Open Source Backend as a Service Providers

Are you looking for a BaaS open source solution? Here is an in-depth analysis of ten excellent open source backend providers, including the core features and pricing model.

Cloud computing has shaken up every industry since its invention. Indeed, the majority of the businesses prefer to pick any cloud computing model to successfully release, build and run their web or mobile applications. Hereof, Backend as a Service (BaaS) is an outstanding choice that startups, SMEs and big enterprises like to use.

However, open-source property adds more value to the services of BaaS platforms, but it is still complicated to find credible BaaS open-source providers. So, this article shares one of the top open-source BaaS platforms with their core features and pricing models.

Overview about Backend as a Service

Backend as a Service (BaaS) is a cloud computing model that permits the developers to connect the server-side of applications with cloud storage and other functions through SDKs and APIs.

With the robust support of BaaS, it becomes very convenient for businesses to emphasize frontend and core operations because backend vendors take care of server-side tasks.

The BaaS industry is expanding rapidly among businesses. According to a recent forecast by Verified Market Research, the BaaS market value will be around 1,637.94 billion USD by 2030.

This value was only 16.43 billion USD in 2021. It means Backend as a Service has the potential to grow with 84% of the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2022 to 2030.

Similarly, another research report of MarketsAndMarkets claims that the market worth of the Cloud MBaaS industry will reach around 5.9 billion USD by 2025.

This research report only covers the use of MBaaS for Android and iOS applications with core backend services database management, authentication, storage and backups etc.

On the contrary, if we talk about open-source BaaS platforms, then Back4App, Parse, AWS Amplify and Kuzzle are prominent ones.

BaaS Core Features

Here are the core BaaS features:

Realtime Databases

The major feature that attracts developers and companies toward open-source BaaS platforms is the availability of real-time databases.

These databases don’t only update and query information spontaneously but also have the ability to store and sync data when a user goes offline.

User Authentication

It is complicated to authenticate a user and safely keep his data in the cloud. But BaaS vendors made it very smooth for developers to verify users’ identities without risking security.

In this regard, Backend as a Service platforms enable user authentication through email, passwords, phone numbers and a variety of social media applications.

Notifications

Notifications have great importance in engaging and retaining application users nowadays. Open-source BaaS providers are giving outstanding services in this regard.

Whether you are looking for in-app messaging, email or push notifications, you can get everything with your BaaS vendor. You just need to enable the notification’s function.

Integrations

BaaS open-source providers allow the developers to integrate their applications and backends with various APIs and social networking apps.

By the same token, coders can also connect their apps with SDKs and even third-party libraries to improve the app’s performance.

Cloud-Based Storage

Limitless cloud-based backend storage is another appealing feature of BaaS platforms. Although the free plans of these backend services confer limited storage, but their pay-as-you-go pricing property allows them to scale storage resources anytime.

For a complete list of BaaS features, read the article The best BaaS features to grow your app.

Advantages of a BaaS

Scalable & Secure — It is very flexible to use backend platforms. You can quickly enhance or reduce resources according to the demand of your project. Indeed, Backend as a Service platforms allow extending sources horizontally and vertically. By the same token, 2-factor authentication, customized team permissions and several safety features make it a very safe choice.

Cost-Efficient — BaaS development is inexpensive compared to custom app development. According to Glassdoor, a backend developer charges $83k to $185 yearly in the United States. Withal, the charges of most BaaS vendors start from $25. Even the majority of them offer free-tiers.

Reduces Time to Market — Building server-side of applications is very quick with open-source BaaS vendors. It overcomes the development duration of MVPs. So, startups and businesses can reduce their time to market.

Stops Futile Stack Development — Developers don’t need to build customized stacks and everything from scratch when using the BaaS platform. It prevents unnecessary development, and most of the functions are done only by connecting APIs.

For a full list of the benefits of a BaaS solution, read the article Benefits of using a backend platform.

Advantages of Open-Source

Here are significant advantages of open-source:

• The top advantage of open-source BaaS platforms is community support. You can’t only access thousands of libraries that are available on the internet, but community forums are also there. Novice developers can ask their queries on these forums from seasoned programmers.

• Similarly, open-source codes are more reliable and secure because the community can quickly identify errors and security lapses.

• You can also smoothly migrate from open-source platforms because they don’t come with vendor lock-in features.

• Less time to market, cost-efficient and merit-based codes are some advantages of open-source for businesses.

Top 10 Open Source BaaS Providers

Below are ten of the best mBaaS open source platforms.

1. Back4App

Back4App is an open source Backend as a Service (BaaS) platform built on top of open source technologies.

It offers developers a complete set of tools and services for building mobile apps without worrying about server management, infrastructure scalability, or data security. It works great fro native and cross platform development.

The platform is a natural choice for developers who want to focus on their code rather than maintaining servers and other backend services.

It allows you to create mobile apps with unlimited cloud storage, streaming, and offline synchronization for audio, video, and pictures. In addition, Back4App features a powerful analytics dashboard with user notifications and in-app purchases.

Features

Relational Database Schema — Back4App supports multiple relational database schemas that you can use to store data in your app. The schema can be changed at any time (including runtime) without affecting the existing data.

