Firebase Alternative Azure

This article will explore the best Firebase alternatives to run using underlying Azure infrastructure.

Cloud computing platforms are gaining in popularity as they provide scalable, cost-effective and highly flexible services. As per a recent report, the overall size of the cloud computing market in the US alone will surpass $947 billion by 2026 (source: Market and Market).

This is a big jump from 2021 when the market size was only $445.3 billion. The increasing popularity of cloud-based computing services points out that more and more businesses and developers are using PaaS, BaaS and IaaS modules instead of relying on the traditional app development model. 

When we talk about cloud computing vendors, two dominant names come to the fore-Firebase and Azure. However, many businesses and developers are also a bit confused between these two.

This article will help you to understand these two platforms better by sharing with you all the necessary details about Azure and Firebase. This will help you to figure out whether Firebase is a true alternative to Azure.

Firebase Overview 

The Google Firebase is a cloud-based application development platform offered by Google. This robust platform allows the developers to create highly functional Android, iOS and web apps. It also provides numerous services which include the following: 

• Analytics: You can access Google Analytics for firebase to get free and unlimited reporting on 500 distinct events. The analytics also helps you to understand the user behaviour so that you can make improvements in your app performance and its marketing.

• Authentication: The inbuilt firebase authentication helps the developer to create secure authentication systems. This makes the onboarding and signing experience of the users smoother. 

• Cloud messaging: Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) allows businesses to securely receive and deliver messages on various platforms like Android, iOS and web apps for free. 

• Real-time database: Firebase Real-time Database is a highly secure cloud-based NoSQL database. You can easily store the app data here and can easily sync the data between multiple users in real-time. 

• Crashlytics: Crashlytics service offered by Firebase provides you with real-time crash reports. This report can help the developer to find and solve stability issues and improve the user experience of the app. 

• Performance: Highly sophisticated Firebase Performance Monitoring service allows developers to gain an insight into various performance characteristics of their apps (Android, iOS or web apps). It helps them to find out how to improve the performance of their app.

• Test Lab: It is a cloud-based infrastructure that helps the developers to test their apps. The developers can intensively test their apps on various device configurations. 

• Other features: Machine learning, notifications, hosting, A/B testing, etc.

Azure Overview 

Azure is a highly popular cloud computing infrastructure, which is developed by Microsoft. This platform allows the developers to easily create, deploy and manage their applications and services with the help of a chain of data centres that are managed by Microsoft.

This cloud computing infrastructure offers numerous services that include IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. It also supports multiple frameworks, programming languages and tools. Microsoft Azure offers 600 + services. Some of the important services that are offered by Microsoft Azure include the following: 

• Computational services: Azure allows the developers to deploy general-purpose virtual machines in the Linux and Microsoft platforms. This helps the developers to manage their websites and apps easily. 

• Storage services: The File service provided by Azure can let you access their data storage on the cloud by using the SMB protocols and REST APIs.

• Mobile services: The powerful HockeyApp is created for mobile app development distribution and their comprehensive beta testing. Additionally, their Mobile engagement service allows the app developers to access real-time analytics. These analytics shows the user behaviour and allows the app developer to send push notification to the mobile phones. 

• Data management: Azure allows the developers to handle data-intensive queries on their data sets, which exceed 1 TB. They can do this through the data warehousing service of Azure, which is known as, SQL Data Warehouse.

• Developer service: The CDN Azureprovides the developer with a powerful content delivery network for audio, images, video and applications. This allows the static assets of those websites which are closer to the user, geographically to be cached to improve their performance.

Firebase Alternatives in Azure 

Azure App Service

Azure App Service is a popular managed platform. It allows you to manage your application and its data. All other supporting services and features are managed by Azure.

Managing the network or the backend infrastructure, updating the operating system, middleware our runtime components are automatically handled by Azure. Some important benefits of Azure App Service include: 

• A fully managed environment.
• Multiple programming languages and framework support.
• Scalability.
• Compliance.
• Security.
• Support for docker and containerisation.
• DevOps optimisation.
• Access to on-premises data.

Back4App 

Back4App is a robust and highly functional open-source Backend as a service provider (BaaS). It provides the developers with numerous tools to build highly functional and scalable mobile and web apps quickly.

It is a fully managed BaaS service solution and has automatic provisioning and scaling of cloud-based applications.

One unique feature of this platform is its ability to allows the developer to customise and optimise each of their applications differently. Some important features of this platform include the following: 

• Works seamlessly with open-source technology.
• GraphQL APIs.
• GDPR requirements.
• Shared and dedicated hosting.
• Spreadsheet-like database.
• Live queries.
• Scalable hosting.
• Push and email notifications. 
• Easy data migration

All these features have made Back4Apps extremely popular amongst app developers to build new apps.

Below a table comparing the platforms.

Conclusion 

This article provided an overview of Firebase and Azure according to their features. It also presented two of the best alternatives to Firebase that offer deployment using Azure as the underlying infrastructure.

The first alternative is Azure App Services, a fully managed service to build mobile and web applications. The second alternative is Back4App, an open-source backend service accelerating mobile and web apps.

FAQ