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Google Firebase vs IBM MobileFirst 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

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)
IBM MobileFirst
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Mobile App Platforms (6th), Mobile Development Platforms (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
MT
Senior Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Streamlines development of hybrid applications, and has ability to integrate device-native code
It was a cakewalk for us to develop mobile apps for three different platforms using IBM MobileFirst. Since it was a consumer application built for large-scale events, it was very crucial for us to manage application compatibility with all sort of devices. With MobielFirst, we could actually achieve this with very little trouble. With help of this product, we have been able to develop mobile applications without having complete knowledge of each mobile OS's native programming. App development, delivery, and code management have been very efficient using this product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that its storage can be easily used in our mobile applications."
"It has security rules to control database read/write operations in real-time."
"The solution is stable."
"What I like most about Google Firebase is that it's one of the easier options to host a website or app quickly."
"The authentication features have made things a lot easier for our organization. About five years ago, developers had to create authentication systems from scratch. Now, services like Google Firebase provide secure and accurate authentication solutions. We can implement authentication quickly by following their documentation."
"This solution supports our real time database. We also use it for AB testing and for its Google Cloud functions. We make use of Crashlytics and reporting on details."
"Allows us to create functions without any infrastructure apart from the Google App Engine."
"Google Firebase has a lot of services like storage, Firestore, and push notifications."
"I like Its capability for developing hybrid applications, with an ability to integrate device-native code as well"
"With help of this product, we have been able to develop mobile applications without having complete knowledge of each mobile OS's native programming technology. App development, delivery, and code management have been very efficient using this product."
"IBM MobileFirst has one of the most feature-rich admin panels."
 

Cons

"In terms of DevOps, such as CI/CD deployments and integrating webhooks with GitHub, GitLab, or other platforms, Firebase does not offer those capabilities at that level."
"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."
"Firebase's real-time information isn't technically real-time. It takes a while to upload user activity into the app. It's not as fast as Datadog, the other solution we use."
"The customization options for password resetting are limited. The process requires additional steps and coding to make it user-friendly. While Google Firebase works well for the login page, password resetting and user verification redirect users to a separate interface, which is not very user-friendly."
"We had some compatibility issues with Elixir."
"The UI for the realtime database could be simplified."
"The notifications must be made a little bit better."
"There was no way of knowing how the rise in traffic would impact the price."
"I would like to see improved support for native device functions."
"There are issues with push notifications, especially for Windows mobile apps. JSONStore also crashes abruptly at times."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Google Firebase is not so expensive, and if you're a start-up with a small amount of data, it will be quite cheap, and there's even a free tier that you can use. If you're doing a pilot with a reasonable amount of data, for example, just a few gigabytes, it's still on the free tier. If you increase the amount of data, Google Firebase pricing is still reasonable."
"The monthly cost is based on writing data and queries to the database."
"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."
"The tool is affordable."
"The more the number of reads and writes, the more one gets charged."
"I rate Google Firebase a seven or eight out of ten for pricing."
"It is not easy to calculate the cost per copy, use or if the load rose dramatically we did not know how that would impact the final price."
"The pricing plans indicate it can get very expensive."
"Cost depends upon various factors. Size of the overall application and product usage matter a lot. For an enterprise-grade application, this certainly comes out as an economical solution. However, for small-scale applications, it can turn out to be on the higher side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise8
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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Also Known As

No data available
MobileFirst, Worklight
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fabulous, Pic Collage, Shazam, SkyScanner
UniCredit Business Integrated Solutions, Gruppo Unipol, Raymond James Financial, Toshiba GCS, CST, ABK-Systeme GmbH, BNP Paribas
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