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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Platform as a Service
  4. Realtime Backend API
  5. DigitalOcean vs Firebase

DigitalOcean vs Firebase

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Firebase
Firebase
Stacks42.5K
Followers36.0K
Votes2.0K
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean
Stacks18.2K
Followers13.3K
Votes2.6K

DigitalOcean vs Firebase: What are the differences?

Introduction

DigitalOcean and Firebase are both popular cloud computing platforms that offer a wide range of services for developers. While they share some similarities, there are several key differences between the two.

  1. Pricing and Billing: DigitalOcean follows a predictable, fixed monthly pricing model where you pay for the resources you provision, regardless of whether you use them fully or not. On the other hand, Firebase operates on a pay-as-you-go model, charging you based on actual usage. This can be advantageous if you have fluctuating or unpredictable traffic patterns.

  2. Infrastructure: DigitalOcean provides a traditional infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model, allowing you to configure and manage virtual machines (droplets) and other infrastructure components yourself. In contrast, Firebase is a fully managed platform as a service (PaaS) that abstracts away the infrastructure layer, allowing you to focus solely on building your application without worrying about server management.

  3. Scalability and Autoscaling: While DigitalOcean allows you to vertically scale your infrastructure, meaning you can increase the size of your virtual machines to handle more traffic, it does not offer built-in autoscaling capabilities. Firebase, on the other hand, automatically scales your applications in response to changing demand, ensuring high availability and performance.

  4. Database Options: DigitalOcean primarily offers traditional relational databases and object storage solutions, allowing you to configure and manage them yourself. Firebase, on the other hand, provides a fully managed NoSQL database (Firestore) as well as a real-time database, offering a more scalable and easy-to-use option for storing and retrieving data.

  5. Authentication and User Management: While both platforms provide authentication and user management services, Firebase offers a highly secure and comprehensive solution out of the box. It provides support for various authentication providers, including social logins, email/password, and phone number authentication. DigitalOcean, on the other hand, does not offer such extensive built-in authentication capabilities.

  6. Additional Services: DigitalOcean focuses primarily on providing infrastructure-related services, such as virtual machines, load balancers, and block storage. In contrast, Firebase offers a broader range of services, including cloud functions, in-app messaging, remote configurations, and more. These additional services make Firebase a more well-rounded platform for building and scaling modern applications.

In summary, DigitalOcean is a reliable choice if you prefer manual infrastructure management with fixed pricing, while Firebase offers a fully managed platform with flexible pricing and a wider range of services tailored towards modern application development.

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Advice on Firebase, DigitalOcean

Jared
Jared

Contractor at Insight Global

Aug 9, 2019

ReviewonFirebaseFirebase

I started using Firebase over 5 years ago because of the 'real-time' nature. I originally used to use Real Time Database, but now I use Cloud Firestore. I recommend using the Google Firebase PaaS to quickly develop or prototype small to enterprise level web/mobile applications. Since Google purchased Firebase, it has exploded and it growing rapidly. I also find some level of comfort that it is Backed by Google.

272k views272k
Comments
Noam
Noam

Jul 16, 2020

Needs adviceonNode.jsNode.jsExpressJSExpressJSReactReact

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.

1.15M views1.15M
Comments
Jerome/Zen
Jerome/Zen

Software Engineer

Aug 2, 2020

Needs advice

DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.

However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.

One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.

Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.

264k views264k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Firebase
Firebase
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean

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.

We take the complexities out of cloud hosting by offering blazing fast, on-demand SSD cloud servers, straightforward pricing, a simple API, and an easy-to-use control panel.

