Since this is a side project, it depends on what you want to learn at the end of the day. You could invest in learning the tools that bigger teams are using, l

Since this is a side project, it depends on what you want to learn at the end of the day. You could invest in learning the tools that bigger teams are using, like kubernetes, or cloud-specific offerings, like AWS Fargate or whatever, but my guess is that if you don't already use those tools for your day job you may end up spending more time on "how to deploy" as opposed to actually having something to deploy. A simpler approach would be to focus on sharpening your existing skills, or perhaps using one or two additional tools that get the job done without too much fanfare. For example, if you already use git you could learn how to setup your own git server with hooks, so that you can just `git push production v0.0.2` to your own server to deploy your application. Personally I find docker a very nice tool for both development and production as it allows me to quickly try out new things without messing up with my dev or prod machines. There's a lot of things to learn (if you aren't familiar with it yet), and it's best to start from the basics (networks, volumes, container lifecycle) and later move on to more complicated stuff, if and when, needed (swarm). Just keep in mind what your end goal is: if your side project is more about learning how to deploy real-world apps at scale then yes, kubernetes and cloud-specific technologies may be the best approach. If you just want to get your code out there and used by other people you can easily get away with `git pull && npm start`.