You are asking the right questions. In our particular case, 1, we did not have good libraries for file uploads to Azure and to handle the signing for securely

You are asking the right questions. In our particular case, 1, we did not have good libraries for file uploads to Azure and to handle the signing for securely displaying them. This was solved by 2 very simple modules. In the end, both things are fairy simple unless you want them complicated (ActiveStorage can sure do "more" out-of-the box). This also means the code it's super straight-forward and understandable. 2, we did not have a good library for SOAP. We started to build a simple SOAP library. This I would consider a pain, but there is always option to avoid it (see no. 3). 3, we did not have good PDF libraries. I happened to package my Ruby library (using Prawn) as a Docker container and simply call its API. This could also simply solve no. 2. On the other hand hand, 1, we got one of the best GraphQL libraries out there (Absinthe) 2, we got a really fast test suite (once everything compiles, that is) 3, we are getting great tooling like Phoenix LiveDashboard for free Also I want to note that deployment is now quite easy with "mix releases" (as compare to what it was). You even get a remote console that connects to your running cluster. No problem. [0] https://nts.strzibny.name/phoenix-livedashboard-request-logger/ https://nts.strzibny.name/phoenix-livedashboard-request-logg...