adekmm

@41209 look at this: https://pl.usembassy.gov/abct/

I live in Żary (Tier-3 City), which is near Żagań. Quick overview:

- small city is quite cheap. Prices said by @burntoutfire are right

- there are around 2000 US soldiers hanging around here. So you won't be alone :) if someone told you that small cities in eastern europe may be intolerant (or unsafe or unwelcoming) for travelers - it's not here. Here Everyone thinks that every American met is a soldier with combat training ;)

- internet is cheap and stable. mobile is cheap and stable (comparing to US or western Europe). In almost every place you can pay using credit card.

- ecommerce is working great here. Delivery takes 1 working day. Parcel lockers are on every corner of Poland already :)

- it's close to Germany (10 miles to border, 100 miles to Berlin) so you can get two cultures in one visit.

- people in Poland are... mentally somewhere between Russians and Germans ;)

- most of the people <40yo understand english. But many of them have no practice and are just afraid to speak. The younger people you meet the bigger chance to speak english you have.

- it's the region with a lot of forests (like 70% of area). So the air quality is decent comparing to any large city.

- covid is not an issue here right now. We had 6 new cases in last 24h per 1 million people. There is no "next wave" coming. You should wear a mask in closed space, but except visits at hospital/doctors no one cares.

I use covering indexes for most queries. It works Great for reads, and still write performance is better in postgres (on Linux).

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Index-only_scans

I've been SQL Server user for many years. And for last two years I started also using PostgreSQL. Today I use both of them in my project, and as a developer/dba I see pros and cons:

MS SQL: - The tools included like Management Studio are just great. This is totally next level to the Postgres tools. - Using multiple CPU cores for a single query is really helpfull in my scenario. - Easy continous backup to the cloud. - Included Integration Services, Analysis services are also easy and enugh for my usage.

Postgres: - Is running on linux, to it's cheaper. Even when we use SQL Server as Bizspark (for free now), the Azure Windows VM for it costs us much more, than VM with Linux. And of course when we want to cluster our DB, Postgres is even cheaper. - Great JSON support. There are parts of our project where it's helpfull. - Better configurability, like WAL, checkpoints etc. We have much better write performance on postgres than in sql server (probably just our case).

The other things really do not much difference. Both DB's can be extended, and extensions may be written in many languages. Both achieve great overall performance, both have strong community and a lot of documentation.

I'm running SaaS startup in UE (in Poland). Because of these VAT changes, and also some consumer rights changes, I've decided to restrict my service to use only by companies.

I's not worth to me to update system to verify consumer address, create invoices with more than 10 possible vat rates and do additional accounting work.

If I would have a lot of B2C consumers, I'd just incorporate in US or other non-EU country for this. I could offer them cheaper service (no VAT) and I would have much less work to do.