Airship vs. Firebase

Airship is grouped under ‘Mobile Push Messaging’ while Firebase is classified as a tool in the category ‘Realtime Backend/API.’

To grow beyond simple integrations and to craft complex workflows, brands have been integrating Firebase and Airship with apps on the web.

Read along to know the difference between the two to help in your decision-making process. 

Key Takeaways

• Airship is a mobile engagement platform

• Firebase is the app development platform from Google

• Airship provides professional services and has enterprise plans

• Firebase does not have enterprise plans or professional services

• Airship and Firebase are free to start

What is Airship?

Incepted in 2009, Airship (formerly Urban Airship) was a pioneer in push notifications. It is an American company that offers branding and marketing services to enterprises.

Airship helps brands create orchestrated, brilliant experiences by boosting engagement and building trust. It allows organizations to generate personalized messages to customers via SMS messaging, push notifications, and customer analytics services. 

Airship Core Features

• Myriad channels

Airship allows brands to connect with customers on mobile and beyond. Airship lets companies connect with their customers based on their preferences and behaviors, from mobile channels, such as SMS, applications, and mobile wallet to email and notifications. Their open architecture makes it easy to boost customer engagement across platforms. 

• Orchestrated messaging

Outstanding customer experiences is possible with Airship as it allows you to send automated, coordinated messages and interactions on mobile and other channels. 

• Analytics and data

Businesses’ outcomes and apps can be optimized by leveraging data. Airship allows brands to create better experiences through the use of advanced reporting and analytics designed by experienced data scientists. 

Advantages of Airship

• Ease of acquiring new customers

Airship enables businesses to show customers how important and valuable they are with the help of hyper-relevant messages. Also, enterprises can create more opportunities to help customers connect with the brand more deeply and across channels and platforms. 

• Helps in retaining existing customers

Sending messages that precisely deliver what your consumers want or need in the exact moment of their need is made possible with Airship. This is the key to building long-lasting relationships with customers and retain them. 

• Boosts business growth

By offering real-time data, Airship enables businesses to understand customer behavior accurately. The data can also be leveraged to improve campaign performance and uncover new opportunities for growth. 

What is Firebase?

Developed by Google, Firebase is a platform for creating web and mobile applications. Originally, it was an independent company in 2011, but Google acquired it in 2014. Today, it is their flagship offering for application development. 

It is a BaaS (Backend-as-a-Service) platform and offers developers all the services and tools they need to develop high-quality apps, earn profit and grow their user base.

It is categorized as a NoSQL database program, and it stores data in JSON-like documents. Furthermore, it allows developers to boost user engagement with the help of rich analytics, messaging campaigns, and A/B testing. 

Firebase Core Features

• The Realtime Database

Realtime Database helps developers create dynamic applications faster, and every data can be synchronized with every user in real-time. The concurrent connections have been increased, and it currently stands at 100,000 connections at once.

As Firebase has two NoSQL databases, it has proven to be much more effective than relational databases for mobile app-based workloads. It enables easy storage of user-generated content, and cloud storage empowers scalability. 

• Firebase Analytics

The success and future strategy of any app depend on the app’s analytics. Firebase Analytics offers unlimited and free access to analytics, including the app’s behavioral analytics, push notification and attribution analytics, and crash reporting.

Developers are even provided with app-specified personalized analytics that are based on the users. For more specific results and assessment of data, developers can import the data to Google’s BigQuery and look for it in their own way. 

• Cloud Messaging

FCM or Firebase Cloud Messaging is a cross-platform messaging solution that allows users to send messaged reliably and at no cost. By making use of FCM, you can send notifications to a client application that a new email or other such data is ready to be synced.

Also, notifications can be sent to drive retention and user re-engagement. If you’re using FCM for instant messaging, a message is capable of transferring a payload of up to 4,000 bytes to a client application. 

Advantages of Firebase

• All in one platform

Firebase provides developers a broad list of products to help them in the app development process. It has two database options, namely, Realtime Database and Firestore.

Also, Firebase allows users to perform effortless cloud media storage, and serverless app development is enabled via integrated Cloud Functions. Firebase covers the entire app development cycle, and the platforms have features not just to build but to release and monitor apps.

Furthermore, Firebase offers tools to boost user engagement and encourage them to keep using it. 

• Scalable hosting

Firebase uses a user-friendly hosting service for static files, and it serves them from a global CDN with HTTP/2. It also utilizes Superstatic to make the app development process painless.

Your apps can be deployed straight to Firebase for production use, and you can scale easily. SSL protection is also provided for free. 

• Managed service

Firebase managed services allow developers to outsource the responsibility of maintaining and anticipating the need for a wide range of processes and functions to enhance operations and cut down on expenses.

So, developers can free themselves from the headache of crafting excellent user experiences and focus, and they also don’t need to manage servers or write APIs. 

Airship vs Firebase Comparison

Conclusion

In summation, both Firebase and Airship are powerful platforms developers can use in their app development process.

Airship is a mobile engagement platform. The company is privately held, focuses on enterprise contracts, and offers professional services. The client list includes Alaska Airlines, Vodafone, and Home Depot.

Firebase is the all-in-one app development platform from Google. The company offers a broad range of features, messaging is free to use, and other features work under a pay-as-you-go model. The client list includes The Economist, New York Times, and Alibaba.

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