something similar, basically a Fleet Management App but has some Uber like feature such as assign drivers to vehicles, add and plan trips, real-time analytics etc. Its serving ~15k vehicles now.
When we made it (~2009) we used Django for the webapp and Java (with Netty) for collecting GPS data. It was hosted on a VPS (RapidVPS, it was I believe we overspent behind the dedicated 8GB package), it served quite well. I don’t know what stack they are using now though but I think for small scale Uber clone starting with the more traditional approach would be okay like making the API layer with something like Phoenix, front end with React/Native that displays it and a message queue of your choice.
The next video in ElixirCasts is paid though, but the other resource (blog post) is so comprehensive.
Thank you for sharing these!
BTW, don’t you think Rails API will be slower for such an application?
@AstonJ @OvermindDL1 @mafinar
What would you use for the server-side of such an app today?
What would you have used if you knew all of the language and frameworks currently used for web/restful-api development?
Languages like C, C++, Dart, Crystal, Go, Haskell, Nim, Lua, Elixir, Erlang, Gleam, Java, Scala, Groovy, Kotlin, Clojure, Ruby, Python, Rust etc, and their frameworks.
Would you use one of the above options or use something like AWS amplify. Let me remind that the application is a small-scale but a serious Uber clone.
Sounds like any of your options can do that - so I guess it would be dependent on your priorities and which of those you feel can be offered to you.
I would prob just do it with whatever I know or find easiest.
Hi there,
I would suggest you go for MongoDB for this project. I have personally used this in my taxi dispatch software which is so efficient and cost-effective. The good part is it handles quite a hefty amount of data when compared with others.
I can guide you through the process if you need any help. This is Charles from SpotnRides.