Real-Time Queries — Back4App queries are fully compatible with real-time communication scenarios and can deliver results within milliseconds.

Smooth Interface — The interface of Back4App is just like a spreadsheet. So, developers don’t have to worry about performance issues while adding a new feature or scaling their application.

Notifications — Back4App provides an easy-to-use interface for adding information to your app. You can conveniently create push notifications, email and in-app messages.

Pricing

Back4app is one of the best open-source Backend as a Service offering a free plan for a startup pack with all core features. It charges commence from $25/month for its shared plan, which is cost-effective.

2. Parse

Parse is an open source mobile backend as a service that companies of all sizes use to create mobile and web applications. One of the things that make Parse so powerful is its open-source platform. Developers can contribute their code to the forum to make it better for everyone.

Moreover, a large community of developers follows it on GitHub. Yes, it has 35k plus stars and 16k+ forks on GitHub.

Features

Parse Server — Parse Server is the open-source version of the Parse backend as a service (BaaS). It is easy to deploy your Parse server with all popular SDKs and libraries.

Libraries & SDKs — The Parse JavaScript SDK makes it easy to add Parse to your website or app. It’s lightweight and works on both the front and the Backend.

Community Support — Parse Server has a thriving community of developers who are happy to help each other with reliable solutions. Even you can also visit its official forum to get answers to your queries.

Data Modeling — Parse Server supports most data types. But it does not support some relationship types, such as many-to-many relationships between two classes that belong to different containers.

Pricing

Parse is an entirely free platform. Yes, it does not cost anything.

Keep reading to discover more open source backend solutions.

3. Strapi.io

Strapi.io is an open-source backend development platform that improves the digital experience.

Yes, its goal is to make developers’ lives easier by providing a powerful and flexible API-based platform. Hereof, it confers outstanding solutions for eCommerce, static sites, mobile applications and editorial sites.

Developers of any skill level can use Strapi because it has many features, such as authentication management and authorization rules, CSRF protection, and many more.

Features

Open-Source — Strapi is a free and open-source software. You can use it for any purpose without paying any fees under its community plan.

RESTful or GraphQL APIs — Strapi supports both RESTful and GraphQL APIs thanks to its flexible structure and powerful plugin system (i.e., GraphQL Playground).

Self-Hosted — Strapi doesn’t depend on third-party services nor requires you to pay for hosting or storage space. This makes it a great choice if you want to host your website!

Multi-Tenant — With Strapi, you can have multiple sites with separate data on a single instance. For example, you can create a website for your company and another for your clients with the same codebase!

Pricing

Free of Cost Community Plan — It has several valuable features, and you can create unlimited projects. 

The Bronze Plan Costs $9 per Month — This plan has all the components except the ability to scale your platform and add custom domains to your project.

The Silver Plan Costs $29 per Month — This plan has all the features, including scaling and adding custom domains to your project.

4. AWS Amplify

AWS Amplify is a fully-managed open-source BaaS Backend solution that can be used to build and deploy apps quickly.

It allows developers to focus on building the user experience rather than managing backend services such as authentication, data storage, and analytics.

AWS Amplify BaaS supports, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle databases. Also, it allows you to easily create and deploy applications that need data persistence without worrying about details of how it is implemented behind the scenes.

Features

Authentication — Authentication is a crucial part of the Amplify BaaS platform. It allows you to authenticate users using credentials, including email addresses, social network accounts, and passwords.

DataStore —This feature provides access to relational databases such as SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and others through Amplify’s ORM layer. You can use this layer to interact with your data in the same way you would with SQLite or MySQL directly.

Extensibility — Amplify BaaS is designed to be extensible through interfaces that allow developers to scale up resources.

Storage — Storage provides access to local file storage so that you don’t have to rely on network connections when working with large files or streaming data like video files in real-time over HTTP/2.

Pricing

The free tier of the service is limited to 5 GB storage and 1000 build minutes. Its Static Plan follows a pay-as-you-go policy where it costs $0.01 per build minute. Under its hosting section, it charges $0.023 per GB of storage.

5. Kuzzle

Kuzzle BaaS is another fully centralized, secure and scalable platform for building backends. It enables developers to build applications in minutes by providing all the backend services they need.

Hereof, Kuzzle BaaS provides a set of tools that allow developers to create and manage their web applications quickly and efficiently. The major business sectors that utilize Kuzzle are construction, logistics and smart city.

Features

Database — Kuzzle provides a hassle-free database interface that lets you create and manage your cloud database on the fly.

Realtime Query Subscription — This BaaS provider offers real-time updates of data values using the Pub/Sub model.

Search Engine — Search engines are one of the essential features of any modern application. Kuzzle BaaS offers a full-fledged search engine with fast results, which is always available even when users are offline.

Security Layer — Kuzzle is a highly secure cloud platform that uses encryption and authentication to safeguard your data.

Pricing

Kuzzle provides its customers with the option of using its services for free. However, Kuzzle charges commence from 500€ / month when it comes to technical assistance.

