Firebase Backend as a Service
Firebase is a Baas that is owned by Google and helps you to build and grow your app. It was developed as a YC11 start-up and it took the form of Google’s mobile app development platform in no time. Firebase Backend as a Service is gaining popularity due to its many factors, and most of the mobile app development companies are preferring Firebase Baas for their upcoming projects.
When the backend technologies are discussed, people often neglect it due to a lack of knowledge and move ahead with whatever is offered to them. Here, we are going to discuss everything that you need to know about Firebase to give you a heads up before you plunge into this technology.
Major Components of Firebase
Firebase is fueled with basically three types of components, namely, build components, grow components, and improve components. Each of these component types serves exactly the same purpose as their names suggest. Let’s have a brief look at some of the major components of Firebase.
Authentication
Give your user a secure login and allows users to link their various accounts, viz. Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. and that too by using a single Firebase authentication account.
Realtime Database
Firebase has a real-time database that connects with your app through WebSocket to provide you with a much faster call and syncing your data is faster, easier, and secure. So, with Firebase, any changes made by you, or the client is immediately updated for viewing.
Cloud Functions
You can use Cloud Functions to write and deploy your code and run it on the serverless Google infrastructure. Firebase provides you with Cloud Functions that run on serverless infrastructure to communicate with other Firebase products.
Cloud Storage
With Firebase, you get highly scalable cloud storage, a Google Cloud’s product. It works as follows, you can use the SDKs provided by your client in the application to simplifying the file transfer process directly to/from the cloud storage. Thus, saving time and keeping it secure too.
Firebase Hosting
Easy to use, setup, and highly secure global web hosting CDN is provided by Firebase Hosting. Get your data delivered quickly with servers that are in proximity to your users. And you don’t even require a custom domain.
ML Kit
Leverage all the goodness of machine learning from Google with Firebase’s machine learning kit. You can use the ML kit for possibly anything if you are well-versed in ML. Whether it is using the camera for capturing landmarks, faces, etc. or something more advanced, say deploying a map.
Features of Firebase
Firebase is stuffed with many features that make it a powerful backend-as-a-service model. So, here are some of the highlighting features of Firebase that everyone must be familiar with,
Integration with Various Services
Make the maximum use of Firebase by the seamless integration of all the useful services such as Firebase remote configuration, Google Tag Manager, Firebase Notifications, etc.
Cloud Messaging
Firebase allows Cloud Messaging to send push notifications to your app or the user to notify about something that can interest them. You can either send the message by writing code in the backend or directly ping the user with information.
Crash Reporting
One of the best crash reporting tools is with Firebase. This crash reporting tool gives you a complete report and it is integrated with analytics too. Thus, you can even evaluate how a crash can affect your users.
Audience Segmentation
Firebase provides audience segmentation in a really simple way. You choose your requirements and the analytics does it work to decide who is your target audience and how will they be segmented in order to grow.
Remote Configuration
Make any changes you desire to the look and feel of you app remotely and that too without publishing a new update to the app with Firebase’s remote config feature. Just define a couple of config parameters in your Firebase console and app SDK will fetch it periodically to make dynamic changes in your app.
Growth and Engagement Feature
Firebase provides a bunch of growth and engagement features that can give a boost in user engagement instantly and help your app to grow. Some of them are A/B testing, analytics, app indexing, in-app messaging, user behavior prediction, etc.
Dynamic Links
With Firebase Dynamic Links, you can introduce your app’s deep link into any platform to launch your application for a customized experience onto any screen. With Dynamic links, users can just click on it to install the app and open it if its already installed.
Advantages of Using Firebase
With the increasing popularity of Firebase, and after getting an overview of Firebase and its features, you might be wondering about the reasons to use Firebase, right? Well, here are some of the main advantages of using Firebase,
- Easy to set up and provides hassle-free access to all your data, files, media, etc.
- Firebase makes you free from infrastructure as it does not require any server-side infrastructure for enforcing the data into the applications
- You can leverage the mighty Google Analytics with Firebase as it gives a completely free solution and allows you to get reporting on a number of aspects
- Unique and efficient audience division based on various parameters with Firebase analytics
- Real-time database synchronization with access from multiple sources with both online and offline services for efficiently bifurcating, scaling and monitoring data
- Ensures completely robust data security with the built-in security feature at the data node level
- You get the best file storage system, Google Cloud Storage, and static file hosting to build scalable applications
Popular Applications Using Firebase
Owing to the innumerable advantages and features of Firebase, many industry giants have embraced Firebase for their application development, namely,
- New York Times
- Duolingo
- Trivago
- Shazam
- Viber
- Skyscanner
- The Economist
- Alibaba
Conclusion
Firebase Backend-as-a-Service is easy to set up, user-friendly, and Google-powered mobile application development platform that allows you to leverage the most outstanding features to help your application in growing and improving your profits. You can get your application developed with Firebase by gathering your business application requirements and contacting the Firebase app development experts now!