What is Firebase and what are its top alternatives?
Firebase is a comprehensive mobile application development platform that offers features like real-time database, authentication, cloud messaging, hosting, and more. It provides easy integration with Google services and is known for its easy setup and scalability. However, Firebase has limitations in terms of customization and flexibility for complex applications.
AWS Amplify: AWS Amplify is a full-stack development platform consisting of tools and services like authentication, storage, analytics, and more. It offers seamless integration with AWS services and provides a wide range of customization options. Pros include scalability and flexibility, while cons may include a steeper learning curve compared to Firebase.
Backendless: Backendless is a development platform that provides backend services such as database, user management, APIs, and more. It offers support for multiple platforms and allows for codeless development. Pros include rapid development and a deep feature set, while cons may include pricing based on usage.
Syncano: Syncano is a serverless platform that offers features like real-time data sync, user management, and database. It allows for custom business logic and provides flexibility in building APIs. Pros include real-time capabilities and ease of use, while cons may include limited community support.
Kuzzle: Kuzzle is an open-source backend platform that offers features like real-time data synchronization, authentication, and scalable architecture. It allows for customization and offers support for multiple programming languages. Pros include open-source flexibility and real-time functionalities, while cons may include a smaller user base compared to Firebase.
Parse Platform: Parse Platform is an open-source framework for building mobile applications that provides features like database, authentication, and push notifications. It allows for self-hosting and customization. Pros include open-source flexibility and ease of use, while cons may include maintenance overhead for self-hosting.
Strapi: Strapi is a headless CMS that offers self-hosted backend services with features like content management, authentication, and customizable APIs. It allows for flexibility in content creation and supports various databases. Pros include self-hosting capabilities and content management features, while cons may include a learning curve for beginners.
Hasura: Hasura is a GraphQL engine that offers real-time data sync, authentication, and powerful queries for building applications. It provides seamless integration with existing databases and microservices. Pros include real-time capabilities and GraphQL support, while cons may include complexity in setting up GraphQL queries.
Supabase: Supabase is an open-source platform that offers features like databases, authentication, and real-time subscriptions. It allows for easy integration with frontend frameworks and provides flexibility in building applications. Pros include open-source flexibility and real-time capabilities, while cons may include limited community support.
Prisma: Prisma is a modern database toolkit that provides features like ORM, migrations, and real-time data sync. It allows for easy database management and offers support for multiple databases. Pros include ease of use and database management capabilities, while cons may include limitations in customization compared to Firebase.
Couchbase: Couchbase is a NoSQL database platform that offers features like JSON document storage, real-time data sync, and offline support. It provides scalability and high performance for building applications. Pros include NoSQL flexibility and performance, while cons may include a steeper learning curve for beginners.
Top Alternatives to Firebase
- Parse
With Parse, you can add a scalable and powerful backend in minutes and launch a full-featured app in record time without ever worrying about server management. We offer push notifications, social integration, data storage, and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app’s backend with Cloud Code. ...
- MongoDB
MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding. ...
- Heroku
Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling. ...
- Auth0
A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications. ...
- Realm
The Realm Mobile Platform is a next-generation data layer for applications. Realm is reactive, concurrent, and lightweight, allowing you to work with live, native objects. ...
- Contentful
With Contentful, you can bring your content anywhere using our APIs, completely customize your content structure all while using your preferred programming languages and frameworks. ...
- Couchbase
Developed as an alternative to traditionally inflexible SQL databases, the Couchbase NoSQL database is built on an open source foundation and architected to help developers solve real-world problems and meet high scalability demands. ...
- Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud Storage allows world-wide storing and retrieval of any amount of data and at any time. It provides a simple programming interface which enables developers to take advantage of Google's own reliable and fast networking infrastructure to perform data operations in a secure and cost effective manner. If expansion needs arise, developers can benefit from the scalability provided by Google's infrastructure. ...
