expressjs (and some plugins for input parsing, compression, etc..) for HTTP server and API. socket.io for websockets (easy API and great fallback functionality

expressjs (and some plugins for input parsing, compression, etc..) for HTTP server and API. socket.io for websockets (easy API and great fallback functionality). (I think both will serve you well with the default settings. you won't need to worry about scaling until you have hundreds or thusands of req/sec) for deployment IMO it's always better to use docker, and it's easy to learn the basics in one afternoon. (for small apps: on gitlab/github push -> do gitlab-ci/travis-ci docker build + api testing + run deploy script) ORM - you can probably find one for every DB out there, but I prefer to write the queries myself. Data migration - I'll probably work directly with the DB... depends on the scale of the app