Or you could use sqlite until you need postgres. I have to admit I reach for postgres immediately when in many cases sqlite would have served me just as well.
SQLite seems to be gaining popularity with even larger projects which is surprising to me. As I see it, the big value prop of SQLite is that it runs in-process which, for a webapp, is almost nil?
Other than that, it's not like queries are any simpler and the "simple" type system is, in my opinion, not a feature. I get that some might disagree with that.
Is there some other reason why you would prefer it?
It has an extremely low barrier of entry while providing the features of a relational database when all you need is a local data store. The files are trivially easy to transport using standard tools when needed. I've been in back-end automation/integration for my entire career and use these kinds of things all the time. The overhead of maintaining a full networked RDBMS isn't always something I want (or need) to do.
I use it in my production SaaS serving around 4 million requests per month on one of the lowest DigitalOcean tiers. The big ones for me were cost, operating simplicity and performance. I don’t need a separate process or server running which has saved me some money and time, and the app’s workload doesn’t need a ton of inserts so the speed is blazing fast.
It may not quite have all of the JSON features of Postgres, but recently the JSON handling has become way more usable in SQLite. More than usable for sure.
