
Facebook is closing Parse - theunquietone
http://blog.parse.com/announcements/moving-on/
======
gfosco
Separately, we developed an open-source Parse-compatible API server for
Node/Express. [https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-
server](https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server)

This, along with the database migration tools released earlier, allow
developers a full migration path to move from Parse hosted data + API to their
own infrastructure.

Over the weekend, I set up a website & app on a $5 DigitalOcean box running
Parse and Mongo locally.

~~~
intellegacy
how long does the full migration and setting the digitical ocean box take to
do? debating whether i should do that, or just start over with firebase

~~~
gfosco
Migration is based on data size, but setting up the API server on a new VPS is
quick... I'd say less than one hour from a fresh image on Digital Ocean. I'll
try to publish a guide for that part.

~~~
intellegacy
that'd be great! thanks. please post the guide to HN or on the parse blog

------
chrisfosterelli
While I'm sure this sucks for a lot of people, I'll be honest the shutdown
seems pretty fair. One year notice, detailed migration path with accompanying
migration tools, and an open source release of the product itself.

I didn't use parse, but this seems like a reasonable way to do it.

~~~
ineedtosleep
Oh definitely. This is a fine example of how to do a service shutdown. Sadly,
I await the comments from unprepared customers next year.

If you make apps and use any sort of {P,B,S,I,}aaS, do you yourself a favor
and follow/subscribe/whatever to their news/release channels.

~~~
mooreds
Yes! I wrote about this a few years ago:

[http://geekestateblog.com/monitoring-
microvendors/](http://geekestateblog.com/monitoring-microvendors/)

It's really important as people build apps (and business value) through
composition of smaller services rather than composition of code that they
become aware of these external dependencies. And not just at build time, but
during the operation of these apps/business processes.

------
nodamage
This announcement just underscores the importance of having full control over
your backend. Yes, it's more work, but if you're writing apps that seriously
depend on backend services, it's simply too much risk to depend on anyone
else.

Fortunately in this case Facebook offered generous lead time to migrate off
Parse.com, but they were not obligated to do so, and other providers might not
be so generous in the future.

Developers who depended on Parse now have an interesting decision to make:
export their data into MongoDB and start running their own servers, or look
for an alternative BaaS provider to do it for them (which carries the same
risk of that provider shutting down in the future).

~~~
jshen
"This announcement just underscores the importance of having full control over
your backend"

I disagree. If using something like this let's you get to market much faster,
much cheaper, and find market fit faster/cheaper, then it's worth it.
Depending on the need it can take millions of dollars and year(s) of work to
then begin working on the actual business objectives.

~~~
jonsterling
We used Parse, and (contrary to your suggestion) it helped us get to market
_much slower_ and _much more expensively_. We experienced a hilarious amount
of downtime, and hundreds of engineering hours that could have been spent
developing features for our users or improving our services were spent working
around fatal bugs in Parse, which were usually not manifesting on all
instances, which made it very difficult for the Parse team to diagnose them.

Fixes for Parse bugs were usually not forthcoming from the Parse team---and
when things were fixed, more often than not the fix was reverted within a week
because it caused something even worse.

For the first six months of our time using them, Parse would only report
downtime post facto and backdated by a day. “F@#$k Parse” was perhaps the most
frequently uttered phrase among all of us in our douchebag Mission district
headquarters. What a life.

All the time, push notifications inexplicably stopped working for hours at a
time---we were running a daily sales app, and this really killed us. It ruined
dozens of auctions and pissed off tons of our users. But what's even worse?
Parse made my life a living hell for a year, and I'm glad they're gone.

~~~
zachlatta
Ran into the exact same issue when using Parse. I was working on an app that
operated primarily through push notifications. The push notification downtime
was horrible -- I remember having to get on calls with clients apologizing
profusely for the downtime. We were also paying Parse an absurd amount of
money for extra reliability, which didn't seem to help much.

I never heard people talking about the difficulty of moving off of Parse,
especially in mobile clients that were developed with the Parse SDK. I spent a
ridiculous amount of time getting Parse synced with our custom backend so old
clients wouldn't break.

