Enterprise Node Stack Guide for Solo Developers

The Stack

This is the stack you reach for when you're building something that needs to look and feel enterprise-grade from day one. Maybe you're selling to businesses that require AWS hosting. Maybe you're building an API that other companies will depend on. Maybe you just want a codebase architecture that scales cleanly as the product grows.

When to Use This Stack

Perfect for: B2B SaaS targeting mid-market or enterprise, API-first products, developer tools, platforms that need to pass security audits, products where reliability is more important than speed to market.

Not ideal for: Quick MVPs (too much setup overhead), solo projects where you're still validating the idea, consumer apps where time-to-market matters most, or teams of one who don't need the structure.

Be honest with yourself about whether you need this. Most solo developer products don't. But if you're building for B2B customers who ask about your infrastructure during sales calls, this stack answers those questions before they're asked.

Why Solo Developers Choose It

TypeScript everywhere. One language, full type safety, from your API endpoints to your database queries to your frontend components. Refactoring is safer. Bugs are caught at compile time instead of runtime. For a solo developer who is also the QA team, this is insurance.

NestJS brings structure. Express gives you freedom. NestJS gives you opinions. Modules, controllers, services, guards, interceptors, pipes. The architecture is pre-defined, which means you spend less time deciding how to organize code and more time writing business logic. For a growing codebase, this structure prevents spaghetti.

AWS credibility. When enterprise customers ask "Where is our data hosted?" and you say "AWS with encrypted RDS, S3, and VPC isolation," that conversation ends quickly. It shouldn't matter this much, but it does. AWS on your architecture diagram opens doors.

Scales with complexity. This stack handles complexity that would strain simpler setups. Microservice extraction if needed (NestJS makes this straightforward). Event-driven architecture with SQS or EventBridge. Complex authorization with RBAC or ABAC. You probably don't need any of this on day one, but the stack supports it without a rewrite.

The Parts Nobody Warns You About

AWS is expensive and complex. A basic setup with ECS (containers), RDS (managed Postgres), ElastiCache (Redis), and S3 runs $80-200/month minimum. That's before you hit any meaningful traffic. And AWS's console is a labyrinth of services, each with their own configuration. Budget time for infrastructure setup and cost monitoring.

NestJS has a steep learning curve. Dependency injection, decorators, modules, providers. If you're coming from Express, the NestJS way of doing things feels over-engineered at first. It clicks after a week or two, but that initial learning period is real. The documentation is good but assumes familiarity with enterprise architecture patterns.

You're the infrastructure team. With simpler stacks, deployment is "push to Vercel." Here, you're managing containers, load balancers, database backups, security groups, IAM roles, and monitoring alerts. This is real work that takes time away from building features.

Over-engineering is the constant temptation. Just because the stack supports microservices, event sourcing, and CQRS doesn't mean you should use them. Start monolithic. Extract services only when you have a concrete reason. I've seen solo developers spend months building elaborate infrastructure for products that had 50 users.

Setting Up the Stack

If you go with NestJS, the CLI scaffolds everything. nest new project-name gives you a structured project with modules, controllers, and services. Add TypeORM or Prisma for database access. Set up BullMQ for background jobs.

For deployment, you have two paths.

Simpler: Use Railway or Render instead of AWS. You get Docker-based deployment with managed databases, and it costs $20-50/month instead of $100+. You lose the "we're on AWS" talking point but gain hours of time back.

Full AWS: Use AWS CDK or Terraform to define your infrastructure as code. ECS Fargate for containerized deployment (no server management), RDS for PostgreSQL, ElastiCache for Redis, S3 for file storage. Set up GitHub Actions to build Docker images and deploy to ECS on push.

The full AWS path takes 2-3 days of initial setup. The Railway path takes 30 minutes. Choose based on whether your customers actually require AWS.

Architecture

Frontend (Next.js / React)
  └── API Gateway / Load Balancer
        └── NestJS Application
              ├── Auth Module (JWT, sessions, RBAC)
              ├── Users Module
              ├── Core Feature Modules
              ├── Webhooks Module
              └── Background Workers (BullMQ)

Infrastructure (AWS)
  ├── ECS Fargate (containers)
  ├── RDS PostgreSQL (database)
  ├── ElastiCache Redis (cache + queue broker)
  ├── S3 (file storage)
  ├── CloudWatch (logs)
  └── Route 53 (DNS)

CI/CD (GitHub Actions)
  └── Test → Build Docker → Push to ECR → Deploy to ECS

Cost Breakdown

Alternative with Railway: $20-50/month total. Same stack, simpler deployment, lower cost.

Alternatives to Consider

If cost is a concern: Django on a $4 VPS gives you the same backend capability at a fraction of the cost. You lose TypeScript but gain Django's admin panel and ecosystem.

If you don't need enterprise credibility: Next.js + Supabase + Vercel. Simpler, cheaper, faster to ship.

If you want better performance: Go with Go + PostgreSQL + Redis. Better raw performance, smaller binaries, lower memory usage. But smaller ecosystem for web application development.

If you want simpler deployment with Node.js: Express on Railway or Render. Same Node.js backend, none of the NestJS ceremony, and managed deployment.

My Take

Here's my honest assessment: most solo developers don't need this stack. The overhead of NestJS's architecture and AWS's infrastructure eats into your most precious resource, which is time. If you're validating an idea, use something simpler and cheaper.

But if you know your market is B2B, your customers will ask about infrastructure during sales, and your product needs to handle complex business logic cleanly, this stack delivers. NestJS's structure prevents the codebase from becoming a mess as it grows. TypeScript catches bugs early. AWS provides the credibility and reliability that enterprise customers expect.

The key is being honest about when you need this versus when you want this. Need is a product selling to security-conscious businesses that require SOC 2 compliance and AWS hosting. Want is a solo developer who enjoys building infrastructure. Build what your users care about, and only reach for enterprise infrastructure when the market demands it.