What is your favorite serverless backend?

My go to is: API Gateway --> AWS Lambda --> DynamoDB for backend, serverless architecture.

I use Zeit.co in combination with the Next.js (react framework). All routes with server-side data dependencies and files in the the /api directory get automatically deployed as serverless functions, everything else gets deployed statically and served from a CDN. Love that there is zero configuration.

Super quick to get something off the ground with zeit.co, works really nice with React projects too (they built Next.js). Firebase also has some really nice serverless products - includes stuff you might not get with going with someone like Zeit, i.e a hosted database. Have used AWS lambda before for a project too, felt a lot more responsive that the stuff Google offers.

Yep, my current project has a serverless backend using AWS Lambda (+ API Gateway), mainly because I'm using other parts of the AWS ecosystem too.

In the future I wouldn't mind exploring other higher-level (dev-friendly) options, AWS (and Azure) are pretty rough around the edges in general which contributes to the perceived complexity of using them. In the end it might be the thing that leads to the downfall of these colossal cloud providers.

One of the big strengths of AWS API Gateway + Lambda is the authorizer concept. I'm using a Cognito authorizer but you can delegate to another Lambda. The benefit of this is the ability to authorize via Cognito/Auth0/whatever without coding it into the lambda function itself.

I am curious how people tackle this when using other serverless services (like Zeit). I guess it's either:
a) Every function decodes and validates a JWT token.
b) Every function does a DB/Cache query to see if the user is logged in.
c) Some third option?

I have been using aws-amplify.github.io/ to great success.

I've been happy with AWS lambda for some of the serverless stuff I've done. I've got a Jenkins job setup that runs all my tests and compiles my Clojure code to a jar to deploy.

I am using OpenFaaS (https://www.openfaas.com/) on DigitalOcean (https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/openfaas)

zeit.co with nextjs and serverless functions!

Yeah definetely AWS .. Lambda / API Gateway / Cognito / SNS / SQS and either DynamoDB or RDS depending on situation. I also develop mainly in C# so having .Net Core for Lambda is a big plus for me

Google App Engine with Datastore

Yes, I've been using GCP for a microservice as part of our core product. I find it the simplest for most APIs, as there's no overhead of a gateway.

I also played with Cloudflare Workers, and found it very interesting, specially with its KV storage built-in.

AWS all the way !! Lambdas , Api Gateway , events and others .. service integrate really well... plus massive community support..the sdk is awesome . On a side note chosing serverless without investigating traffic to cost analysis is not wise .. how much traffic do u expect ??

I started to use Gatsby. There is a great community and good starters and plugins in order to achieve all the funcionalities/features that you are looking for. Also, with graphql, you can create autommatically pages from cvs files, or md files if you design a template before. Furthermore it is, incredibly fast and you can easly transform your web into a pwa with a plugin. I definetly, like it a lot.