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Appium vs Google Firebase comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Appium
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (7th), Regression Testing Tools (6th)
Google Firebase
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

AS
Independent consultant, at OpenText
Efficient mobile testing with intuitive emulation capabilities and a user-friendly interface
Initial setup for Appium (especially for iOS) is not beginner-friendly.Consumes too much of your host machine's resources, potentially slowing down the machine.Appium Inspector often lacks deep insight or crashes with certain app builds. Improve test flakiness by intelligently selecting robust self-healing locators,simplified installers, better documentation, GUI-based config management,smart wait mechanisms and better failure logs.
SK
Chief Technical Advisor at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Leverage rapid prototype development for application building
The pricing structure needs improvement since it uses cloud billing. We do not know how the pricing is calculated as it is all on the cloud. The concept that the more you use, the more you have to pay could have been much better. They could have implemented credits based on usage so that users would be able to easily calculate the pricing and provide it to customers. I am the co-founder and CTO of the company called Aiwox (A I W O O X). We have numerous projects for mobile application development, and we have shifted from Google Firebase to Supabase because there is a fixed price for Supabase. Supabase is built on top of AWS, and it provides a very good pricing model. Some of the credits are free, and once you reach a certain limit, you know the charges. The second improvement area is related to SQL. They provide the real-time database, which is very good, and they have gradually started including PostgreSQL, which is a relational database, but it is not production-ready yet. I may be incorrect; perhaps they have released something new, but PostgreSQL database real-time database remains a challenge with Google Firebase.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What I like about Appium right now is that it's like Cypress in the sense that............. to test the components in the way I want them to be tested."
"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"I haven't explored other solutions in this particular area, but what I like best about Appium is the fact that it shares functions with Selenium. The extension of Selenium functions allows me to use all of the methods that exist in that domain, and it just makes it simpler for me. I've been using Selenium for some time as well, so using Appium just seems like a natural fit for me."
"The solution helps with test automation. We focus mostly on Java."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"The library is extensive so the driver interacts with most functions or actions on mobile devices."
"Appium's best feature is that it supports multiple frameworks."
"Appium provides a record-and-play option, and the commands are the same as those that Selenium uses. So a person who has some exposure to Selenium will be able to write a piece of code in Appium."
"The product’s most valuable features are integration and hosting."
"The solution is useful for managing users and user authentication."
"We're able to use the solution in several processes."
"Google Firebase is one I like a lot because it gives us a little bit more power and accessibility when it comes to publishing apps a lot quicker and for the needs that we have."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that its storage can be easily used in our mobile applications."
"The initial setup of Google Firebase is pretty straightforward."
"The Realtime Database feature is the most important for us since we are able to see changes in the database the moment they are happening."
"The scalability is good."
 

Cons

"We haven't been able to fully leverage Appium for multiple reasons. I think number one is just that the tests take a long time to run. We have had some issues around just the results themselves and how predictable they are, but those are not issues with Appium directly."
"It breaks down."
"The setup and installation were a problem for us at first."
"The installation part of Appium is somewhat clumsy, requiring numerous dependencies and configurations."
"Appium can improve when the case fails, there should be a feature where you can generate the report from Appium. Once you're on a test case, automatically the screenshot should be captured which would avoid manual intervention. These features would be beneficial to migrate to Appium."
"The tool needs to add a dependency manager."
"There is always a concern about the amount of code that is required to enhance the automation process. The idea of having less code or no code is what we would like to see in future updates."
"Configuring the project to be used in Appium is a little bit tedious."
"The only thing that I won't do on Firebase is the hosting side of things for a progressive web app because it feels like you actually still need to download the app first before you can actually get into the functionality of the app."
"The notifications must be made a little bit better."
"We use Firebase for media processing and we are growing more. As we grow, the pricing goes high and it's high compared to competitors. The solution is expensive."
"There needs to be an easy way to duplicate a database."
"The product's user interface for developers needs improvement."
"I would like to see faster data migration and some support for other languages in the next release."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Integrations and extensions offered by the product are quite limited presently."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"The solution is open-source."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"I'm unsure if there's any cost associated with Appium. I got the free package which includes the server GUI application and the inspector application, and it was free to download, and that's all I need to get my work done. I'm not aware of any additional costs associated with the tool."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The tool is affordable."
"My company makes very minimal payments toward the licensing costs of the solution."
"The moment you go into volumes, then you work on a pay-per-volume basis."
"The price is perfect and very clearly defined. The price during the trial setup is free and then you move to a paid service."
"The pricing component is a bit confusing when it comes to what exactly you'll pay for, but I wouldn't say it's expensive."
"Google Firebase’s pricing needs improvement."
"I rate Google Firebase a seven or eight out of ten for pricing."
"My company makes monthly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no additional costs apart from the licensing costs attached to the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
5%
University
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Do you recommend Appium?
I do recommend Appium. It is an open-source solution and completely free of charge. We use Appium and Appium Studio as our base for any type of mobile automation for testing. It has a great interfa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Appium?
My experience with Appium from a pricing perspective is favorable due to it being open source, making it a cost-effective option.
What needs improvement with Appium?
The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement. Additionally, the wait time functionality could be enhanced as I experienced failures with longer wait times.
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
What do you like most about Google Firebase?
Google Analytics for Firebase is the best feature of the solution.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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