I think MongoDB is adding unncessary complexity to this project (primarily because we have to install MongoDB just to run this). I believe it should be split, e.g. we should be able to specify in the mern-cli that we only want an isomorphic application with Express and leave out the storage layer. Another reason, this github issue will be repeated many times - https://github.com/Hashnode/mern-starter/issues/18 Front page of the website also states: No configurations and setup. - but this is misleading as it is not that simple.