Jonathan Mensah

@jonathan-m

A CS Stdent in Ghana building and shipping software

Joined December 2025

About

Shipping software to real users. Writing about production lessons, expensive mistakes, and what breaks after 1,000 downloads.

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Jonathan Mensah's blogs

Jonathan Mensah — Building in Publicjmensah.hashnode.dev7 posts

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Recently published

JMJonathan Mensahjmensah.hashnode.devMar 10 · 10 min read

How I Got to 50,000 Downloads Without Spending on Ads (And What Actually Drove Growth)

In 2021, I built my first mobile app during a high school vacation. It was terrible, basically a wrapper around a website for exam past questions. But it made okay money from ads, so I forgot about it

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JMJonathan Mensahjmensah.hashnode.devMar 1 · 10 min read

How I Built a Multi-App OTA Update System (And Cut Costs from $199/month to $0)

Expo's EAS Update service costs $199/month for 50,000 monthly active users. If you have multiple apps or are a solo dev with modest traffic, that's expensive, even the $19/month tier only covers 3,0

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JMJonathan Mensahjmensah.hashnode.devFeb 22 · 7 min read

How I Handle Deployments and CI/CD for a $5/Month Production App

Running a production app with ~10,000 active users on a $5/month VPS sounds impossible. But it's not, if you're smart about your tooling. Here's my entire deployment setup: from code commit to product

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JMJonathan Mensahjmensah.hashnode.devFeb 15 · 6 min read

How I Migrated 50,000 Users from Firebase to a Custom Backend (And What Broke Anyway)

After my Firebase bill hit $300/month, I knew I had to migrate. But I had a problem: 50,000 downloads, ~10,000 active users, and zero tolerance for downtime or forcing password resets. Here's how I migrated from Firebase to a custom NestJS + MongoDB ...

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JMJonathan Mensahjmensah.hashnode.devFeb 8 · 5 min read

How My Firebase Bill Hit $300 in One Month (And Why I Don't Use Firebase Anymore)

I randomly checked my Firebase dashboard one day and my heart sank. $300. In one month. For an app I thought was "basically free to run." Turns out "free tier" doesn't mean much when you're making inefficient queries to thousands of active users. Her...

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Jonathan Mensah

About

Available for

Jonathan Mensah's blogs

Recently published

How I Got to 50,000 Downloads Without Spending on Ads (And What Actually Drove Growth)

How I Built a Multi-App OTA Update System (And Cut Costs from $199/month to $0)

How I Handle Deployments and CI/CD for a $5/Month Production App

How I Migrated 50,000 Users from Firebase to a Custom Backend (And What Broke Anyway)

How My Firebase Bill Hit $300 in One Month (And Why I Don't Use Firebase Anymore)

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Jonathan Mensah

About

Available for

Jonathan Mensah's blogs

Recently published

How I Got to 50,000 Downloads Without Spending on Ads (And What Actually Drove Growth)

How I Built a Multi-App OTA Update System (And Cut Costs from $199/month to $0)

How I Handle Deployments and CI/CD for a $5/Month Production App

How I Migrated 50,000 Users from Firebase to a Custom Backend (And What Broke Anyway)

How My Firebase Bill Hit $300 in One Month (And Why I Don't Use Firebase Anymore)