SPOTTD

Client: Spottd.app

Industry: Social, Technology

Location: Portugal

Project Summary

Spottd is a mobile social network for car enthusiasts, currently available on iOS and Android, exclusively in Portugal. The platform allows users to share photos of vehicles they spot on the streets and provides a license plate search feature that enables users to retrieve detailed technical specifications of vehicles. With more than 75,000 registered users and more than 24,000 monthly active users, the app fosters a vibrant community of car lovers. Key metrics include over 5,500 daily visits and more than 6,000 daily license plate searches. The backend of the app is hosted on AWS, utilizing PHP Laravel, Redis for caching, and Postgresql for database management, with a primary focus on performance, scalability, and seamless user interaction.

Challenge

As Spottd experienced rapid organic growth, several backend challenges emerged. The platform had to manage a growing influx of user-generated content and high-frequency interactions, such as likes, comments, vehicle posts, and notifications. Furthermore, with an increasing number of users conducting license plate searches daily, the system had to handle heavy database loads while maintaining fast response times. Achieving seamless scalability was critical to ensuring a smooth user experience as the community continued to expand, without compromising performance or introducing latency issues, especially with dynamic user activities.

Solution

To address these challenges, the backend infrastructure was built with a strong emphasis on scalability and performance. The architecture leveraged Amazon Web Services (AWS), specifically utilizing EC2 instances for scalable compute power, S3 for image storage, and CloudFront for content delivery, ensuring quick loading times for the app’s high-volume media content.

The PHP Laravel framework was selected for its robustness in managing complex backend workflows. Redis was implemented as a caching layer to reduce database load, especially for frequently accessed data like user profiles, vehicle posts, and interactions. This provided significant performance improvements during peak traffic times, particularly when processing high-volume social engagement activities. Postgresql was used for the primary database, chosen for its reliability and efficiency in handling the app’s growing data needs. License plate searches were optimized by pre-indexing commonly queried vehicles, ensuring that users could retrieve technical details in near real-time.

Impact

The backend optimization led to a system that scales effortlessly with Spottd’s organic growth. With over 80 new users joining daily and 37,000 new users in the past year, the platform maintained a fast and responsive user experience. Redis caching significantly reduced the number of database calls, enabling faster interactions, such as likes, comments, and notifications, while the optimized vehicle search functionality handled over 6,000 daily queries with minimal latency.

Thanks to AWS’s scalable infrastructure and optimized backend architecture, Spottd’s backend has been able to handle over 5,500 daily visits without any significant downtime or performance degradation, solidifying its position as one of the top social networks in the Portuguese AppStore.

Conclusion

Spottd’s backend solution, driven by AWS infrastructure and a well-optimized tech stack, demonstrates the importance of a scalable and efficient backend in supporting rapid growth. With a focus on handling high user interaction rates and heavy data processing loads, the architecture has enabled the app to grow organically while maintaining a seamless user experience. As Spottd continues to expand, its robust backend will serve as the foundation for further innovation and engagement within the car enthusiast community.