A full node requires way too much RAM in my eyes. I'm building an own solution with PHP and SQLite on SSD. Important to know is that you can't use all the API functions with a simple node but it is still possible to receive blocks.

I'm going through all these blocks and put the relevant data in indexed form into my own SQLite DBs. From there it is available for super fast access by the requests from the clients. It has been a lot of work in the past weeks for me but it works really fast and enables me to do much more than the default node APIs provides to us.

Edit:
An example of what I can show only by parsing the whole chain is the real post count. The field 'post count' on SteemWorld will display the real number of posts and comments (separated). That's even not being shown on Steemit because it is not possible with a full node.