Final thing: debuggin. For nearly any issue, a half-assed solution---often not
usable in production---by one of their staff was buried deep into their
forums. Super painful.

~~~
jonsterling
Exactly, exactly, exactly!

> We were also paying Parse an absurd amount of money for extra reliability,
> which didn't seem to help much.

We were also hooked into the same scam!

> For nearly any issue, a half-assed solution---often not usable in production
> ---by one of their staff was buried deep into their forums. Super painful.

Haha, well put. They always directed people to their pathetic "support forum",
where one of their staff would propose a criminally bad "solution" to a
problem, which no self-respecting engineer could even sanction putting into
production.

------
jewel
I am happy to see that they're not using any of the insulting language that
would land them on
[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/).

FYI, here's the announcement of the acquisition from April 25, 2013:
[http://blog.parse.com/announcements/the-future-of-
parse/](http://blog.parse.com/announcements/the-future-of-parse/)

Relevant bits:

Q: Will my Parse app be affected in any way? No.

Q: Will Parse apps have to use Facebook functionality? No.

Q: Will Parse honor my contract? Yes, of course.

~~~
pbreit
So that will have been nearly 4 years ago.

~~~
tbranyen
Obviously you're not a golfer.

~~~
xyzzy4
Mark it zero!

------
btown
It will be funny to see all of the abandoned apps that start failing a year
from now. Obscure games, utilities, etc. Most people won't be bothered to go
through the stress of an App Store review process to update an old free-to-
play app that's not even making them revenue. But how many people's morning
commutes will be ruined when their old games or news apps fall apart? The
price of progress (and of liquidity), I suppose...

~~~
coldtea
> _But how many people 's morning commutes will be ruined when their old games
> or news apps fall apart? The price of progress_

The "price of progress" is suddenly not being able to play WhackAMole 3000 on
your mobile phone on your way to work?

~~~
kennywinker
Kinda. I mean, I can dust off my old console and play the games on that any
time I want. App Store stuff means built in expiration date. Cloud integration
means built in expiration date. Price of progress.

~~~
ckrailo
Your old console ran the same code for years on end with no updates and no new
features. Your phone's updating all the time. Thus, software TTL is much
lower. (Software TTL for your console is determined by how long your cartridge
serves up good data.)

------
Cshelton
It always sucks when things have to come to an end, however, this is a pretty
graceful shutdown if you ask me. Many other service providers, especially in
other industries, would often times send you a letter with a month, sometimes
less, notice.

From a business learning experience, I'm really interested in the reasoning.
I'm hoping a detailed blog post comes out of this, which I'm sure it will,
just as a "case study" of sorts.

~~~
hkmurakami
I feel like it reflects FB's character as an open source company.

------
DocSavage
And just when I was about to choose between Parse and Google's Firebase. Makes
me wonder if Firebase will follow the same path through acquisition, seeming
stability, followed by closing?

As far as similar open-source systems, it seems like Mozilla's Kinto compares
favorably to Parse after it's code is released:
[http://kinto.readthedocs.org/en/latest/overview.html](http://kinto.readthedocs.org/en/latest/overview.html)
There's a nice table there comparing the different services' features.

~~~
mayop100
[Firebase founder here]

We're not going anywhere. We have strong backing here at Google and are
continuing to make big investments in our platform. You'll see big things from
us soon.

What makes us different? Firebase is very complementary to Google's other
product offerings. Cloud for one, as well as Angular, Polymer, GCM, etc.

~~~
aikah
"We're not going anywhere."

I'd like another answer like. "We are thinking about providing a community
version that one can deploy on its own servers, then we provide the IaaS when
the customer might want to scale". If Parse had an opersource version to begin
with, it would have been much much more successful and people would have been
less worried about building on a third party platform.

If Firebase closes tomorrow there will be no migration strategy for people who
built their infrastructure around Firebase.

> Firebase is very complementary to Google's other product offerings

Google is a big org. Tomorrow some upper executive you don't even know might
decide your product doesn't add value anymore. You know that.

~~~
DannyBee
"Google is a big org. Tomorrow some upper executive you don't even know might
decide your product doesn't add value anymore. You know that. "

This demonstrates a pretty strong misunderstanding of how google actually
works.

~~~
adamors
Well, there's a reason people have been compiling a graveyard of Google
products:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html)

~~~
DannyBee
1\. This is pretty irrelevant to whether the mechanism is that some magical
bigwig exec decides a project "doesn't add value", which is what was suggested
might happen.

2\. Plenty of companies kill plenty of products. They just don't bother to
announce it, they let it die quietly and silently

------
minimaxir
Odd. The Parse SDK had a new release _one month ago_ :
[http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/14/parse-launches-sdk-
support-...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/14/parse-launches-sdk-support-for-
apples-watchos-2-and-tvos/)

That makes this decision seem very sudden.

