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Fanout vs Firebase: What are the differences?

Introduction

In the world of real-time data streaming and synchronization, Fanout and Firebase are two popular platforms that offer solutions for developers. Here, we will explore some key differences between Fanout and Firebase.

  1. Real-time Webhooks: Fanout specializes in real-time data delivery through Webhooks, allowing developers to push updates instantly to connected clients. This makes it ideal for scenarios where real-time notifications or updates are critical, ensuring low latency in delivering information to end-users.

  2. Database Integration: Firebase, on the other hand, is known for its real-time database capabilities, providing developers with a NoSQL database that synchronizes data in real-time across all clients. This makes it a robust choice for applications requiring live data synchronization and offline support for mobile and web platforms.

  3. Scalability Options: Fanout offers a scalable HTTP API for handling large volumes of data streams efficiently, making it suitable for applications that require high throughput and seamless scalability. This ensures that as your user base grows, Fanout can handle the increased load effectively.

  4. Authentication and Authorization: Firebase offers built-in authentication and authorization features, making it easier for developers to secure their applications and manage user access control seamlessly. With Firebase Authentication, developers can identify users across different devices, providing a seamless user experience.

  5. Real-time Analytics: Firebase includes robust analytics capabilities that enable developers to gain insights into user behavior, app performance, and user engagement in real-time. This empowers developers to make data-driven decisions and optimize their applications for better performance and user experience.

  6. Hosting and Functionality: Firebase provides hosting services and serverless functions that allow developers to deploy their applications with ease and scale them as needed. This integrated approach simplifies the development process, offering a comprehensive solution for building and deploying real-time applications.

In Summary, Fanout excels in real-time data delivery through Webhooks, while Firebase offers a real-time database, scalability options, authentication features, analytics capabilities, and hosting services, making it a versatile platform for building dynamic applications.

Advice on Fanout and Firebase
Moghammad Sabre Khan
Needs advice
on
FirebaseFirebase
and
Socket.IOSocket.IO

We (my team) are building an App where we want to have Bi-directional texting, Single Directional Picture, and audio transfer.

We are building all this using Flutter.

There will essentially be 3 apps, 2 Mobile-based (Android and iOS) and 1 Microsoft Based. We've built up most of the code already, and made a few major mistakes but fixed it(namely had no proper state management).

How things will work:

Person A has a Mobile app 1, Person A presses a button that sends a "communication request" into a Pool of requests. Person B on Desktop App chooses a "communication request" from the pool, and engages in Bi-directional texting with Person A. Person B also opens communication with Person C who is on Mobile app 2, and they engage in Bi-directional texting. Person C will be notified of communication requests through Push Notifications.

So far we've been using Socket.IO, however, I'm starting to think that's not the best.

A problem we've encountered so far is that Person A(Mobile App 1 User), is the person who sends a "communication request" into the "Communication Pool". The Mobile App 1 User, can "cancel" the communication at any point in time. When they do that, I would like for a notification to be sent to Person B, the Desktop User, For them to pick up another communication request.

I am not sure how this should be done however, should it be done in the Back-end, then how does the Front-end get notified of the change?

Any advice on which to choose?

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Replies (1)
Jomai Omar
web developer at tunisofts · | 3 upvotes · 18K views
Recommends
on
FirebaseFirebaseSocket.IOSocket.IO

It's so simple when you use Firebase to manage the requests just make new field to the request for example callstate with values like "requesting" "incall" "cancelled" and both A and B can update this field.

See more
Needs advice
on
ApolloApolloFirebaseFirebase
and
Socket.IOSocket.IO

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.

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Replies (3)
Timothy Malstead
Junior Full Stack Developer at Freelance · | 7 upvotes · 491.4K views
Recommends
on
FirebaseFirebase

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.

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Recommends
on
AblyAbly

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

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Recommends
on
8base8base

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

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Decisions about Fanout and Firebase
Jack Heaton
Full Stack Developer at Life Story Maps · | 4 upvotes · 37.3K views

The start-up guides, tutorials and documentation in general for Firebase are pretty outstanding.

There is 1GB database storage for the free tier as compared to Supabase's 500MB. Not that I think there is anything wrong with Supabase, I intend to try it out someday.

Also if you are doing any sort of personal front-end project, even using a free cluster from MongoDB can be a lot of work and setup, with Firebase (specifically Fire store and Google Authenticator) the implementation of BaaS is quite easy to get up and running.

It's pretty easy to understand the Fires store security rules as well, and if you ever have a hard time trying to figure something out, there is good community support and YouTube tutorials for most topics.

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Pros of Fanout
Pros of Firebase
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 371
      Realtime backend made easy
    • 270
      Fast and responsive
    • 242
      Easy setup
    • 215
      Real-time
    • 191
      JSON
    • 134
      Free
    • 128
      Backed by google
    • 83
      Angular adaptor
    • 68
      Reliable
    • 36
      Great customer support
    • 32
      Great documentation
    • 25
      Real-time synchronization
    • 21
      Mobile friendly
    • 19
      Rapid prototyping
    • 14
      Great security
    • 12
      Automatic scaling
    • 11
      Freakingly awesome
    • 8
      Super fast development
    • 8
      Angularfire is an amazing addition!
    • 8
      Chat
    • 6
      Firebase hosting
    • 6
      Built in user auth/oauth
    • 6
      Awesome next-gen backend
    • 6
      Ios adaptor
    • 4
      Speed of light
    • 4
      Very easy to use
    • 3
      Great
    • 3
      It's made development super fast
    • 3
      Brilliant for startups
    • 2
      Free hosting
    • 2
      Cloud functions
    • 2
      JS Offline and Sync suport
    • 2
      Low battery consumption
    • 2
      .net
    • 2
      The concurrent updates create a great experience
    • 2
      Push notification
    • 2
      I can quickly create static web apps with no backend
    • 2
      Great all-round functionality
    • 2
      Free authentication solution
    • 1
      Easy Reactjs integration
    • 1
      Google's support
    • 1
      Free SSL
    • 1
      CDN & cache out of the box
    • 1
      Easy to use
    • 1
      Large
    • 1
      Faster workflow
    • 1
      Serverless
    • 1
      Good Free Limits
    • 1
      Simple and easy

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

    Cons of Fanout
    Cons of Firebase
      Be the first to leave a con
      • 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
      • 3
        Very unstable server
      • 3
        No Relational Data
      • 2
        Too many errors
      • 2
        No offline sync

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

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      What is Fanout?

      Fanout makes it easy to build realtime APIs and apps. The product is a cross between a reverse proxy and a message broker. Receivers subscribe to channels, and published data is delivered in realtime.

      What is Firebase?

      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.

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use Fanout?
      What companies use Firebase?
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        What tools integrate with Fanout?
        What tools integrate with Firebase?
          No integrations found

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          What are some alternatives to Fanout and Firebase?
          Pushpin
          Pushpin is a reverse proxy server that makes it easy to build realtime web services. The project is unique among realtime push solutions in that it is designed to address the needs of API creators.
          Pusher
          Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.
          NGINX
          nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.
          Apache HTTP Server
          The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.
          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.
          See all alternatives