Pros and cons of Firebase
Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) has become a popular type of cloud services They allow entrepreneurs and businesses to create digital products without investing in building their own server infrastructure. Among the available cloud computing solutions is Firebase, owned by Google. The platform has received a lot of attention. By offering helpful services that accelerate product development, today we’ll take a closer look at the pros and cons of Firebase and answer the question if it’s the best solution for your project.
What is Firebase?
Firebase is Google’s mobile and web development platform that helps entrepreneurs build, improve, and scale their app products. The platform offers a set of tools that greatly simplify the product development process. That is why it is suitable for creating an MVP as it reduces time and effort. spent by developers on its creation.
Out-of-the-box services include a suite of machine learning, hosting, storage, or real-time database. Infrastructure also offers some free products like Analytics, Crash Reporting or Cloud Messaging. The services are hosted in the cloud. This makes the developer’s job much easier and empowering. focus on the overall experience that the product offers. The platform provides developers with an API that allows them to sync app data between clients and store it in the Firebase cloud.
Pros and cons of Firebase
To help you decide if a platform is worth your time and effort, we now benchmark its performance by comparing the pros and cons of Firebase.
pros
First, about the benefits that lead to choosingFirebase as the back end of your application.
Database parameters
Firestore and Realtime are database options that you can choose to build your product. Both are hosted in the cloud, NoSQL databases are flexible and scalable in terms of size. Real-time database provides developers with offline access and real-time updates. which allow them to work on responsive apps without an internet connection.
Free for beginners
The platform does not charge a fee for most of its services and only requires you to select a plan after reaching a certain amount of database memory. This is great for beginners who want to check if the platform is sufficient for their product and do not want to pay for all services up front. who wants to estimate the total price they have to pay for a custom plan, there is a pricing calculator that makes the process simpler.
Community
Firebase has a well-prepared technical documentation that makes it easier to use the services offered and makes them more accessible to users. You can find all the information you need about integration, availability and supported technologies. Moreover, there are about 1.5 million applications based on Firebase This means that the community around the product and the amount of resources will benefit developers trying to find an answer to any problem.
Ease of integration
Finally, ease of integration and quick setup. The ready-made APIs offered by the platform allow you to add new functions in just a few clicks. Firebase requires almost no technical knowledge to get started on your product. The simple user interface allows you to implement such functions in your application without serious problems. features like authentication. With Firebase, there is no need for complex settings, so almost anyone can set up an app – on the web or on a mobile device.
Minuses
Like everything, Firebase has its drawbacks.
Data storage is inconvenient
Usually you will use a real-time database as your main storage, which is not always a good thing. The main problem is the limited query capabilities. You cannot query more than one key at a time, and the service does not provide a way to filter your data. This is because the entire database is a JSON file and has nothing to do with the SQL storage format. The format also excludes the possibility of data modeling.
Limited data migration
You are not hosting data, all data is hosted on Firebase and this is a major issue in using BaaS platforms as the back end of your application. If Firebase does not provide a migration tool to easily migrate user data, it severely restricts data migration. This makes users platform dependent. , and if the concept of the server base changes, there is no way to move the application to another source.
Android in the middle
Firebase does not provide the same experience for Android and iOS apps. It is still more Android oriented and it is the only system that gets most of the dedicated services and capabilities. For example, Test Lab integrates seamlessly with Android studio and supports a wide range of Android devices for testing. On the iOS side, it was provided closed beta support for iOS devices, but includes a very basic suite of tests.
However, it’s pretty cool!
Summarizing the pros and cons of Firebase, it is a good choice if you are planning to create a new product from scratch or rewrite an existing one. The platform helps to store and improve dynamic content. It also speeds up the development process, allowing you to get faster results – so this ideal for creating MVP