Local-First Software Is Easier to Scale

Posted by chilipepperhott 7/5/2025

Local-First Software Is Easier to Scale(elijahpotter.dev)

175 points | 77 commentspage 2

charcircuit 7/5/2025|

An alternate article for this traffic spike is "PaaS is Easier to Scale". When the author relies on others to do the hosting and handle the scale the author doesn't have to worry about it. That's why he didn't need to be alerted. He's relying on others for that responsibility.

danjl 7/5/2025|

The authors rely on themselves, not other people. The developers of local first software take on the responsibility of making sure the app runs entirely on local resources. That's not the job of anybody else, and you don't need to pay for it like you do with cloud resources. This means it's cheaper for a startup to distribute local first software. The trick is that it's much harder to get paid for the app.

charcircuit 7/5/2025||

>not other people

The website is hosted by Automattic. The Firefox extention is hosted by Mozilla. The Chrome extention is hosted by Google. The Obsidian plugin is hosted by Obsidian. The VSCode extention is hosted by Microsoft. The source code is hosted by Github. The discord is hosted by Discord.

If you delegate your entire backend to other companies you won't be the one who has to worry about scaling.

danjl 7/5/2025||

With true local first software, there is no backend. Sometimes there's a static host that just delivers the code, but has no endpoints. Providing the code, or the extension, is not a service that the customer cares about. It's not for the customer. That's for the developer.

charcircuit 7/5/2025||

I'm talking about the developer having to worry about scaling and not the software. This article is about how the author got a sudden influx of traffic and did not have to worry about scaling anything to support it. That influx of traffic was to his website and then to the various distribution channels of his app. There is a reality that his website would fall over from the traffic and he would have to worry about scaling it, but in this reality he is paying someone else to handle scaling it for him.

If it wasn't local first software and he paid someone else for the backend, he also wouldn't have to worry about scaling the backend. My comment is pointing out that the dichotomy isn't between local first and non local first software, but between self hosting and not self hosting.

kylecordes 7/5/2025||

Local first is easier to scale technically.

Paid hosted software is easier to scale financially.

Without the latter, it's very hard to come up with the money to pay people to build, to support the market, etc.

ccorcos 7/5/2025|

I’m not sure it’s that clear…

Take an application like Slack and consider how to scale it local-first for a team with 1000 people.

And then consider how to coordinate deployment of new features and schema migrations…

Compare that with running a centralized server, which is going to be much easier.

lazyhideousarom 7/5/2025||

"Lots of cloud providers like to brag about being able to scale with their users. I like to brag about not having to scale at all."

Bars.

lazyhideousarom 7/5/2025||

"Lots of cloud providers like to brag about being able to scale with their users. I like to brag about not having to scale at all"

Bars.

kaycey2022 7/5/2025|

Why local first and not a native application?