AWS Equivalent of Firebase

Amazon Web Services and Firebase are two leading cloud service providers. However, because of some discrepancies in Firebase, dev teams and businesses use its alternatives. Therefore, it will be a great idea to select AWS products. 

Indeed, Amazon Web Services is the top-ranked cloud platform, with 48% of the votes in a recent survey of Stack Overflow.

Conversely, Firebase secured the 5th position with 13.9% of the votes. Therefore, this guide will discuss the best AWS Equivalent of Firebase, its features, and pricing structure. 

Firebase Limitations 

Firebase is an avant-garde Backend as a Service (BaaS) platform endorsed by Google Cloud. It facilitates the dev community with a wide range of computing tools for crafting, deploying and running mobile and web applications.

This cloud platform promises the availability of real-time data through its NoSQL and SQL database support. Similarly, Firebase’s further features are authentication, push notifications, FCM, remote config, and cloud functions. 

Withall, Firebase also has some drawbacks that we are going to discuss below:

Not An Open-Source Platform

Google Firebase is not an open-source platform like AWS, so it gives limited control over backend infrastructure. In addition, editing the source code while using this platform is troublesome. 

This drawback restricts the programming community from making substantial contributions to Firebase. Also, the absence of self-hosting makes it an inflexible choice for users. 

Vendor Lock-In

Vendor lock-in is a crucial limitation of using Firebase. Indeed, it is hard to move your application from Firebase to another cloud platform. This uneasy transition confines you to stay with the same CSP without proper reasoning. 

Global Unavailability

Although Firebase is available in most regions, it is not available in countries where Google is banned. Yes, Firebase is a product of Google LLC and uses its subdomain, ‘firebase.google.com’. Therefore, Firebase services are blocked in countries like North Korea and China. 

What is the AWS Equivalent of Firebase?

AWS Amplify is the AWS equivalent of Firebase. It is a full-stack app development platform that combines backend and client-side dev tools essential for scaling, running, deploying, and building web and mobile applications. 

This platform lets you create native mobile, SSR, single-page, static, and cross-platform applications within hours.

Yes, it takes a few hours to convert your idea into an app. Then, its visual UI hoops up the app’s server-side functionalities.

Correspondingly, with fully managed CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure, Git-hosted code with zero configuration is deployed. This platform lets businesses expand bandwidth and resources with a few clicks. 

Amazon Music, Noom, Busby, Orangetheory Fitness, HyperTrack and Knowt are featured customers of AWS Amplify. 

Features of AWS Amplify

Let’s delve into the significant properties of AWS Amplify:

• Support for Frameworks – AWS Amplify supports a large number of mobile and web languages and frameworks. Swift, Vue, React, Flutter, Kotlin, JavaScript, Java, Angular, Jekyll and Gatsby are prominent names in this regard. 

• DataStore – This powerful machine-based storage engine offers offline and real-time support. Along with Amplify Studio, it permits data modeling tasks using a visual interface. This feature also makes it seamless to manage content, illustrate data relations, and set authorization principles. 

• Authentication – Endorsed by Amazon Cognito, authentication is another appealing feature of this Firebase alternative. AWS Amplify has a robust and managed user authentication system. Its core highlights include ready-to-use UI components, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and compatibility with frontend libraries.

• Storage – This AWS equivalent of Firebase seamlessly maintains and stores various kinds of user-generated content. It lets you backlog different data types using private, secure, and public storage buckets. With the robust backing of cloud object storage of Amazon S3, you can also quickly extend the storage space.

• API – Supported by Amazon API Gateway and AWS App Sync, AWS Amplify authorizes developers to use REST and GraphQL APIs. These APIs are highly beneficial for hooking up data and governing databases. Similarly, these APIs let you tailor data instances through AWS Lambda. 

• Analytics – If you are impressed by Firebase’s Google Analytics feature, then you also don’t have to worry about AWS Amplify. Like Firebase, this cloud platform has appealing analytics functionality. Indeed, it is simple to track user activity and approach all insights with the assistance of Amazon Kinesis and Amazon Pinpoint.

