Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Amazon VPC vs Firebase: What are the differences?
What is Amazon VPC? Provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud and launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define. You have complete control over your virtual networking environment, including selection of your own IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways. You can easily customize the network configuration for your Amazon VPC.
What is Firebase? The Realtime App Platform. Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
Amazon VPC can be classified as a tool in the "Virtual Private Cloud" category, while Firebase is grouped under "Realtime Backend / API".
Some of the features offered by Amazon VPC are:
- Create an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud on AWS's scalable infrastructure, and specify its private IP address range from any range you choose.
- Divide your VPC’s private IP address range into one or more public or private subnets to facilitate running applications and services in your VPC.
- Control inbound and outbound access to and from individual subnets using network access control lists.
On the other hand, Firebase provides the following key features:
- Add the Firebase library to your app and get access to a shared data structure. Any changes made to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
- Firebase apps can be written entirely with client-side code, update in real-time out-of-the-box, interoperate well with existing services, scale automatically, and provide strong data security.
- Data Accessibility- Data is stored as JSON in Firebase. Every piece of data has its own URL which can be used in Firebase's client libraries and as a REST endpoint. These URLs can also be entered into a browser to view the data and watch it update in real-time.
"Secure" is the primary reason why developers consider Amazon VPC over the competitors, whereas "Realtime backend made easy" was stated as the key factor in picking Firebase.
Instacart, 9GAG, and Twitch are some of the popular companies that use Firebase, whereas Amazon VPC is used by Coursera, Intuit, and Expedia.com. Firebase has a broader approval, being mentioned in 859 company stacks & 993 developers stacks; compared to Amazon VPC, which is listed in 300 company stacks and 79 developer stacks.
We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.
I would recommend looking hard into Firebase for this project, especially if you do not have dedicated full-stack or backend members on your team.
The real time database, as you mentioned, is a great option, but I would also look into Firestore. Similar to RTDB, it adds more functions and some cool methods as well. Also, another great thing about Firebase is you have easy access to storage and dead simple auth as well.
Node.js Express MongoDB Socket.IO and Apollo are great technologies as well, and may be the better option if you do not wish to cede as much control to third parties in your application.
Overall, I say if you wish to focus more time developing your React application instead of other parts of your stack, Firebase is a great way to do that.
Hello Noam 👋,
I suggest taking a look at Ably, it has all the realtime features you need and the platform is designed to guarantee critical functionality at scale.
Here is an in depth comparison between Ably and Firebase
Hey Noam,
I would recommend you to take a look into 8base. It has features you've requested, also relation database and GraphQL API which will help you to develop rapidly.
Thanks, Ilya