~~~
heraclez
And that's not all. Parse just did a full rebranding, including a full
frontend overhaul of its dashboard.

What the hell is going on?

~~~
timdorr
It's a BA came through and said "Oh, they're not making a billion dollars for
us yet? Let's get rid of them!"

~~~
dalacv
BA?

~~~
DonHopkins
Butthead Astronomer.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#Libel_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation#Libel_dispute_with_Carl_Sagan)

------
bsaul
A few thought :

1/ parse wasn't a core service for facebook, nor a relevant source of a revenu
AND their API wasn't standard. Those points combined made it very risky for
people to use it.

2/ since they open sourced their API now, and the service was a paid service,
there's a very high probability that someone will very soon create a 100%
compatible PAAS.

3/ firebase will be next to shutdown. Not because they suck, but simply
because they're exactly in the same case (proprietary,non standard, critical
technology, held by a company who don't really care about it for its money
service). People won't sign up on firebase anymore, so they will have to shut
down quite soon.

4/ Every non core project run by facebook should be looked upon with extra
caution now. Yes, that includes occulus. They're clearly not going to sell
many devices, and gaming console maker (aka Sony) will have the lion's share
of the gaming market. So, expect fb to shut it down in 2 or 3 years if it
doesn't get a very large marketshare (the only use case large enough i can
think of that is not gaming being porn).

5/ I personnaly would be really hesitant now to run on something like google
app engine. I wouldn't be surprised to see google and microsoft moving forward
api standardization for core cloud services on a much faster pace. Except
amazon, nobody is really safe now.

~~~
aianus
> gaming console maker (aka Sony) will have the lion's share of the gaming
> market

Given that you need a bleeding-edge $1000 PC to run Oculus at a smooth,
nausea-free 70hz, I don't see how Sony is going to get similar performance
from a 2-year-old $400 console.

Maybe a couple generations down the road, but not in the next few years.

~~~
learc83
That completely depends on how graphics intensive a particular game is. Sure
you won't be running the Witcher 3 at 90 fps, but it's definitely possible if
you make a game that is more stylized and less photo realistic.

They're also apparently using some kind of frame interpolation to run 60hz
games at 120hz. How well that works to stop nausea I don't know, but the
reviews from early demos I've seen look promising.

------
mmanfrin
Man, this is an example of how to shutter a service gracefully. 1 year heads
up and _an open source replacement for their service_ with export tools to
port the data in to a format that replacement can use.

------
dantiberian
I wonder if Firebase will be next? They were acquired by Google in 2014.
However they also acquired Divshot to join the Firebase team in 2015 which
indicates they at least intended to continue with it then. Firebase does at
least make more sense as part of Google's cloud services division rather than
at Facebook.

~~~
mmanfrin
I think Firebase's position is a bit more defensible -- Google has done well
to ingratiate Firebase as a backend for angular apps.

~~~
ravenkat
The news i have heard from various googlers is, `GOOG acquired Firebase
because a project started using Firebase as backend and grew very fast and
they didn't want to migrate and just acquired FireBase`.

~~~
boulos
This is not even remotely true.

Disclaimer: I work on Google Cloud but not Firebase.

------
gdeglin
One group of developers this is going to affect most are those who used
Parse's GCM Server Key for push notifications.

Since Parse is probably not going to reveal this key, Android developers using
Parse for push will not be able to use their existing GCM push tokens with
other services.

~~~
simscitizen
The easiest way to deal with this is to add your sender ID to the app
manifest, so Parse registers with both its sender ID and yours:

[https://parse.com/docs/android/guide#push-notifications-
sett...](https://parse.com/docs/android/guide#push-notifications-setting-up-
push)

This requires a new release of your app, but that is a necessity in any case.

~~~
gdeglin
You're right, it seems like this should work.

------
ape4
Maybe its not such a good idea after all to code your app to a proprietary API
in the cloud.

~~~
zenojevski
…except that this just has just become an open-source API that is self-hosted?

~~~
xd1936
Luckily, this time. Not all startups who provide a service like this may
choose to do the same when they implode.

~~~
disbelief
Also many (the majority?) of Parse users signed up with them so that they
_wouldn 't have to self host anything_.

~~~
malka
yes. Meaning there is a market to fill. Too small to be of interest to
Facebook, but I'm sure people will build business upon the open source server.

