I’m currently building a multi-tenant SaaS app (single database) and trying to decide whether to use WeWeb’s native Tables or an external backend like Supabase.
My main question is:
Are WeWeb Tables robust enough for a production SaaS application (with things like tenant isolation, scaling, complex relationships, and long-term data growth), or are they better suited for simpler/internal tools?
I’m also considering Supabase as an alternative backend. For those who have experience with both:
What are the main benefits of using WeWeb Tables over Supabase?
Are there any limitations with WeWeb Tables when building a full SaaS product? (Example being haveing a realtime chat feature)
At what point would you recommend switching to Supabase (if at all)?
How do they compare in terms of performance, flexibility, and scalability?
Would appreciate insights from anyone who has built or is currently running a SaaS product on WeWeb Tables.
I’m not really sure WeWeb was ever truly production-ready, especially since things like branching still don’t seem to be a priority. It can work in production, but only if you’re okay putting in extra effort to work around stuff that probably shouldn’t need workarounds - as you already found out judging by your threads here.
On the backend side, comparing it to Supabase feels… optimistic. The API layer is nice, sure, but the data storage part still feels pretty rough. It’s the kind of thing where you end up losing hours debugging or trying to make things behave, and then start wondering if switching to something like Supabase would’ve been easier.
If you really want to use WeWeb’s new backend feature, I’d probably treat it carefully. Using Supabase for storage, auth, etc., and keeping WeWeb’s backend more as a no-code alternative to edge functions seems like a safer setup than relying on it fully.
It’s only been out a month, I doubt anyone has really had a good chance to test the difference. I’d agree with Broberto, I would definitely not rely on weweb backend for your main backend. I honestly can’t see much benefit over Supabase except latency.
For me, I’ve built apps in Replit and similar vibe-coding tools. It was a good experience, but it felt like a “black box.” If something broke, I wouldn’t know how to debug or fix it.
I feel a similar way about Supabase. Even though it has an AI assistant that can write SQL for me, I don’t fully understand what’s happening behind the scenes.
With WeWeb Tables, I feel like I have much more visibility and control over what’s going on, which makes it easier for me to understand and manage.
My main concern is losing features like WebSockets and real-time functionality, especially for things like the chat feature in my app.
My hope is that, since WeWeb Tables are built directly by WeWeb, they will continue to improve over time. Ideally, I would benefit from native optimizations like faster requests and tighter integration.
Another reason I’m considering Supabase is that WeWeb now presents Supabase data in a table-style interface similar to its own Tables. That makes it feel like I could get the best of both worlds—Supabase’s power with WeWeb’s usability.
WeWeb Tables also use the Neon database, which is a big plus for me. That’s the same production database used by Replit, and I’ve had a good experience with it.
My main concern at this point is whether WeWeb Tables are stable and scalable enough to support a SaaS application with real users.
Right now, I feel stuck trying to decide which direction to go.
Yea sorry that’s something I missed out on in my reply. Supabase is good if you understand postgres and know some basic coding. It’s a bit of a learning curve the but I 100% believe its better long term for any project. If you want to move off weweb you still have all your data in Supabase. You just connect your new platform to Supabase and you’re away pretty much. I believe you can still get your data from weweb but you’d have to setup a new db if you moved off weweb.
Personally I even use supabase for personal projects cause I don’t have to worry about doing auth or anything. Supabase takes away so much dev hours and I don’t have to worry about it.
That would also be the case if you start with WeWeb full-stack and decide to move off the WeWeb frontend later. You could choose to keep your WeWeb db and call its API endpoints.
Yeah, these types of decisions can be super stressful
My two cent: if you’re non-technical, building a multi-tenant SaaS with a single database is likely going to be easier with WeWeb Tables because secure tenant access is key and you’ll be able to control that visually in WeWeb.
With Supabase, I would be a bit concerned about a non-technical person not fully understanding the SQL generated with AI because:
it makes things harder to debug when something is not behaving as expected
when building a multi-tenant SaaS, you need to be very sure you are handling tenant access properly!
That said, you can definitely achieve the same result with Supabase and I agree with Yaj that time invested in learning Supabase can never hurt! If you’re up for learning a bit of SQL and upskilling, it’ll definitely be worth your time.
One way to test your appetite for learning would be to start with WeWeb front + Supabase back. That way:
you know you already have realtime available for your SaaS, and
at the same time, you can start getting a feel for our Data & API tab.
If you realize you regularly get stuck understanding how Supabase works or what the details of what SQL means, you can always add a WeWeb Tables data source and experiment with that.
I hope that helps! Good luck with your project Don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s anything we can help you with!
Good point about keep weweb db and using the API it might not be someones final solution but good to know people don’t have to try do some crazy migration right off the bat if they did actually want to move away.
I made a mistake here. Realtime for WeWeb tables is not planned at this stage. We haven’t yet decided if we’ll want to add the feature to support live chats or focus on other use cases.
What is planned is realtime support on the new Supabase integration (to match the feature set available in the plugin).
So @Danny, if you need a chat with realtime, definitely go with WeWeb + Supabase. And since I can’t share an ETA on when realtime will be available in the new integrations, if the realtime chat is a critical feature of your app, I’d recommend going with WeWeb + the old Supabase plugin, not integration.
Apologies for the confusion! We’ll put together a comparison page on the website in the coming weeks to present more clearly the pros and cons of using Supabase vs WeWeb Backend.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s anything we can help you with!