Firebase alternatives & related posts
- Easy setup118
- Free hosting78
- Well-documented62
- Cheap52
- Use push notifications in 3 lines of code47
- Fast41
- Cloud code39
- Good for prototypes32
- Cloud modules31
- Backed by facebook27
- Parse Push7
- Cross Platform7
- Parse Analytics6
- Multiplatform6
- Parse Core6
- Quick chat and profile capabilities5
- Free Tier5
- Cloud Based5
- Nice security concept4
- Free4
- About to Die3
- Local Datastore3
- Backend as a service3
- Backbone Models3
- Geopoints3
- Anonymous Users2
- Easy to use2
related Parse posts
- Document-oriented storage827
- No sql593
- Ease of use553
- Fast464
- High performance410
- Free255
- Open source218
- Flexible180
- Replication & high availability145
- Easy to maintain112
- Querying42
- Easy scalability39
- Auto-sharding38
- High availability37
- Map/reduce31
- Document database27
- Easy setup25
- Full index support25
- Reliable16
- Fast in-place updates15
- Agile programming, flexible, fast14
- No database migrations12
- Easy integration with Node.Js8
- Enterprise8
- Enterprise Support6
- Great NoSQL DB5
- Support for many languages through different drivers4
- Schemaless3
- Aggregation Framework3
- Drivers support is good3
- Fast2
- Managed service2
- Easy to Scale2
- Awesome2
- Consistent2
- Good GUI1
- Acid Compliant1
- Very slowly for connected models that require joins6
- Not acid compliant3
- Proprietary query language2
related MongoDB posts
I just finished the very first version of my new hobby project: #MovieGeeks. It is a minimalist online movie catalog for you to save the movies you want to see and for rating the movies you already saw. This is just the beginning as I am planning to add more features on the lines of sharing and discovery
For the #BackEnd I decided to use Node.js , GraphQL and MongoDB:
Node.js has a huge community so it will always be a safe choice in terms of libraries and finding solutions to problems you may have
GraphQL because I needed to improve my skills with it and because I was never comfortable with the usual REST approach. I believe GraphQL is a better option as it feels more natural to write apis, it improves the development velocity, by definition it fixes the over-fetching and under-fetching problem that is so common on REST apis, and on top of that, the community is getting bigger and bigger.
MongoDB was my choice for the database as I already have a lot of experience working on it and because, despite of some bad reputation it has acquired in the last months, I still believe it is a powerful database for at least a very long list of use cases such as the one I needed for my website
I am starting to become a full-stack developer, by choosing and learning .NET Core for API Development, Angular CLI / React for UI Development, MongoDB for database, as it a NoSQL DB and Flutter / React Native for Mobile App Development. Using Postman, Markdown and Visual Studio Code for development.
Heroku
- Easy deployment703
- Free for side projects459
- Huge time-saver374
- Simple scaling348
- Low devops skills required261
- Easy setup190
- Add-ons for almost everything174
- Beginner friendly153
- Better for startups150
- Low learning curve133
- Postgres hosting48
- Easy to add collaborators41
- Faster development30
- Awesome documentation24
- Simple rollback19
- Focus on product, not deployment19
- Natural companion for rails development15
- Easy integration15
- Great customer support12
- GitHub integration8
- Painless & well documented6
- No-ops6
- I love that they make it free to launch a side project4
- Free4
- Great UI3
- Just works3
- PostgreSQL forking and following2
- MySQL extension2
- Security1
- Able to host stuff good like Discord Bot1
- Sec0
- Super expensive27
- Not a whole lot of flexibility9
- No usable MySQL option7
- Storage7
- Low performance on free tier5
- 24/7 support is $1,000 per month2
related Heroku posts
StackShare Feed is built entirely with React, Glamorous, and Apollo. One of our objectives with the public launch of the Feed was to enable a Server-side rendered (SSR) experience for our organic search traffic. When you visit the StackShare Feed, and you aren't logged in, you are delivered the Trending feed experience. We use an in-house Node.js rendering microservice to generate this HTML. This microservice needs to run and serve requests independent of our Rails web app. Up until recently, we had a mono-repo with our Rails and React code living happily together and all served from the same web process. In order to deploy our SSR app into a Heroku environment, we needed to split out our front-end application into a separate repo in GitHub. The driving factor in this decision was mostly due to limitations imposed by Heroku specifically with how processes can't communicate with each other. A new SSR app was created in Heroku and linked directly to the frontend repo so it stays in-sync with changes.
Related to this, we need a way to "deploy" our frontend changes to various server environments without building & releasing the entire Ruby application. We built a hybrid Amazon S3 Amazon CloudFront solution to host our Webpack bundles. A new CircleCI script builds the bundles and uploads them to S3. The final step in our rollout is to update some keys in Redis so our Rails app knows which bundles to serve. The result of these efforts were significant. Our frontend team now moves independently of our backend team, our build & release process takes only a few minutes, we are now using an edge CDN to serve JS assets, and we have pre-rendered React pages!
