As you start planing to develop your Mobile app, One of the question that arises in many peoples mind is that what to use for backend of App? or What to use to store the data of App like users data or any other type of data that app needs to function.
You can choose Firebase for all these needs. Firebase is a service which is provided by Google. You can simply use Firestore database which is a Google Cloud database. And for backend functions as well you can use Firebase.
There are number of benefits of using Firebase :
1] Better database : The Firestore database is a NoSQL database, which is better then relational database (for example MySql) which you may use if you choose other backend server to store your database but with Firebase, you will use Firestore.
NoSQL is better to store large amount of data. NoSQL database provides better performance and are easy to scale. In Firestore, all data is stored in collections and documents.
2] Faster App : When you use Firebase for your App, it works Faster. Reason is Firebase is basically a cloud service provided by Google so it works better then other servers and backend service providers. When user opens any screen in your app and you are fetching and displaying some data from Firebase it will display faster, but in other servers it may take more time.
3] Free to start (within limits) : As it is provided by Google you can use your google account to login on Firebase, and in pricing plans you will see that the Spark plan is free, and if our project grows we can buy Flame or Blaze Plan. So it is absolutely free to start and we can use Spark plan initially with zero cost, but there are limits to number of reads and writes in database and limits other services also.
4] Saves a lot of time : As you may know that in order to develop any app, you may need server and hosting, to create and maintain your database and backend service. So it required at least one backend developer in your developers team and front end developer to work on Android code. Even if you have comparatively small app, having different types of developers, and they depend on each others work. For example, frontend developer may need some type of data from backend database, and will need a backend service to develop some particular function, which may need a lot of communication between both developers. And the process may create some bugs or errors also. But if we use Firebase and its Firestore database, only the frontend developer (Android developer) can manage all this work, so it saves a lot of time.
5] Better Backend functions :
In application if we need to perform some functions in backend means on cloud then we can use cloud/Firebase functions. So these backend functions are also faster and better in Firebase if we compare it to other servers.
Firebase provides many services and tools, which are perfect to develop and run mobile apps.
To develop app firebase provides, Authentication, Database, Functions, ML Kit etc.
To develop best quality apps, firebase provides Crashlytics to get notified about all the crashes of app so the developers can solve that easily. And Test Lab to test app in different type of devices.
For Analytics as well they provide various tools.
And to Grow app they provide tools like A/B Testing, Cloud Messaging and AdMob etc.
For any app owner it is really good to have all these tools, analytics, database, backend code etc. at one place. And Firebase does this perfectly.
You will not have to worry about scaling your resources while number of users of your app are increasing at higher pace. Because you can simply upgrade to Flame or Blaze Plan of Firebase.
At Optimum Technical Labs LLP we have developed number of apps using Firebase. You can check more about our Firebase apps
If you have any questions regarding Firebase app development, Please feel free to contact me via email — swapnilchouhanabc@gmail.com or Skype — swapnilchouhan or linkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/swapnilchouhan/
Thank you for reading
Source of image firebase.google.com