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Firebase vs Netlify: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Firebase and Netlify are two popular web development platforms that offer different features and functionalities. Understanding the key differences between these two platforms is crucial for choosing the right one for your project.

  1. Hosting and Backend Services: Firebase provides a comprehensive backend-as-a-service (BaaS) solution, offering hosting, authentication, database, storage, and more in a single platform. On the other hand, Netlify focuses primarily on static site hosting and deployment, making it a great option for simple static websites.

  2. Scalability and Performance: Firebase offers excellent scalability and performance out of the box, as it is backed by Google's infrastructure. It automatically handles scaling and load balancing, ensuring your application can handle high traffic without any issues. Netlify, while it provides solid performance, may not offer the same level of scalability and performance as Firebase for large-scale applications.

  3. Real-time Database and Functionality: Firebase includes a real-time database that synchronizes data across multiple devices in real-time. This is particularly useful for building chat applications, real-time collaboration tools, or any application that requires real-time data updates. Netlify does not have a built-in real-time database functionality, so if you need this feature, Firebase would be a better choice.

  4. Deployment and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Netlify has a strong focus on providing an easy and intuitive deployment process with built-in CI/CD capabilities. It automatically deploys your code whenever you push changes to your repository, making it a seamless experience. Firebase also offers deployment options but doesn't provide the same level of built-in CI/CD features.

  5. User Authentication: Firebase offers built-in authentication services, allowing you to easily add user authentication and authorization to your applications. It supports various authentication methods, including email/password, social media logins, and more. Netlify, on the other hand, does not provide native authentication services. You would need to integrate third-party authentication providers into your application if you choose Netlify.

  6. Pricing and Cost: Firebase offers a pricing model based on resource usage and provides a generous free tier. It charges based on features used, such as authentication, database, and storage. Netlify offers a free tier for basic hosting needs but charges for additional features, such as form submissions and advanced workflows.

In Summary, Firebase provides a comprehensive backend solution with real-time database capabilities, built-in user authentication, and strong scalability. Netlify, on the other hand, focuses primarily on static site hosting and deployment, providing an easy deployment process with built-in CI/CD and a free tier option.

Advice on Firebase and Netlify
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 · 461.5K 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 Firebase and Netlify
Howie Zhao
Full Stack Engineer at yintrust · | 7 upvotes · 213K views

We use Netlify to host static websites.

The reasons for choosing Netlify over GitHub Pages are as follows:

  • Netfily can bind multiple domain names, while GitHub Pages can only bind one domain name
  • With Netfily, the original repository can be private, while GitHub Pages free tier requires the original repository to be public

In addition, in order to use CDN, we use Netlify DNS.

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Pros of Firebase
Pros of Netlify
  • 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
  • 18
    Rapid prototyping
  • 14
    Great security
  • 12
    Automatic scaling
  • 11
    Freakingly awesome
  • 8
    Super fast development
  • 8
    Angularfire is an amazing addition!
  • 8
    Chat
  • 6
    Built in user auth/oauth
  • 6
    Ios adaptor
  • 6
    Awesome next-gen backend
  • 6
    Firebase hosting
  • 4
    Speed of light
  • 4
    Very easy to use
  • 3
    Great
  • 3
    It's made development super fast
  • 3
    Brilliant for startups
  • 2
    The concurrent updates create a great experience
  • 2
    Push notification
  • 2
    .net
  • 2
    Cloud functions
  • 2
    Free hosting
  • 2
    Free authentication solution
  • 2
    JS Offline and Sync suport
  • 2
    Low battery consumption
  • 2
    I can quickly create static web apps with no backend
  • 2
    Great all-round functionality
  • 1
    Large
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Free SSL
  • 1
    Faster workflow
  • 1
    Google's support
  • 1
    CDN & cache out of the box
  • 1
    Easy Reactjs integration
  • 1
    Simple and easy
  • 1
    Good Free Limits
  • 1
    Serverless
  • 45
    Easy deploy
  • 43
    Fastest static hosting and continuous deployments
  • 22
    Free SSL support
  • 22
    Super simple deploys
  • 15
    Easy Setup and Continous deployments
  • 10
    Faster than any other option in the market
  • 10
    Free plan for personal websites
  • 8
    Deploy previews
  • 6
    Free Open Source (Pro) plan
  • 4
    Great loop-in material on a blog
  • 4
    Analytics
  • 4
    Easy to use and great support
  • 3
    Fastest static hosting and continuous deployments
  • 3
    Great drag and drop functionality
  • 3
    Custom domains support
  • 1
    Canary Releases (Split Tests)
  • 1
    Supports static site generators
  • 1
    Tech oriented support
  • 0
    Django

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Cons of Firebase
Cons of Netlify
  • 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
  • 7
    It's expensive
  • 1
    Bandwidth limitation

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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.

What is Netlify?

Netlify is smart enough to process your site and make sure all assets gets optimized and served with perfect caching-headers from a cookie-less domain. We make sure your HTML is served straight from our CDN edge nodes without any round-trip to our backend servers and are the only ones to give you instant cache invalidation when you push a new deploy. Netlify is also the only static hosting service with integrated continuous deployment.

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What are some alternatives to Firebase and Netlify?
Parse
With Parse, you can add a scalable and powerful backend in minutes and launch a full-featured app in record time without ever worrying about server management. We offer push notifications, social integration, data storage, and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app’s backend with Cloud Code.
MongoDB
MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding.
Heroku
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.
Auth0
A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications.
Realm
The Realm Mobile Platform is a next-generation data layer for applications. Realm is reactive, concurrent, and lightweight, allowing you to work with live, native objects.
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