Case study · Student social network

Vibly

3 years 4 months · sunset 2026

Social network for 50 student associations. Feed, paid events, real-time chat, multi-AZ AWS infrastructure. Ran in production for three years before scheduled sunset.

Context

Mobile social network for French student associations. 50 active associations, thousands of events organized, integrated ticketing. Launched in 2022, sunsetted in 2026 by client decision (strategy change, no technical issue).

The challenge

Build a full social product (feed, paid events, real-time chat, moderation) with viable unit economics on a student user base — meaning an infrastructure budget that had to hold at €3-4 per active user per year, not per month.

Our approach

Flutter stack for iOS + Android on a single codebase. Express + Mongoose (MongoDB) backend deployed on AWS Elastic Beanstalk in eu-west-3, with multi-AZ auto-scaling and PM2 in cluster mode to absorb the peaks (concentrated on Thursday evening student parties). MongoDB for feed and chat, S3 for files, Firebase for push notifications. Multi-tier ticketing (free, paid, multiple prices, bundles, member or non-member rates, waitlist) with ticket payments via Lydia.

Tech stack
FlutterExpressMongoDBAWSLydia
Outcome

3 years 4 months in stable production. Programmed sunset in 2026 without technical incident. Code base fully transferred to the client.