Learning Management System Stack (Next.js, PostgreSQL, S3, Stripe, React) overview

A learning management system for delivering courses, quizzes, and video content to students. Next.js handles course catalog pages with SSR for SEO and the authenticated student dashboard. PostgreSQL stores courses, lessons, enrollments, quiz results, and progress tracking. Sharp handles image processing for course thumbnails and avatars. Stripe manages course purchases, subscriptions, and instructor payouts. React with Tailwind CSS delivers a polished student-facing experience with video players, progress bars, and interactive quizzes. The main tradeoff is media management — video transcoding, adaptive bitrate streaming, and storage costs grow quickly with course catalog size. Teams must decide early between self-hosted media or a managed video platform.