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.;Real-time Synchronization- Firebase takes a new approach to the way data is moved around an app. Rather than using a traditional request & response model, it works by synchronizing data between devices. Whenever your data changes, all clients are immediately notified within milliseconds. The synchronized data is also persisted, allowing new clients to be immediately updated.;First-class Data Security- Traditional applications intermix security code with application code, whereas Firebase treats security as a first-class feature. You define your security policies in one place using a flexible rules language, and Firebase ensures that they are consistently enforced across all parts of your application. Having all your security logic in one place allows for easy auditing and helps you avoid security mistakes. The safety and security of your data is our top priority.;Automatic Scaling- The Firebase API is built from the ground up for performance and scale. Whenever your data changes, Firebase calculates the minimum set of updates required to keep all your clients in sync. In addition, all Firebase API functions are designed to scale linearly with the size of the data being synchronized. More importantly, Firebase handles all of the scaling and operations for you. Your app will scale from its first user to its first million without any code changes.;Servers are Optional- Firebase can provide all of the data storage, control, and transmission needs of most apps. In many cases, Firebase can completely replace your server and server-side code. This means you no longer need to build complicated backend software and can instead focus on your application logic and your customers.
We provide all of our users with high-performance SSD Hard Drives, flexible API, and the ability to select to nearest data center location.;SSD Cloud Servers in 55 Seconds;We provide a 99.99% uptime SLA around network, power and virtual server availability. If we fail to deliver, we’ll credit you based on the amount of time that service was unavailable.;All servers come with 1Gb/sec. network interface. Plans start with 1TB per month and increase incrementally.;KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is one of the fastest-growing open source full virtualization solution for Linux. Our KVM virtualized droplets are designed to address a high level of security and performance.;With our SSD hard drives, you can expect much faster disk i/o performance when compared to a traditional storage medium (e.g. SATA).;We have created a simple name spaced API that provides complete control over your virtual private servers.;All cloud servers are built on powerful Hex Core machines with dedicated ECC Ram and RAID SSD storage.;Shared Private Networking enables Droplets to communicate with other Droplets in that same datacenter.;Transfer a copy of your Droplet snapshot to all regions (Amsterdam, San Francisco, and New York).;An intuitive user interface to control all of your virtual servers. Create, resize, rebuild and snapshot with single clicks.;Full featured DNS management allows you to easily manage your domains.;If you ever get locked out of your virtual server, you’ll be able to recover it with full console access.;Automatically set your server to be backed up. Or take a snapshot when you reach a milestone.
Statistics
Stacks
42.5K
Stacks
18.2K
Followers
36.0K
Followers
13.3K
Votes
2.0K
Votes
2.6K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 371
    Realtime backend made easy
  • 270
    Fast and responsive
  • 242
    Easy setup
  • 215
    Real-time
  • 191
    JSON
Cons
  • 31
    Can become expensive
  • 16
    No open source, you depend on external company
  • 15
    Scalability is not infinite
  • 9
    Not Flexible Enough
  • 7
    Cant filter queries
Pros
  • 560
    Great value for money
  • 364
    Simple dashboard
  • 362
    Good pricing
  • 300
    Ssds
  • 250
    Nice ui
Cons
  • 4
    Pricing
  • 3
    No live support chat
Integrations
Trigger.io
Trigger.io
Famo.us
Famo.us
Backbone.js
Backbone.js
Ember.js
Ember.js
AngularJS
AngularJS
React
React
Cloud 66
Cloud 66

What are some alternatives to Firebase, DigitalOcean?

Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2

It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Socket.IO

Socket.IO

It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure

Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.

Google Compute Engine

Google Compute Engine

Google Compute Engine is a service that provides virtual machines that run on Google infrastructure. Google Compute Engine offers scale, performance, and value that allows you to easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. There are no upfront investments and you can run up to thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that has been designed from the ground up to be fast, and to offer strong consistency of performance.

Linode

Linode

Get a server running in minutes with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.

PubNub

PubNub

PubNub makes it easy for you to add real-time capabilities to your apps, without worrying about the infrastructure. Build apps that allow your users to engage in real-time across mobile, browser, desktop and server.

Pusher

Pusher

Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.

Scaleway

Scaleway

European cloud computing company proposing a complete & simple public cloud ecosystem, bare-metal servers & private datacenter infrastructures.

SignalR

SignalR

SignalR allows bi-directional communication between server and client. Servers can now push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR supports Web Sockets, and falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers. SignalR includes APIs for connection management (for instance, connect and disconnect events), grouping connections, and authorization.

Rackspace Cloud Servers

Rackspace Cloud Servers

Cloud Servers is based on OpenStack, the open and scalable operating system for building public and private clouds. With the open cloud, you get reliable cloud hosting, without locking your data into one proprietary platform.

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