Matt Luo

Building a language learning app meant I needed a backend that could handle realtime sync, multilingual support, and type-safe code. I didn’t start with Convex—I evaluated Firebase, PlanetScale, Supabase, Neon, and others first. Each had tradeoffs: Firebase felt disjointed and buggy; PlanetScale lacked international support; Supabase leaned too hard into SQL; and Neon made realtime too complicated. What made Convex different was how little backend glue I needed to write. Realtime sync just worked. TypeScript felt native. My frontend felt alive without hacks. It felt like hiring a backend team on day one. A year later, I’m still shipping fast—and glad I made the switch. This post breaks down what I found, what failed, and why Convex ended up being the best database for a modern TypeScript app like LanguageHopper.

Convex might look like just a database, but for modern app developers, it's a full backend-as-a-service platform that replaces the complexity of stitching together ORMs, caching, rate limiting, realtime sync, and CI/CD. In this post, a startup founder walks through how they used Convex to build ClarityText—an AI-powered chat knowledge base—and explains why Convex delivers faster MVPs, deeper type safety, and a seamless developer experience without third-party services like Prisma, Redis, or Firebase. Perfect for developers evaluating backend choices in 2024 and beyond.