Note sure about best practice as a lot is personal choice.
For example many use docker deployment to cloud services like Digital Ocean and Heroku, some prefer node running on a VPS. Personally i wouldn’t say either was best as many factors can influence the choice.
Most seem to be using MySQL/MariaDB as their database platform although others seem to prefer Postgres. Again it’s down to preference. Personably i see SQLite a bit lightweight for anything but small projects although it is generally OK for your developmetn server but I deploy of MariaDB generally.
Migration to Production is really easy with Wappler and it’s inbuilt database manager as database structure changes can be replicated to production at the click of a button and deploy to production equally as easily with a click of a publish button.
Of course you can use an external DB manager like navicat if you wish, connection is exactly as you would with any other dev. platform, basic connection credentials.
Personally i use both Docker via digital ocean and a VPS via my preferred server provider (20i in UK). The forum has posts on configuring a VPS for node on NGINX and cPanel
I was a die hard coder, not really written any code in 3 years since using Wappler. It really is a game changer