------
mmastrac
Ugh. This is why you don't build on proprietary stacks like this. I've
detailed tonnes of complaints I've had about the platform itself being awkward
and buggy in previous HN comments, but this is obviously the #1 reason not to.

If Facebook can shut down a service this big, Google or Amazon can too. Moving
a VM is (reasonably) easy, but porting an app from proprietary backend X to
another is hard.

~~~
st3v3r
No, this is just why you should architect your applications so that the
backend isn't all over the app, but instead limited to the outskirts. Then you
can change providers at will.

------
hkmurakami
>We’re proud that we’ve been able to help so many of you build great mobile
apps, but we need to focus our resources elsewhere.

I read this as "our Facebook overlords have decided that our revenue/head can
be dramatically increased if redeployed on a different part of the overall
company, so they have decided to shut Parse down and move us elsewhere."

Which is a perfectly fair business decision but this is really sad to see
since I saw the Parse acquisition as a beacon for platform companies being
able to run independently post acquisition. :(

~~~
rms_returns
If resource is the question, then I wonder how come they are sustaining
WhatsApp? Its a zero-profit activity, the users chat amongst themselves, what
does FB gain from that? I guess the parse resource traffic would be little
compared to terabytes flowing through the WhatsApp every day.

~~~
joering2
you kidding?? Knowing what 200MM people are talking about and being able to
display them "relevant" ads based upon it is priceless!!

~~~
estefan
The day I see ads on whatsapp is the day I leave.

~~~
joering2
Facebook owns whatsapp. You already making FB money even if you not crossing
FB site.

Actually you're working for Facebook... and you do it for free!

~~~
rms_returns
Kindly explain, if WhatsApp doesn't show me ads nor do I have a paid
subscription to WhatsApp then how is Facebook making money from me?

~~~
joering2
Sure it goes something like this:

\- hey rms, how you been?

\- good Alice, just been busy - we're finally looking to buy our first house..
so excited about it can't wait!

\- awesome, man! do you have location on your mind??

\- well, me and wife are looking into Los Angeles and neighborhood, unsure
yet..

\- cool I come visit you!

\- yeah you guys swing buy! We want to buy at least 4bd house, so there will
be plenty of room for you to stay...

\- okay see ya!

Meanwhile 2 days later on your Facebook feed:

Local Los Angeles realtor giving best tips for first time buyers...

If you buying in Cali you will be in shock about this one rule...

Learn about magic device this 60 year old used to built his own house in
California.

California realtors are scary of this one website with top notch listings...

If you buying in Los Angeles you are overpaying not knowing about this law...

President Obama wants you to use first time buyers loan - click your State
from the list below...

And so on...

~~~
estefan
I don't use FB...

~~~
joering2
You don't have to. Majority of internet websites includes either ads or
forums/comment sections coming back to FB cookies. So yes they do know what to
show you on drudgereport when you chat on whatsapp. try yourself!

------
chatmasta
I don't understand why Facebook never integrated Parse into its own datacenter
infrastructure. As far as I can tell, Parse still hosts all of its
infrastructure on EC2 (DNS lookups for every Parse service point to an EC2 IP
address). Hosting on EC2 made sense when Parse was an independent company, but
didn't they sell to Facebook so they could benefit from Facebook
infrastructure?

This seems like Facebook throwing in the towel on what seemed like a good plan
to gain a foothold in the cloud space.

Either that, or they're not really shutting down, and they just want to get a
bunch of free labor from open source developers before migrating to an
enterprise support business model.

~~~
adrr
Isn't Instagram still using AWS for some of their infrastructure? They had a
big blog post about moving but if i remember correctly there was article about
instagram getting hacked via S3 bucket keys a couple months back.

------
Mizza
Goddammit!

I built a service on top of Parse and Yahoo Pipes. And I JUST finished porting
the Pipe stuff to Lambda..

Oh well, nice of them to provide a DB migration tool and an open source
server.

~~~
katowulf
Hang in there, you've got a year to figure out what's next. They're slipping
out the door with good style at least.

------
bsdpython
There are going to be a lot of mobile "full stack developers" that are going
to have to scramble now to find another way to avoid learning how to build a
simple API server and database.

I only used Parse for one small project a few years ago. At the time their
scheduled tasks feature was new and I found it hilarious that there was a bug
that mixed up hours and days in the scheduler. That is when the scheduled
tasks actually ran at all.

