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Google Firebase vs IBM SoftLayer 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
47
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (5th)
IBM SoftLayer
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Public Cloud Storage Services (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Google Firebase is designed for Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) and holds a mindshare of 4.9%, down 6.9% compared to last year.
IBM SoftLayer, on the other hand, focuses on Public Cloud Storage Services, holds 0.4% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

Shravan Revanna - PeerSpot reviewer
Simple to get started with and offers integration features in multiple programming languages
The product provides integration features in multiple languages, such as Python, JavaScript, Golang, and all other languages. Google Firebase has documentation, which might seem a bit confusing, but one with decent knowledge can easily explore and get started with Firebase quickly. Before jumping into any cloud infrastructure, the tool should analyze how much it would cost to run the database. Google Firebase provides a certain number of reads and writes per day, which is approximately 40,000 reads and writes. If there are more than 200 to 300 active users per day, there will be plenty of reads and writes to the database. In such a case, one can't use Google Firebase and has to upgrade to Spark, which is where it is based on usage. The tool is fairly simple to get started with. Utilize all the features can get very complicated. One must be a pretty good developer who has a lot of experience to be able to utilize the best features. It gets really complicated over time. The basic functionality and basic usage are easy to use and easy to get started. There are plenty of deprecated versions, and frequently upgrading them causes inconvenience. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.
reviewer1032702 - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable with excellent speed and agility
The most valuable aspect of the solution is simply to have the ability to host in a cloud form and out of the data center - the IBM big iron solution. It's the speed and the agility that really sell SoftLayer. The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer. The ability to extract act from your current location, load into your future location, with limited change, and then be able to take the transfer actions slowly and methodically after you're in your new location is the part that really makes this awesome. The stability and scalability are quite good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its simplicity makes it quite handy for my needs in app development."
"The initial setup of Google Firebase is pretty straightforward."
"It has security rules to control database read/write operations in real-time."
"We used it to create credentials for DART for our Android and Flutter applications."
"The most beautiful feature of Google Firebase is that it gives you a lot of functionalities out of the box, without you having to develop or having to complete a solution. For example, identity management is integrated, and security is out of the box, particularly security for the user and the ability of each user to see his data. I also like that Google Firebase has a really good performance and is comparable to MongoDB. It's on the same level, and sometimes, it's on an even higher level than MongoDB. Other functions that Google Firebase has that I find valuable include information dissemination, mail automation, and SMS, available out of the box. Another valuable feature of the solution is that it allows you to develop some functionalities on the server side, so you can write JavaScript functions on the server side and use those functions quite easily. Google Firebase gives you almost a full backend environment out of the box without you having to do any deployments or a lot of administration because all administration is given out of the box."
"If there's data added to the solution, there's a good record of it so it's easy to track everything."
"The most valuable features of Google Firebase have been Analytics, Remote Config, and Crashlytics. Additionally, a lot of companies have used push notifications which is important. There is little maintenance required."
"It is a completely reliable product."
"The stability is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization."
"The ELT versus ETL extract, transform and load versus extract, load, and then transform, the ELT method is what really sells SoftLayer."
 

Cons

"The product is not that cheap."
"Since Google Firebase is a NoSQL platform, areas for improvement include enhancing query functionalities to be more equivalent to SQL, like MS SQL."
"Google Firebase's app testing feature for Android, where you can upload your APK, needs improvement because it's not working very well."
"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."
"Google Cloud Functions (which is still a BETA version) needs to have more control over the uploaded functions. That is, it needs more options for controlling the functions itself."
"We had some compatibility issues with Elixir."
"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."
"The cold start-up of the cloud function needs to speed up. For me personally, I'm not experienced in anything there, however, I've just read online it's a problem."
"For us, the versioning was an issue."
"The interface is hard to use for us. It should be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is free."
"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 plans indicate it can get very expensive."
"They have a free tier that will cover most projects. For more intensive use, you pay as you use it, but the price is very cheap."
"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."
"We are using the free version of Google Firebase."
"My company makes very minimal payments toward the licensing costs of the solution."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Educational Organization
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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
CloudLayer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fabulous, Pic Collage, Shazam, SkyScanner
Whogohost Ltd., Skypicker, Infinity Computers and Communications Company, Grace Co. Ltd., Keyword, Uvionics Tech, Tennis Australia, immixGroup, Salesbox, Cxense ASA, Avnet Inc., Komsomolskaya Pravda, Seekr
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Akamai and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.