Expats in Switzerland
Relocation platform for the international community
- Sole designer, engineer, operator
- January 2025
- TypeScript, Next.js, Cloudflare Workers, PostgreSQL
The problem
Professionals relocating to Switzerland needed a reliable, practical resource. The information existed, but it was scattered, and running a content platform the usual way meant a bill that grew with traffic.
I wanted near-zero operating cost, with dynamic features and lead capture, without a team to keep the lights on.
Architecture
Cheap primitives, on purpose
I started with a static site and moved it to a live platform only where the page needed to be dynamic. Cloudflare Workers handle the edges a static export cannot: forms, scheduled jobs, the bits that have to run when nobody is watching.
The rest stays boring. No Kubernetes. No multi-region story. If it needs routine hands-on work, it does not ship.
- Static origin for the bulk of the pages
- Workers and background jobs for dynamic features and lead capture
- Cost treated as a design constraint, not an afterthought
Operating it
I keep the content and the runtime
There is no editorial team to hand this to. I write the guides, watch the workers, and pay the bill.
That is why the platform has to be cheap enough and quiet enough to leave for a week.
Related
Advisory
Building something similar?
If you are designing tenancy, billing, or infrastructure you will have to live with, I do architecture reviews.
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