~~~
jonsterling
Lol yep, it was horrible.

------
josh2600
It's really hard to build trust when products disappear. Building on top of
google is hard for this reason, and Facebook is beginning to look eerily
similar. Recall all of the wonderful social graph access that once existed and
see, now, the wake of crippled API's where they once lived.

Since it is impossible to build everything from scratch, some compromise must
be made, but I wonder whether that compromise can reasonably include offerings
from $BIG_CO? Certainly open-source projects implode as well, but rarely with
the scale of things like Google Reader or Parse...

~~~
mikegioia
What's even more ridiculous is that their homepage says:

    
    
        From startups to the Fortune 500, hundreds of
        thousands of developers *trust us*.
    

Trust you to what? Pull the rug out at some point? Why they even put that word
on the HP is a separate question.

~~~
steffan
The acquisition happened nearly 3 years ago. To their credit, they kept
running it for longer than a lot of other companies would have.

Anyone in the situation of seeing their platform provider acquired should see
the writing on the wall. It's unfortunate, but it's the reality. Enjoy the
continued services while [if] they last, but always have a Plan B.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Anyone in the situation of seeing their platform provider acquired should
see the writing on the wall."

In this case though FB seemed to embrace Parse and continued to develop it. It
would have been much better to shut it down after acquisition. FB's support of
it probably helped it gain more trust that it would stick around.

------
subpixel
I'm building on top of Firebase at the moment, and this is exactly the sort of
thing I'm afraid of.

~~~
mayop100
[Firebase founder here]

Google is 100% behind us, and we're continuing to make big investments in the
platform. If you have concerns, feel free to ask me questions on twitter:
twitter.com/startupandrew

~~~
henrify
And Facebook was 100% behind Parse, just short time ago.

If anything Google is probably THE most aggressive company in discontinuing
products:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services)

------
adriancooney
Wonder _why_ they actually shut down? Seems like it was an unexpected
decision.

[http://blog.parse.com/events/announcing-f8-2016/](http://blog.parse.com/events/announcing-f8-2016/)

~~~
lacker
The NYT article has some pretty good explanation here.

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/facebook-to-shut-
do...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/facebook-to-shut-down-parse-
its-platform-for-mobile-developers/)

"Facebook also would have had to invest untold millions of dollars in capital
and, more importantly, engineering talent, to get the Parse business fully off
the ground to have a better chance at making a dent in competitors like
Amazon, Microsoft and Google."

That old blog post doesn't make sense any more - we should just take it down.

~~~
wesleyfsmith
Must have been really hard shutting down your baby. Do you wonder what could
have happened if you hadn't sold?

~~~
lacker
I do wonder, but it's just impossible to know. Working on a startup, there are
just so many variables out of your control or understanding. You can't predict
what will happen. You can only aim at a vision and do your best to get there.

------
boulos
To those concerned about Firebase, here's the latest tweet from Firebase:

[https://twitter.com/Firebase/status/692845862527995904](https://twitter.com/Firebase/status/692845862527995904)

> Not a great day for app developers :( Firebase is healthy & actively working
> on many new exciting features here at Google #parse

Disclaimer: I work on Compute Engine not Firebase (but I sit next to them).

------
jtchang
One of the reasons you need to pick hosted services very carefully is just
this type of scenario. Especially when you are deciding where your data lives.

I give a tremendous amount of respect though to the Parse team for open
sourcing the server. Like holy crap they released their entire code base. It
must have been especially tough since you have to go through it and clean
everything up. Too bad they didn't include the commit history (I certainly
understand why they did it). Commit histories are generally the most
interesting.

------
20years
I was just looking at Parse & Firebase for the potential back-end on a biz app
I am currently developing. I decided to install DreamFactory on AWS with
DynamoDB because I felt uneasy relying on the others. I have been burned
multiple times by both Facebook & Google shutting down API's.

It was fairly painless getting DreamFactory setup.

I give props to Facebook for giving such a long notice though. That should be
more than enough time for app developers to switch.

------
kuzmin
Currently using Parse for Push notifications (it's simple to send a request to
Parse and it handles iOS vs Android issues).

Is there any tool out there that has similar functionality? Ie. you register
all your users devices there and they simplify the sending of push
notifications.

