Google Firebase Mobile and Web App Development Tool
In this rapidly changing world, the challenge of developing a high-quality and robust mobile app would require a lot of commitment and dedication. There is one such platform from the Google stable that has caught the attention of developers and is now among the top tools they use. That’s Firebase, which has numerous options for building highly functional and flexible web apps, Android and iOS platforms. While it definitely has its own set of competitors in this industry, Firebase is always in conversation with the best platforms currently available.
Firebase has powerful features for developing, managing, and improving apps. With its own set of trusted tools, applications can be built and expanded on demand. Therefore, its goal is to solve three main developer dilemmas: build an app quickly, launch and monitor it with confidence, and engage your users. Access to services that developers can create themselves allows them to focus on delivering strong app experiences. Some of its most prominent features include databases, authentications, push messages, analytics, file storage, and much more. Developers can scale on demand without any problem.
The history of this platform has its own ups and downs like many others. It originated from Envolve, a start-up company established in 2011 by Andrew Lee and James Tamplin. They provided an API for developers to facilitate online chat integration for websites, but soon discovered that their chat service was being used to transmit non-chat messages. They relied on the platform for real-time app data synchronization, so they decided to differentiate the real-time architecture from the chat system that led to the founding of Firebase in 2011, leading to the public release in April 2012.
Firebase Realtime Database was first released as an API for app data synchronization across Android, web, and iOS devices that developers can use to build real-time collaborative apps.
Firebase received seed funding of approximately $1 million in 2012 from contributors including Greylock Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Founder Collective, and also raised series A funding of approximately $6 million in 2013.
The launch of Firebase Authentication and Firebase Hosting in 2014 established the company as a leading mobile backend as a service (MbaaS).
It was acquired by Google in October 2014 and is now the Google BaaS platform. It eventually merged with DivShot, a web hosting platform also acquired by the tech giant. Since then, it has amassed an impressive cross-section of clients, including Alibaba, The New York Times, Todoist, Le Figaro, and eBay Motors.
The platform can be accessed for free with its own limitations, which is its Spark Plan. It allows users to sign in with their Google account, which made it so popular. This includes 10 GB hosting, SSL, multiple websites, custom domain, and various other features. You also have optional features like Firebase ML, Realtime Database, Cloud Firestore, and Test Lab, but you don’t have access to Cloud Functions.
On the other hand, developers who require more services can upgrade to the Blaze Plan which has the original free limits. So if you host 20GB of storage, you will only be charged for the additional 10GB usage. This plan has a flexible pricing model of $0.026/GB. Includes all Spark Plan features, a plan calculator, and a Usage tab to check plan payment status and usage-related data for different Firebase services, such as the total amount of data within a database , the total number of real-time connections, including WebSockets. , and more.
Still, whichever plan you choose, Firebase has a generous array of always-free services that give it an edge over its competitors. We will discuss each one briefly.
The first is the application distribution feature that allows users to receive helpful feedback before the production phase of a new version and to submit previous versions of applications using CI servers or a console. Another is app indexing which allows users to re-engage Google Search users by providing app links in Search. A/B testing is also a feature that allows users to quickly test changes made to UIs, features, and campaigns before the app is released. Predictions uses data machine learning to develop dynamic user segments based on behaviors. The in-app messaging feature engages active app users through contextual messaging. Firebase Cloud Messaging allows app owners to notify client apps if data or email will be synced with payload transfers up to 4kb for instant messaging scenarios.
To get more information about the performance of your web applications on different operating systems, the performance monitoring feature is provided. Crashlytics quickly finds and fixes issues by monitoring both fatal and non-fatal errors, and reports are generated based on how they affect the user experience. Dynamic links are smart URLs that allow app administrators to direct current and potential users to different parts of Android or iOS apps. The Remote Config cloud solution allows users to modify the behavior and appearance of applications without updating them. Machine Learning components can be used by iOS and Android developers, providing predictions to notify returning app users.
Another notable feature of this platform is its ability to radically reduce the time to market for app development, as frontend developers can manage all the work, reduce the time it takes to complete it, avoid creating boilerplate code, and start a back end from scratch. . This is all thanks to the services mentioned above, such as data storage, authentication, notifications, analytics, and more.
Therefore, with the platform shifting focus to creating front-end code for mobile apps that provides convenience and helps keep costs down, many developers around the world prefer Firebase. Integrating this platform into your code base is made easier by high-quality SDKs and detailed documentation.
Serverless application development via built-in Cloud Functions can be used with Blaze Plan via the two database options: Cloud Firestore and Firebase Realtime Database. Cloud Firestore or Google Firestore is a cloud-based NoSQL database for storage and synchronization. It can be accessed from mobile or web applications through native SDKs. Firebase Realtime Database is a cloud-hosted database that provides JSON-based data storage and can perform real-time data synchronization with connected clients and allows applications to receive the latest updates.
With those advantages, a lot of disadvantages in using the platform cannot be noticed. The biggest limitation of this platform that makes it an unsuitable choice for developers is that it’s not open source, so you can’t modify the Firebase source code, which prevents the community from extending the product. Another is the use of the NoSQL structure for a database that makes it difficult to execute complex queries. The absence of dedicated servers is another major limitation as it offers less versatility compared to a full cluster structure and can prevent optimal performance. Its usage-based pricing model also poses a cost forecasting problem, especially when scalability requirements cannot be predicted. Support for ACID properties has also been emphasized in the community, because although it can support this type of transaction, developers need to run their own code, unlike a traditional database which results in a more complicated system.
Since Firebase is part of Google Cloud Platform, it works seamlessly with their other services and integrates with many third-party services, but there are no options to run on other cloud providers like AWS or Azure. As a Google subdomain, it is blocked in many countries like China because they banned URIs with *.Google.com and *.googleapis.com.
Nonetheless, Firebase is still a great platform, even if it has its own set of limitations, and as with other industries, there are plenty of alternatives out there that are just as amazing.
Back4App is a widely used open source platform that works as a low-code backend to speed up app development. A reliable choice for hosting web, mobile, and IoT applications that allows developers to leverage a database that enables fast and efficient data updating and synchronization. Backendless is a popular mobile backend that gives users the options of dedicated, cloud, and managed servers to suit different development requirements. AWS Amplify is feature rich for AWS full stack application development and has its well-regarded analytics to uncover user behaviors with convenient metrics and automatic tracking. Another is Parse, which is a prominent open source back-end framework since 2016 and provides a rich set of features like a spreadsheet-like database, APIs, notifications, authentication, and storage. While Kinvey is a serverless app development platform for multi-channel app development, and it operates through a cloud backend and SDK. It has shared code for cross-platform applications and can facilitate easy code management.