Express handling non-application tasks reduces specialized capacity

Running Express directly without a reverse proxy means Express handles static file serving, compression, SSL termination, and other tasks that don't require application state knowledge, reducing capacity for specialized application logic.

Deploy a reverse proxy (Nginx or HAProxy) in front of Express in production. Configure the proxy to handle compression, static file serving, SSL/TLS termination, error pages, and load balancing. Point the proxy to Express for application-specific requests only.