~~~
gcarre
I just created an account on OneSignal:
[https://onesignal.com/](https://onesignal.com/)

~~~
jkestner
Free - what's the catch? I don't want to have the same problem all over again.
Forget the fine print, the body text is really hard to read superthin gray
text on white.

~~~
gdeglin
Hi, I'm one of the founders of OneSignal.

We make revenue from products that help companies with advertising and
competitive research. Our push service helps us collect the data necessary to
make this work, similar to services like Flurry Analytics. So we're happy to
provide it for free. Happy to go into more detail via email:
contact@onesignal.com

------
spdustin
I hate to be "that guy", but I use their analytics too, along with in-app push
notifications that can be targeted to groups of users. Anyone have experience
and recommendations for alternatives that are just as easy to implement in an
iOS or OS X app?

~~~
Startups411
I use Google Analytics, Flurry Analytics, Facebook Analytics and Fabric all
with custom events. Fabric is great for real-time. Mixpanel seems to be
extremely costly depending on what type of app or game you have.

For broadcast push notifications, I use PushWoosh. They have a lot of features
that Parse Push doesn't for broadcast notifications.

As for the in-app client-based push notification triggered by liking or
commenting on a post or profile, I have no idea how to replace that without
Parse. Hopefully they'll included some sort of guide to help with that
migration.

------
tmsh
Interestingly, might've been better to:

a) release open source versions and announce pricing increase in the future.
b) reduce people using the free 30 transactions / second limit. c) maintain in
maintenance mode indefinitely.

I just don't get why companies shut down services unless they're folding them
into open source projects (like Freebase into Wikidata). Maintenance mode
seems cheap to me, but maybe I'm missing something?

I am most curious about Facebook's strategy for this. Total guesses - but
maybe they have another developer platform in the works? Maybe it's just the
focus on core businesses, but it is most curious.

Anyway, I love parse! Cool it's open source now.

~~~
RussianCow
Keep in mind that this is Facebook, so it's likely they just had better things
for those developers to do that would generate the company more revenue. It's
not in Facebook's interest to keep a business running that's barely breaking
even, especially when they can take the team and put it to use elsewhere
within the company. (Not that I know what Parse's financials look like, but
I'm guessing they aren't making boatloads of money.)

------
Symbol
My sympathies to any workers displaced by these events, but I'm happy. Parse
is a bad product: it has weird quirks in normal usage but most importantly
scales abysmally. I'm thrilled to have ammunition to justify moving away from
it. Love love love the open source angle however, and wish more sunsetting
products go this route.

------
carsongross
This is in no way to dog on Parse, which is handling the situation as well as
any company I've seen, but I can't help but think of the hilarious line from
[https://medium.com/@wob/the-sad-state-of-web-
development-160...](https://medium.com/@wob/the-sad-state-of-web-
development-1603a861d29f#.5barg65m):

"A [Single Page App] will lock you into a framework that has the shelf life of
a hamster dump"

Seems like that could be said about a lot of infrastructure services out there
as well.

------
boggzPit
Damn it Facebook. Why did I ever believe you could handle being cool to
developers?

------
lucb1e
Either their mobile home page is broken or it only shows this announcement
anymore, but what is Parse anyway?

~~~
babuskov
I wondered the same. Wikipedia page sums it up:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parse_%28company%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parse_%28company%29)

"...back-end tools for mobile developers that help mobile developers store
data in the cloud, manage identity log-ins, handle push notifications and run
custom code in the cloud."

AFAICT, it was doing all the mundane work you need to get a modern mobile app
up and running. So, developers could concentrate on the business logic of
their application and leave the rest to Parse.

------
browseatwork
Too bad. I admire them for giving people a year and giving some helpful tools.
I'm glad Parse's winding down is less painful than "We're gone in 1 month,
good luck, bye!".

Another data point for the "Is PaaS dead?" conversation.

[http://blog.fortrabbit.com/cloudscapes-
rerevisited](http://blog.fortrabbit.com/cloudscapes-rerevisited)

------
patkai
Kudos to the Parse team for many things, including a much more decent exit
than many others. But aside all my admiration for all their achievements - all
beyond my abilities - let me ask you, hackers of the world, is this what we
really want, if/when we build something so awesome? I do prefer to hear DHH
talk stuff like "Basecamp is my life's work".

------
scriptstar
Totally disappointed with this announcement. Facebook is making billions of
dollars of profit but can't keep up the lights at Parse. I will think twice to
jump on these platforms next time. Now, I am more sceptical of using ReactJS,
ReactNative and other stuff from the FB spearheads. Perhaps a high time to
learn typescript and angular2.

