Firstly I absolutely love Replit and have deployed 4 apps in less than 2 months with my last one converted to a PWA. Whilst I’d consider myself an experienced developer, I am NOT a full stack developer and against the unregulated growth of AI so my Replit journey started with much hesitation and cynicism.
However here is the caveat, because agent is actually forcing me to learn and develop my own skills to plug the AI failures. It is amazing for creating an initial framework with tech stack but when it starts to go wrong, agent vanishes down some rabbit hole and a simple bug fix has suddenly broken half your app. Eventually I stopped getting frustrated and started learning more React to help the agent fix the screwups, so now we both learn
I’m considering using Replit for 2 projects, the first is a small ordering/stock app but the second is a much larger SaSS product which could grow very large. I am very interested in getting some community thoughts here, my questions/concerns are -
Is it scalable enough for developing a large scale project with 100s of users?
Is it resilient enough when compared to AWS which we initially planned to use?
Can we export the code to a larger platform if the need eventually arises?
Should I be concerned about the multiple posts regarding copyright/IP ?
In my experience as a Replit power user here is what I’ve learned, discovered. Your mileage may vary so you may need to do more diligence. I will try to link to Replit docs where able.
Is it scalable enough for developing a large scale project with 100s of users?
Yes. I know of apps that have hundreds (>100) of users. I am sure there are thousands.
If you have a database the connections can be pooled, and I think can handle 400 concurrent users last I heard. This might have increased/changed.
Should I be concerned about the multiple posts regarding copyright/IP ?
I’m not 100% sure what posts you are referring to, however, I have seen some. IMO the way Replit has written the TOS it is pretty clear. Private repository = private license, public repository = MIT license.
I haven’t fully verified all of this, and I could (probably do) have errors, so I definitely recommend doing your own research, however, this is generally what I have observed.
@mark and @ianbearkoded - I am not a lawyer, but I started some of those posts regarding terms. With a friendly non-lawyer hat on, I would say be cautious if you wish to use your app for commercial purposes. See these lines in Replit Core terms:
You agree to use the service for non-commercial purposes and are of legal age to accept these terms. If you are a commercial user, please visit our Replit Teams page for more information
3. Personal and non-commercial use
Unless otherwise specified, the Service is for your personal and non-commercial use. If you are planning to use the Service for commercial purposes, Replit requests that you subscribe to Replit Teams and agree to the Teams Product Agreement, which will then apply.
I’ve responded in another comment re point 4 (terms).
But re scalability:
I think Replit and all the other platforms (Lovable, etc) are currently being cautious about saying how scalable apps can be, until they see the real-world usage.
Add to this, the traditional developer industry (of which I have been one, for the record) is using this as their main argument for not using AI dev and destroying their industry, and to scare people away from using it instead of their over-priced traditional methods (sorry, horse has already bolted on that, I give traditional dev 5 years max before obliterated).
But Replit-deployed apps use professional hosting (not sure where) that is fully scalable. So the issue isn’t the servers. And it would manage an awful lot more than 100 users!!
The issue will be your code. Sure, edge cases increase with more users, but generally, your code will break whether you have 10 or 1,000 users. So test, test and test again before letting real users loose on your app.
Also, you didn’t mention how you are managing the DB? Replit’s ready made Postgres DB solution will be good and scalable. But personally, I build my apps to fully integrate into Supabase, for auth, data and file storage. This will ensure portability if you do decide to pick up all your code and move to host elsewhere - which you are free to do.
@mark@Gipity-Steve Thanks guys, this is some very helpful information and I really appreciate you both taking the time to respond.
@Gipity-Steve whilst I’m not a lawyer either, I know enough to agree with you here. This is very dubious wording, I can possibly understand if I developed an app for a client that Replit would require that client added as a ‘team member’ and maybe that’s reasonable. But if the client owns a replit account, I develop an app for them and the client deploys it for use with their business, just one admin user. This would not require “teams” but would legally be deemed as commercial use. Yet Replit could revoke their usage at any point for breaking terms of contract.
I cannot envisage any scenario where the majority of users are developing personal private apps for non-commercial use. It seems very strange of Replit to imagine otherwise or this is just misleading wording, designed to soften the impact of higher monthly fees. Either way it’s a concern for me personally so thanks for the insight mate
you’re welcome. I personally upgraded to Teams, as I develop apps for clients and wanted to make sure I was covered.
I also advise my client to read the terms and decide for themselves if they too should be on their own Teams account - in case them eventually launching their app and making money from it also gets tied up in this lack of legal clarity.