6. Supabase

Supabase is an open-source BaaS platform. It provides an infrastructure to store, query, and process data. This Firebase alternative is considered ideal for developers who want to build their application stack and integrate it with other systems.

Features

Database — Supabase uses a highly scalable and multi-tenant architecture that allows you to add more databases with just a button click.

High Availability — Supabase automatically detects and recovers any hardware failure without losing data or time. It also supports both synchronous and asynchronous replication to ensure zero data loss.

Self-Service Portal — Its self-service portal enables users to create their database instances with complete configuration. It also allows them to create new users and assign them different roles within the system based on their permissions.

Security & Auditing Tools — Supabase provides an audit trail for all user actions within the system and role-based security for each user. Moreover, it also includes group security to control data.

Pricing

As long as you have 2 active projects or fewer in the free version, your monthly bill will be $0.

The Pro Version allows an unlimited number of projects, and your monthly bill will start at $25 per project.

7. Appwrite

Appwrite is a cloud-based open-source BaaS provider for web, mobile, and flutter developers that assist enterprises with process automation and management. It is an open-source BPM that any size firm may utilize.

You can use the Appwrite permissions architecture to grant read or write access to each collection or document in your project for a particular user, team, user role, or even public access.

Features

Database — The database is one of the essential features of Appwrite. It works on the principles of distributed architecture and provides high availability, scalability, and performance. You can use it as a document, graph, or key-value store.

Storage — Appwrite provides storage solutions for those who want to create an app without worrying about hosting and managing the server. With Appwrite, you can store all your documents in the cloud so that they are available anytime and anywhere you need them.

Functions — Appwrite has many functions that allow you to build modern applications efficiently. It includes basic functionality such as authentication, storage, databases, and data services.

GEO Localization — It provides geo location features that allow you to use geo coordinates to locate devices on the map and display them on its screen through Google Maps or Open Street Map (OSM).

Console — The Appwrite console permits you to manage all aspects of your app from one place. You can deploy new versions of your application code, manage users’ accounts, view reports, configure push notifications, monitor traffic generated by your application etc.

8. Hoodie

The Hoodie is an open-source JavaScript framework that provides rich features to create web applications, including authentication, data management, and routing.

It is modular and extensible, so you can use only the needed parts. Moreover, this open-source BaaS provider allows you to create an app in just a few minutes.

Features

Offline First — The Hoodie is built with offline first in mind, allowing users to access their data even when offline.

Easy Routing with Iron Router — Hoodie uses an iron router for routing needs, a standard router used by Meteor projects today.

Offline Database Support through PouchDB — PouchDB is used as the database layer of Hoodie because it supports offline data storage and syncing with your server once online again. This makes it easy to develop applications that work offline first without having to worry about re-syncing your data every time you go online again.

9. Usergrid

Usergrid is a Backend as a Service open-source platform that makes it easy to build, deploy and manage mobile and web applications. It includes user management, pushes notification, in-app purchases, analytics, etc.

In addition to its BaaS functionality, Usergrid provides open-source SDKs for iOS, Android, HTML5/JS, Node.js, Ruby, and Java for developers to integrate their apps with other systems or build custom solutions on top of the platform.

Features

Reliability and Scalability — The platform scales to support millions of users with minimal performance degradation and downtime. The architecture is designed for high availability and redundancy, with no single point of failure.

Security — The platform has been built with security in mind from the ground up. In this regard, it uses industry best practices such as SSL/TLS encryption for all communications between your application and Usergrid’s servers and an audited codebase that includes regular external audits by security experts.

Data Sync & Persistence — It supports real-time CRUD data sync between client and server, allowing your application to stay up-to-date, offline or in flight mode. Usergrid also supports offline access so your users can view their data even when they don’t have connectivity.

Authentication and Authorization — Usergrid supports authentication via social login, email address, and password. The first step is to enable authentication in your usergrid.config.js file.

Java-Based — It has a powerful Java API that you can use to build your applications. The API is very flexible and allows you to define your data structure, which you can use as a database schema. It also has a robust API for querying and manipulating the data.

10. Deployd

Deployd is another reliable Backend as a Service (BaaS) solution that allows developers to focus on their business logic and not worry about how to scale or manage the underlying infrastructure.

Deployd simplifies the creation of an API through its use of convention over configuration. You don’t have to specify how your data should be stored or organized, but let Deployd handle it automatically. Furthermore, it also makes it easy to add new endpoints because they can be added anywhere in your deployment.

Features

Real-time Metrics — Deployd comes with real-time metrics for every deployed function, allowing you to see how well your processes perform. It also provides insights into each function’s memory usage, CPU usage, and latency.

Easy Deployment — Deployd is built on Kubernetes and supports multiple cloud providers, including AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions.

Live Editing of Deployed Code — You don’t need to redeploy all your functions when making changes because Deployd allows you to edit live code in the browser. This makes it much easier to iterate on your code without worrying about breaking things while testing new features or refactoring existing ones.

Conclusion

This guide presents one of the top open-source BaaS providers with their essential functions and pricing structures. Hopefully, you will pick a suitable open source backend platform for your venture.

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