~~~
codeisawesome
ReactJS is a no-no from the get go. Facebook's Patent grant on what is
supposed to be an "open source product" is ridiculous:
[https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/PATENTS](https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/PATENTS).
"If you ever start a patent conflict with Facebook in court, (worse but even
more likely:) or if Facebook starts a patent litigation against you, you LOSE
all your rights to use React in ANY product throughout your company and MUST
stop using it at once in your code!" Imagine how that can bring a team down.

If folks know of anything out there that works like React (I like the ideas,
including JSX) but isn't hobbled simply by mis-virtue of being "backed" by the
characterless evil that is Facebook, kindly enlighten me, I will use it.

I'm actually wondering if the new "open source" Parse code will have the same
Patent horror built-in, and if yes that's even worse considering backends can
be even more complicated and important part of a company's infra.

Also, I'm sure there are people saying "hey, your work may not be significant
enough to cause a Patent violation with Facebook so you and the majority of
library users are safe". Sure, that is likely true. But it's about the
principle.

~~~
codeisawesome
Here's an answer I found: Vidom
([https://github.com/dfilatov/vidom](https://github.com/dfilatov/vidom))

It's faster than React or Angular 2 in one benchmark methodology:
[http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/?p=218](http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/?p=218)

------
jaxondu
Speculations on why the shutdown: Apple CloudKit is gaining momentum. Google
is predicted to come out its own offering for Android based on Firebase.
Facebook wants focus on its Messenger as a platform, rather than 'supporting'
Apple and Google's platforms. My 2 cents.

------
lsiunsuex
wow.

A year ago when I rewrote my startup's product in AngularJS I was on the fence
between Firebase and Parse. Built prototypes against both and ended up going
with Firebase for a few reasons - 1: price, 2: owned by Google and not FB and
3: the whole 3 way data binding thing.

Awesome to see them releasing code for the backend but I'm finding this trend
really disturbing - relying on 3rd party services for everything.

Doesn't anyone remember back in the day (like 5 years ago hah) when
programmers / admins actually bought software and ran it on their own servers
and didn't "rent" it? I know, crazy right? To own software and if the company
went under, things could still be fine for a while longer.

Maybe it's time to consider my use of Firebase and go back to the way things
used to be.

~~~
mayop100
[Firebase founder here]

I want to help put your mind at ease. Google is 100% behind us. If you have
specific concerns, please ping me on Twitter: @startupandrew

------
WoodenChair
Suddenly, Apple's CloudKit doesn't seem so unattractive - but at the same time
I fear it will face a similar fate. Anyone have any insight about whether it's
"safe" to build upon? Is there yet an Android solution for connecting to their
REST API?

~~~
hamming
AFAIK, the new Photos app in iOS and OS X are built on CloudKit. So I assume
it will only die when iOS dies, which could be another decade or so.

~~~
WoodenChair
Well, that's not much reassurance because they stopped publicly
selling/supporting WebObjects long before they stopped using it themselves.

~~~
schwarrrtz
Pretty sure they still use WebObjects for iTunesConnect (at least).

------
sb8244
One thing that I haven't noticed in the comments is that the released server
is _parse API compatible_. It is not the parse server, and so you aren't
guaranteed the same things you are guaranteed from the real parse service.

~~~
HectorRamos
The "real" Parse service is built to power hundreds of thousands of apps. The
OSS Parse Server you run yourself would only need to power a single app. Two
very different use cases.

~~~
sb8244
Yes, but it seems that everyone thinks that this is the "Parse Server" being
released. It's not, it's just an open source compatible API.

It's important because a lot of the powerful features of Parse aren't included
in the new open source server (analytics, config, push). Saying that Parse is
open-source seems to imply that these powerful features are available.

------
Danielmy
Hey guys, you can try www.backand.com which gives you anything that parse had
to offer and much more. Real time, hosting, DB and server side action is just
a bit of what they give you. Oh and the best part, it's free.

~~~
dmitriz
Is there anything that can keep backand.com away from the fate of Stackmob
([http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/12/paypal-closing-down-
backen...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/12/paypal-closing-down-backend-
service-stackmob-months-after-buying-it/)) and now Parse?

~~~
Danielmy
Unlike Facebook, backand main business is being a Baas. It has a lot of
developers and fully backed. In addition, Backand's unique feature is that you
can get the database connection and the server side configuration any time you
want!