• Push Notifications – This CSP sends mobile and web push notifications to improve customer retention and engagement. In this regard, AWS Amplify utilizes distinct ways of interaction, such as emails, popup messages, text messages, and more. 

• Predictions – Businesses prefer using artificial intelligence and machine learning competencies to improve the overall performance of applications. Fortunately, this CSP employs products like Amazon Sagemaker to deploy ML-trained models for applications. This feature could be beneficial for building speech recognition and translation apps.

• Amplify Hosting – It is also straightforward to deploy Git-hosted codes without any configuration on AWS Amplify. Hereof, you just have to hook up your AWS account with any Git platform. Then, deploy and push the repository. You can also use the AWS CLI and Console to conduct changes in code and get help for app hosting.

Pricing of AWS Amplify

AWS Amplify has two pricing models: ‘AWS Free-tier’ and ‘Pay-as-you-go’. First, if we discuss its free-tier offerings, you don’t have to pay for deploying an application for the initial 12 months.

During this period, you can consume 1,000 build minutes, 5GB CDN storage, 100GB-hours SSR request time, and 15GB data transfer for nothing monthly.

On the other hand, its paid plan only costs you for used instances. Likewise, AWS Amplify bills you $0.01 for a single build minute and $0.023/GB for monthly data storage.

In addition, this platform asks for $0.30/million SSR requests and $0.15/GB for data transfer. 

However, SSL certificates are free with premium plans. 

Is there another Firebase Alternative using AWS Infrastructure?

Back4app is another leading Firebase alternative that uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) as fundamental infrastructure. 

Overview of Back4app

Back4app is a fully managed cloud platform famous for its Backend as a Service (BaaS) and Container as a Service (CaaS) offerings. With a community of 300,000 developers, this CSP has shipped 400,000+ applications worldwide. 

Indeed, Back4app is a reliable platform for deploying, developing, and running advanced mobile and web applications.

It takes care of server-side functionalities, allowing developers to focus on core business and front-end activities.

By the same token, its user-friendly dashboard simplifies development tasks for both novice and experienced coders.

PayPal, VantageBP, Adobe, Accenture and Rappi are satisfied customers of Back4app. 

Features of Back4app

Let’s explore the critical properties of Back4app:

• Real-time Database – It is simple to query and gather relational data in the meantime using Back4app. You can easily manage and define the data objects through the SDKs, GraphQL, and REST APIs provided on this platform.

• Authentication – Another advantage of Back4app is a pre-built authentication system. With this feature, it is effortless for dev teams to authenticate and supervise app users.

• File Storage – Back4app enables businesses and dev teams to use economical file storage. This completely interspersed DB storage option allows you to backlog data on the cloud easily.

• Cloud Functions – Like Firebase and AWS Amplify, Back4app also has cloud functions property. It quickly adds business logic to applications and executes the source code without administering the servers. 

• Notifications – Improved user engagement is another critical goal of this CSP. Therefore, it confers notification features to attain and retain potential users. In this regard, it also divides the app users on a regional basis and sends them customized messages. 

Pricing

Back4app offers free-tier plans for its BaaS and CaaS products. Likewise, students and prototypes can approach 25,000 monthly requests, 1GB storage, 1GB data transfer and a single app subscription under its free BaaS program. 

Correspondingly, Back4app Containers bills you nothing for 100GB data transfer, 256MB RAM, custom Docker containers, and 0.25 shared CPU. However, the monthly price of Back4app BaaS and Containers begins at $15 and $5/container. 

Comparison Between Firebase and AWS Amplify

Conclusion

AWS Amplify is Google Firebase’s primary counterpart. So, if you are considering an AWS alternative for Firebase, you must consider this full-stack cloud platform.

This guide discusses all critical aspects of AWS Amplify and its pricing structure in detail. 

In addition, we shared another platform, Back4app, which relies on AWS infrastructure and works as an equivalent of Firebase. Hopefully, you will make a better decision and pick a solution that best suits you.