LauchDarkly vs Firebase | Which is the best?

This article will explore the differences and similarities between LauchDarkly vs Firebase. It will cover the features and pricing of each platform.

Building an application requires a big investment in hardware and software. However, many businesses are not willing to put so much money upfront. For such companies’ cloud-based application development software offers an attractive solution. 

LaunchDarkly and Firebase have become very popular in recent years as they make the job of app developers easier and faster.

Are you confused about which one of these is best suited for your needs? Go through both of their features and prices to find which one offers you the best solution. 

LaunchDarkly Overview 

LaunchDarkly is a powerful feature management SaaS platform that allows developers to transport codes and flags faster.

It gives them total control over their codes and reduces any risks. LaunchDarkly offers separate code deployment and feature rollout functionalities, which have enabled app developers to test their code at the time of production.

Once they are satisfied with the robustness of their code, they can slowly release the features to users and manage flags in their entire life cycle.

LaunchDarkly Features 

LaunchDarkly offers numerous features that make it so useful for app developers. Some of its essential features include the following:

• Progressive Delivery 

Progressive delivery allows the owner to have complete control over the app. The owner decides when to introduce new features in the app.  

• Beta Testing and Feedback 

LaunchDarkly uses feature flags to test the features in a beta tester group. It also allows the developer to collect user input and check the performance of a feature before it is released in the market.

Progressive delivery provides qualitative feedback on the app feature’s usability, performance and functionality before it is ready for general rollout. It allows the developer to target individuals or specific groups and get their feedback. 

• Kill Switches  

In LaunchDarkly, if the developer gets a report of multiple bug reports in a feature, he/she can immediately use the kill switch to stop that one feature instead of a complete rollback that can affect other app features. 

• Release Progression 

The release progression feature of this platform allows the developer to deploy new features with the help of ring deployments, canary launches and percentage deployments. Such a customised incremental release strategy is less risky than the general release. 

• A/B Testing 

The app development team can use feature flags to conduct A/B testing and collect data to find out which feature of the app offers better performance. 

LaunchDarkly Pricing 

LaunchDarkly has three pricing plans – Starter, Pro, and Enterprise. 

1. Starter Plan: This is the basic plan of LaunchDarkly, in which you pay $ 8.33 per month. It is perfect for small teams and includes unlimited feature flags and environments. It also offers a feature flags dashboard, access to 25+ SDKs, and integration with Microsoft teams and Slack. 

2. Pro Plan: In this plan, you pay $ 16.67 per month, and it is best suited for large teams. This subscription package will have everything you get from the very first plan. Additionally, you will get access to API controls, unlimited projects, and reusable segments as well as access to most integrations and flag reviews by peers. 

3. Enterprise Plan: This plan is designed for global teams, and its subscription price is based on individual users and their requirements. In the enterprise plan, you will get everything that you get in the Pro plan and additionally, you will come across permissions and custom roles. Furthermore, you can access other features like bulk user targeting, SAML/SSO/SCIM, flag scheduling, and required approvals.

Firebase Overview 

Firebase platform, a Google product, allows developers to easily create and manage their apps. This BaaS platform offers and highly intuitive application development solution that allows developers to easily accelerate their app development process and scale it up without needing any physical infrastructure. 

Firebase Features 

Firebase provides numerous features to help app developer to create apps faster and with fewer problems. Some of the top features of Firebase include the following: 

• Firebase Offers Google Analytics 

You can use Google Analytics in Firebase to monitor the users’ journey and get real-time customised reporting of their experience.

As Firebase support multiple platforms, you can monitor your users’ experience across various devices. Firebase users can get unlimited reports of 500 separate events.  

• Real-time Access to Database  

Firebase offers a Real-time database to the app developers. The Realtime database is a NoSQL database based on the cloud. It stores data as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) in real-time.

The real-time database can also access the local cache on the device to work offline and store any changes made. Once the connectivity is restored, the data is synced. 

• Authentication 

The Firebase SDK comes with ready-to-use UI libraries and backend services. It allows the developer to create a comprehensive authentication process in a very short time.

Firebase will enable developers to introduce authentication in their app using email, phone numbers, and Google and Facebook accounts.  

• Crashlytics  

Firebase Crashlytics helps to find, arrange and fix any stability issues that affect app performance. This feature gives comprehensive alerts in real-time whenever a crash happens.

Firebase Pricing 

Firebase has two major pricing plans, Spark and Blaze. Additionally, there are few other pricing plans that you can customize to suit your requirements. To know more about these plans, please refer to the Firebase website.  

1. The Spark Plan (Free): In the free plan, you get 100 simultaneous connections, 10 GB of hosting storage, 360 MB /day of data transfer, 20 K writes/day, 50 K documents read every day, and 5GB of data storage in the cloud.   

2. The Blaze Plan (Pay as you go): it offers all the features of the Spark plan. Additionally, you get a 200 K/database connection; for every additional hosting storage above 10 GB, you have to pay $ 0.026/GB. After you have exhausted your 360 MB/day data transfer, you must pay $ 0.15/GB for any additional requirement. You also get to store 5 GB of cloud storage, and you have to pay $ 0.026/ GB for any additional need. To subscribe to this plan, you pay you to have to pay $ 0.01/phone verification. Once registered, you get all the features of the Spark plan, and for any additional need, you have to pay the price fixed by Google.

Firebase vs LauchDarkly Comparison

Conclusion 

These two cloud-based platforms offer outstanding services and have numerous features to make the app development process simpler and faster.

You can look through their features carefully to figure out which one of them offers you the best solution for your specific requirement.

Also, check their price package to figure out which one of you should choose that fits perfectly with your app development requirements. 

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