Case Study: Nerve achieves reliable uptime and effortless Node.js scaling with Joyent

Nerve - Customer Case Study

Nerve, the edgy content and online-dating brand, rebuilt its dating experience as social.nerve.com using Node.js and MongoDB to create a real-time, conversation-driven matching app. With a small engineering team and no dedicated ops staff, Nerve needed reliable performance, instant response times, strong data security, and a hosting solution that wouldn’t require managing servers or databases themselves — after problems trying to configure Node.js on AWS, they sought a simpler, supported approach.

Nerve deployed the app on Joyent Cloud (Node.js on SmartOS) and moved its data to MongoLab’s DBaaS, gaining easy setup, automatic scaling, 24/7 monitoring, backups, and responsive support. The result was higher uptime, minimal operational overhead, fast scaling during traffic spikes, and confidence to migrate additional sites to Joyent — outcomes that left the team recommending the Joyent–MongoLab combination.

Nerve

Justin Shreve

Lead Engineer