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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Platform as a Service
  4. Realtime Backend API
  5. Firebase vs Heroku vs Parse-Server

Firebase vs Heroku vs Parse-Server

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Firebase
Firebase
Stacks42.5K
Followers36.0K
Votes2.0K
Heroku
Heroku
Stacks25.8K
Followers20.5K
Votes3.2K
Parse-Server
Parse-Server
Stacks191
Followers238
Votes32

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Advice on Firebase, Heroku, Parse-Server

Alex
Alex

Oct 20, 2020

Decided

I'm transitioning to Render from heroku. The pricing scale matches my usage scale, yet it's just as easy to deploy. It's removed a lot of the devops that I don't like to deal with on setting up my own raw *nix box and makes deployment simple and easy!

Clustering I don't use clustering features at the moment but when i need to set up clustering of nodes and discoverability, render will enable that where Heroku would require that I use an external service like redis.

Restarts The restarts are annoying. I understand the reasoning, but I'd rather watch my service if its got a memory leak and work to fix it than to just assume that it has memory leaks and needs to restart.

101k views101k
Comments
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

Detailed Comparison

Firebase
Firebase
Heroku
Heroku
Parse-Server
Parse-Server

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.

Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

A Parse.com API compatible router package for Express. Read the announcement blog post here: http://blog.parse.com/announcements/introducing-parse-server-and-the-database-migration-tool/. Read the migration guide here: https://parse.com/docs/server/guide#migrating

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.
Agile deployment for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, Go and Scala.;Run and scale any type of app.;Total visibility across your entire app.;Erosion-resistant architecture. Rich control surfaces.
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Statistics
Stacks
42.5K
Stacks
25.8K
Stacks
191
Followers
36.0K
Followers
20.5K
Followers
238
Votes
2.0K
Votes
3.2K
Votes
32
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
  • 703
    Easy deployment
  • 459
    Free for side projects
  • 374
    Huge time-saver
  • 348
    Simple scaling
  • 261
    Low devops skills required
Cons
  • 27
    Super expensive
  • 9
    Not a whole lot of flexibility
  • 7
    No usable MySQL option
  • 7
    Storage
  • 5
    Low performance on free tier
Pros
  • 13
    Open Source
  • 7
    Well documented
  • 4
    Easy setup, easy api, Fast,more platforms,realtime
  • 3
    No vendor lock-in
  • 2
    Backed by People
Cons
  • 1
    No guarantee (comes as is)
Integrations
Trigger.io
Trigger.io
Famo.us
Famo.us
Backbone.js
Backbone.js
Ember.js
Ember.js
AngularJS
AngularJS
React
React
Mailgun
Mailgun
Postmark
Postmark
Loggly
Loggly
Papertrail
Papertrail
Redis Cloud
Redis Cloud
Red Hat Codeready Workspaces
Red Hat Codeready Workspaces
Nitrous.IO
Nitrous.IO
Logentries
Logentries
MongoLab
MongoLab
Gemfury
Gemfury
Parse
Parse

What are some alternatives to Firebase, Heroku, Parse-Server?

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

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.

Google App Engine

Google App Engine

Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

Red Hat OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

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.

Render

Render

Render is a unified platform to build and run all your apps and websites with free SSL, a global CDN, private networks and auto deploys from Git.

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.

Hasura

Hasura

An open source GraphQL engine that deploys instant, realtime GraphQL APIs on any Postgres database.

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