I’ve deployed an app via the open-source server in Mongolia. While we don’t have blocking issues like in China, we often have incredibly slow access to outside Mongolia resources. So I have a few recommendations:
- External CSS resources (fonts, animations, etc) should be coded directly into the app instead of referenced. Google fonts probably won’t work for example. The user’s browser will fail back to the default fonts, but it degrades the user experience.
- Email doesn’t work the same way in the open-source app server. Use an email provider that will work in China. Your app will need to be able to connect to the email server to send and receive emails (if you need that functionality).
- By default the app server uses Let’s Encrypt for SSL certificates. Works very well, but you should consider that if the server is physically located in China you may have extra requirements to be allowed an SSL certificate. Extra work may be needed there.
For me the main limitation was speed. I noticed that BEFORE the recent update the open-source server was slower than the hosted one. Various reasons behind this (including that my host isn’t superfast). But the two most recent versions of the app server are much much faster.
Also, consider whether your server will be able to git pull from Anvils servers when you need to deploy or update your app. If not you will need to download to your local machine and SFTP it to your Lightsail server.
Problems are definitely solvable, and in the end, the user experience won’t really be any different.
When I deployed my first Anvil app to a server I had to reimage the server three times because I kept messing things up. It’s a learning experience, but more recently I was able to go from clean image to deployed app in about an hour.