#StackDecisionsLaunch #SSR #Microservices #FrontEndRepoSplit
Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:
- GitHub (incl. GitHub Pages/Markdown for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
- Respectively Git as revision control system
- SourceTree as Git GUI
- Visual Studio Code as IDE
- CircleCI for continuous integration (automatize development process)
- Prettier / TSLint / ESLint as code linter
- SonarQube as quality gate
- Docker as container management (incl. Docker Compose for multi-container application management)
- VirtualBox for operating system simulation tests
- Kubernetes as cluster management for docker containers
- Heroku for deploying in test environments
- nginx as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
- SSLMate (using OpenSSL) for certificate management
- Amazon EC2 (incl. Amazon S3) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
- PostgreSQL as preferred database system
- Redis as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)
The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:
- Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
- Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
- Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
- Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
- Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
- Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.
Auth0
- JSON web token70
- Integration with 20+ Social Providers31
- It's a universal solution20
- SDKs20
- Amazing Documentation15
- Heroku Add-on11
- Enterprise support8
- Great Sample Repos7
- Extend platform with "rules"7
- Azure Add-on4
- Easy integration, non-intrusive identity provider3
- Passwordless3
- It can integrate seamlessly with firebase2
- Great documentation, samples, UX and Angular support2
- Polished2
- On-premise deployment2
- Will sign BAA for HIPAA-compliance1
- MFA1
- Active Directory support1
- Springboot1
- SOC21
- SAML Support1
- Great support1
- OpenID Connect (OIDC) Support1
- Pricing too high (Developer Pro)15
- Poor support7
- Rapidly changing API4
- Status page not reflect actual status4
related Auth0 posts
Hi Otensia! I'd definitely recommend using the skills you've already got and building with JavaScript is a smart way to go these days. Most platform services have JavaScript/Node SDKs or NPM packages, many serverless platforms support Node in case you need to write any backend logic, and JavaScript is incredibly popular - meaning it will be easy to hire for, should you ever need to.
My advice would be "don't reinvent the wheel". If you already have a skill set that will work well to solve the problem at hand, and you don't need it for any other projects, don't spend the time jumping into a new language. If you're looking for an excuse to learn something new, it would be better to invest that time in learning a new platform/tool that compliments your knowledge of JavaScript. For this project, I might recommend using Netlify, Vercel, or Google Firebase to quickly and easily deploy your web app. If you need to add user authentication, there are great examples out there for Firebase Authentication, Auth0, or even Magic (a newcomer on the Auth scene, but very user friendly). All of these services work very well with a JavaScript-based application.
I only know Java and so thinking of building a web application in the following order. I need some help on what alternatives I can choose. Open to replace components, services, or infrastructure.
- Frontend: AngularJS, Bootstrap
- Web Framework: Spring Boot
- Database: Amazon DynamoDB
- Authentication: Auth0
- Deployment: Amazon EC2 Container Service
- Local Testing: Docker
- Marketing: Mailchimp (Separately Export from Auth0)
- Website Domain: GoDaddy
- Routing: Amazon Route 53
PS: Open to exploring options of going completely native ( AWS Lambda, AWS Security but have to learn all)
Realm
- Good7
- Elegant API3
- Cloud Syncing3
- React Native Support2
- Strong Adoption Growth1
- No offline support for web till now1
related Realm posts
We are building an offline-first Android SDK app. The solution we're working on runs on a mobile device in areas where internet connectivity is intermittent or does not exist. The applications needs to be able to collect data and when it reaches a home base or finds internet connectivity, we'll sync it with the host.
We've heard Realm and Pouchdb could be a good solution, but we are curious if anyone has any experience with either or have another path forward.
If you want to use Pouchdb might as well use RxDB which is an observables wrapper for Pouch but much more comfortable to use. Realm is awesome but Pouchdb and RxDB give you more control. You can use Couchbase (recommended) or CouchDB to enable 2-way sync
- API-based cms30
- Much better than WordPress17
- Simple and customizable11
- Images API5
- Free for small projects3
- Extensible dashboard UI1
- Super simple to integrate1
- Managed Service1
- Tag Manager like UI1
- No spell check5
- No repeater Field5
- No free plan4
- Slow dashboard3
- Enterprise targeted2
- Pricey2
- Limited content types2
- Not scalable1
- No GraphQL API1
related Contentful posts
Hi, I went through a comprehensive analysis - of headless/api content management systems - essentially to store content "bits" and publish them where needed (website, 3rd party sites, social media, etc.). I had considered many other solutions but ultimately chose Directus. I believe that was a good choice.
