We do migrations for schema on app startup (built into the app).

Any general data changes are done outside the pipeline as a pre or post deployment step.

Migrations on startup aren’t perfect, you have to be careful that it doesn’t take too long on startup.

Honestly the pros outweighs the cons. You can fire up a new site/db without much effort which is something we do often.

Sorry I have to laugh at this. If you have to write a script for it even if the script is easy there’s no way I can consider it “not hard”. Not hard is just being able buy it like anything else.

I get what you’re saying though.