Comparing Google App Engine, Parse, Firebase & AWS for Mobile App Back-end Services

Also known as App Engine or GAE (in a short form), Google App Engine is one of the most popular cloud computing platforms. It’s also referred to as an important service to create and host apps on Google’s infrastructure. The USP of GAE is that it automatically allocates additional resources to the server to handle the increased load in a better way.

Advantages

• The major benefits can be described as GAE doesn’t scale. Even if empowering billing, the whole augmented system can support 500 requests/second only. In the case of increasing the threshold, you can reach Google’s disposal that eliminates those caps and makes it higher.
• GAE includes free use of quota and provides full scalability. And it doesn’t need any server administration.
• Deploying and re-deploying is quite easier and quick with GAE.
• Google is blessed with the largest number of servers globally. It has top-class privacy policies, which gets applied to every app that uses Google infrastructure.
• Google products are known for offering reliability and quality performance – GAE is not an exception.
• It doesn’t require any engineers of a technical person to manage servers.
• It enables you to easily move your data to another environment without any hustle.

Disadvantages

• It’s certainly tough to process data transformation with those of existing libraries. Besides, it also doesn’t support any native file system base library.
• It fails to provide any kind of complete text search API.
• It’s not easier to process unit tests. The other limitation of GAE is that it’s not capable of easily resolving the root cause issues, and also doesn’t support adding SSL to the site.
• GAE is also not capable of tweaking server software.

Parse

Developed by Parse Inc. itself, Parse is another popular back-end server. Parse Inc. shut down in 2017 but was later acquired by Facebook. Since then Parse has been an open-source back-end platform.

Advantages

• Parse is extremely simple to use and has great market demand.
• Parse automates image cache performance. It also includes automatic email verification and password resets.
• It makes development quick; thanks to Parse class that displays data in tables. On the other hand, TableViewController or PFQuery is fast.
• Parse free tier lets you do many important things. One can avail features like push notification to approximately 1 million devices monthly at no cost.
• Parse includes SDKs for every platform and can easily handle desktop apps, mobile apps, etc.

Disadvantages

• When it comes to relationship tables or classes, it often becomes highly complicated with Parse.
• Parse also includes certain kinds of service limitations. It is unable to support streaming.

Firebase

Firebase is another popular option for Android app backend. It makes your app super fast, even without the requirement of managing infrastructure. It is a well-managed platform that offers features such as authentication services, data synchronization, file storage, messaging, and a lot more. Firebase lets a mobile app development company create or prototype mobile backend services, with quite an efficiency.

Advantages

• Firebase is a highly advanced and powerful hosted back-end service.
• It includes JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), which indicates that there’s no barrier existing with objects and data.
• Angular fire makes it possible for 3-way data binding.
• It doesn’t require any server infrastructure to power up the application with data.
• It includes a massive size potential.
• It’s highly secure and serverless and requires minimal setup.

Disadvantages

• It comes with query and indexing limitations.
• It’s not widely tested or used for Enterprises.
• It doesn’t include aggregation.
• Firebase doesn’t include any high-standard reporting tools.

Also read: Comparing Node.js vs Golang for App Back-end Development

AWS

AWS Amplify helps you in building a highly agile, secure, and scalable back-end for applications. It removes the necessity for developers to develop and manage back-end resources for every important mobile application feature. Thus, it reduces costs and boosts productivity.

Advantages

• AWS Amplify is expressed in a manner that even a person who is new to mobile apps can use it hassle-free. Thanks to the AWS Management Console, which makes it possible to use for both new as well as existing users.
• The major benefits of using AWS is that it doesn’t include any capacity limitation. It provides capacity at a highly reduced cost and thus helps organizations launching projects cost-effectively.
• AWS caters to organizations by letting them hire a server. One can make a selection of their requirements and then can proceed, even without consulting anyone.
• AWS is committed to providing a secure environment. It lets you pay only for the services that you use. Its end-to-end approach plays a crucial role in securing and hardening the infrastructure.

Disadvantages

• AWS Amplify includes a default set of limitations on certain resources consisted of volumes, images, and snapshots. It offers limited details for resources, which are managed completely by Amazon VPC Console and Amazon EC2.
• Security is something that matters a lot for the app back-end. However, AWS limits certain features that are not meant to be changed at all.
• Another drawback with AWS is that it charges for immediate support and then, you can easily make a selection for any package among business, developer, and enterprise.
• AWS also comes with general cloud computing issues, especially when moving to cloud-like limited control, downtime, and backup protection.

Conclusion:

Be it GAE, Parse, AWS Amplify, or Firebase, all of these technologies have equally demanded mobile app back-end services despite having advantages and disadvantages. You can always opt for custom back-end development services from a reputed mobile agency to build your app back-end as per your specific business needs. So, choose the right option matching your project requirements.

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