I had strongly considered Contentful, Strapi, Sanity, and hygraph. Hygraph came in #2 and contentful #3.
Ultimately I liked directus for:
(1) time in business
(2) open source
(3) integration with n8n and Pipedream
(4) pricing
(5) extensibility
Thoughts? Was this a good choice? We have many WordPress sites we're not (at least now) looking to replace with Directus, but instead to push to.
I'd love some feedback.
Hi. I am gonna build a simple app for a company to ease their work. The company is sending out pdf files to their users' email. The data is a health analysis with a lot of different health values. The app should be an MVP, where users can watch their data instead of opening a pdf file. The company should be able to fill in the data in either Firebase or Contentful database. Is Contentful or Firebase best for this solution? What is your opinion?
- High performance18
- Flexible data model, easy scalability, extremely fast18
- Mobile app support9
- You can query it with Ansi-92 SQL7
- All nodes can be read/write6
- Equal nodes in cluster, allowing fast, flexible changes5
- Both a key-value store and document (JSON) db5
- Open source, community and enterprise editions5
- Automatic configuration of sharding4
- Local cache capability4
- Easy setup3
- Linearly scalable, useful to large number of tps3
- Easy cluster administration3
- Cross data center replication3
- SDKs in popular programming languages3
- Elasticsearch connector3
- Web based management, query and monitoring panel3
- Map reduce views2
- DBaaS available2
- NoSQL2
- Buckets, Scopes, Collections & Documents1
- FTS + SQL together1
- Terrible query language3
related Couchbase posts
We implemented our first large scale EPR application from naologic.com using CouchDB .
Very fast, replication works great, doesn't consume much RAM, queries are blazing fast but we found a problem: the queries were very hard to write, it took a long time to figure out the API, we had to go and write our own @nodejs library to make it work properly.
It lost most of its support. Since then, we migrated to Couchbase and the learning curve was steep but all worth it. Memcached indexing out of the box, full text search works great.
Hey, we want to build a referral campaign mechanism that will probably contain millions of records within the next few years. We want fast read access based on IDs or some indexes, and isolation is crucial as some listeners will try to update the same document at the same time. What's your suggestion between Couchbase and MongoDB? Thanks!
- Scalable28
- Cheap19
- Reliable14
- Easy9
- Chealp3
- More praticlal and easy2
related Google Cloud Storage posts
Context: I wanted to create an end to end IoT data pipeline simulation in Google Cloud IoT Core and other GCP services. I never touched Terraform meaningfully until working on this project, and it's one of the best explorations in my development career. The documentation and syntax is incredibly human-readable and friendly. I'm used to building infrastructure through the google apis via Python , but I'm so glad past Sung did not make that decision. I was tempted to use Google Cloud Deployment Manager, but the templates were a bit convoluted by first impression. I'm glad past Sung did not make this decision either.
Solution: Leveraging Google Cloud Build Google Cloud Run Google Cloud Bigtable Google BigQuery Google Cloud Storage Google Compute Engine along with some other fun tools, I can deploy over 40 GCP resources using Terraform!
Check Out My Architecture: CLICK ME
Check out the GitHub repo attached
In #Aliadoc, we're exploring the crowdfunding option to get traction before launch. We are building a SaaS platform for website design customization.
For the Admin UI and website editor we use React and we're currently transitioning from a Create React App setup to a custom one because our needs have become more specific. We use CloudFlare as much as possible, it's a great service.
For routing dynamic resources and proxy tasks to feed websites to the editor we leverage CloudFlare Workers for improved responsiveness. We use Firebase for our hosting needs and user authentication while also using several Cloud Functions for Firebase to interact with other services along with Google App Engine and Google Cloud Storage, but also the Real Time Database is on the radar for collaborative website editing.
We generally hate configuration but honestly because of the stage of our project we lack resources for doing heavy sysops work. So we are basically just relying on Serverless technologies as much as we can to do all server side processing.
Visual Studio Code definitively makes programming a much easier and enjoyable task, we just love it. We combine it with Bitbucket for our source code control needs.