Built ELI6 Movies as a side project to push how far a free-tier stack can go.
Tech:
- Frontend: pure HTML/CSS/vanilla JS on Vercel (free)
- Backend: Node.js/Express on Render (free)
- DB: MongoDB Atlas M0 (free)
- Metadata: TMDB API
- Video: third-party embeds with smart server failover
Interesting bits:
- Multi-server failover via postMessage detection
- Episode email notifier
- Tiered TMDB cache
- i18n (EN/IT/RU)
- Android TV spatial navigation
Happy to answer questions about the architecture.
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Mate it worse then you think.
The repo
https://github.com/EliseyRotar/eli6_movies
Step 3 in the database setup.
Network Access → Allow Access from Anywhere (0.0.0.0/0) - required for Render's dynamic IPsdeleted by creator
yeah same answer as the other comment — render free tier has no static IPs so you cant restrict by IP at all. strong credentials are the actual protection, not IP allowlisting
You can. Your AI slop just doesn’t know how.
you are right, my bad. render publishes fixed CIDR ranges per region, you can get them from the dashboard and allowlist those in atlas instead of 0.0.0.0/0. updating the readme
popups were coming from window.open() inside the embed iframes, removed allow-popups from the sandbox so that cant happen anymore. should be good now
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got me on the emdash lol. fair points though, working on it
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believe what you want
popups came from the embed iframes, not the site itself. removed allow-popups from the sandbox so they cant do that anymore