~~~
dmitriz
The first thing I read here
[https://www.backand.com/about/](https://www.backand.com/about/) is

> "Backand’s proprietary technology".

This means, if Backand will be acquired and shut down, all my time spent on
learning specifics of Backand infrastructure will be wasted?

Are there any plans to open-source the platform? That would give some
guarantee and peace of mind.

------
TamDenholm
I _just_ started developing something in parse in the last 2 months, i really
really liked the platform, this totally sucks. Does anyone have any
recommendations for alternatives with similar features?

~~~
codegefluester
They open sourced an API server that is fully compatible that you could host
yourself [http://blog.parse.com/announcements/introducing-parse-
server...](http://blog.parse.com/announcements/introducing-parse-server-and-
the-database-migration-tool/)

------
rajacombinator
Interesting. I guess I bought into the PR/propaganda that said Parse was a
huge success and good acquisition for facebook. Never made sense to me why one
would use such a service anyway.

------
purans
Looks like time to revive my PubKit -
[https://github.com/narup/PubKit](https://github.com/narup/PubKit)

------
eachro
I used Parse a few years ago to serve as a backend for a simple event
aggregation app. It was incredibly simple to use and integrate with. I
probably spent on the order of ~1hr reading documentation and another 2 hours
doing some quick and dirty implementation before having a functioning Android
app. It's too bad it's shutting down, but I can't say I didn't see this coming
after the Facebook aquisition.

------
davidkhess
Seems telling that Facebook chose to shut it down rather than spin it back out
on its own or sell it. That implies the economics of it weren't working.

------
PanosJee
And this proves that there no money to be made in Mobile developer tools.
Pretty much all major tools have been acquired or face an uncertain future.

------
chx
Charity Majors leaves Facebook/Parse, Parse shuts down. I am not surprised.

------
blasphemous
Kudos to Parse/Facebook for a somewhat graceful exit.

However, i find it extremely foolish to shut this down completely from
Facebook's point of view.

Sure redeploy all the gun developers to other FB products, but you can't tell
me FB could not afford to hire some devs to maintain this service. They could
have sold the service to another company too.

This just gives Facebook more bad vibes from the dev community.

------
stefybiber
This thing has disturbed everyone who have hosted their apps on Parse
platform, they are looking for an alternate solution. I am also one of them.

I have already talked with various app development platform providers and
check their platforms. I found Configure.IT as the nice solution compared to
other platforms. Actually my 10 to 15 apps are on Parse. So I am bit worried
about it. Now After checking all the solutions, Finally I reached to a
decision.

I also want to guide all the people who are passing through the same situation
as I am passing. I have checked all the features and facilities provided by
this platform and also talked with the authorized persons of this platform.
Really a genuine one.

So finally I have given the project of my apps migration to Configure.IT (
[http://www.configure.it/](http://www.configure.it/) ) and they are doing it
very nicely. Thanks to whole team. Thanks a lot.

------
jondubois
Maybe it's a good time to self host an open source solution using
[http://socketcluster.io/](http://socketcluster.io/) maybe with the Meatier
stack
[https://github.com/mattkrick/meatier](https://github.com/mattkrick/meatier)

------
nevi-me
I haven't worked with Parse, but the announcement reminds me of something I
decided to do as much as I can.

We sometimes choose to build features on top of third-party vendors' services,
and the reality's that unless that third-party derives decent revenue or
primarily provides that service; one shouldn't expect that the service will
always be available. Twitter was a good example, Google SEO is another, where
people who were relying mostly on search traffic got wiped when algorithms
were changed.

It takes longer at times, and seems like reinventing the wheel, but for
features that I deem to be very useful to my users, I choose to roll out the
relevant underlying detail myself. In most cases there are often already
third-party libraries that can help with bootstrapping the features. I'm glad
that the parse-server is available so people can run their own local instance
though.

------
datarem
It's as if millions of independent developers cried out in terror and then
suddenly migrated to DigitalOcean.

------
sciencesama
[http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/28/parse-ceo-ilya-sukhar-
is-l...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/28/parse-ceo-ilya-sukhar-is-leaving-
facebook/)

when a venture capatilist leaves the team things are not going good somewhere
;)

------
mpinteractiv
I love your product, thanks for releasing a "community server". I liked it
because it contained enough business logic to get started with most projects.
Built that with it among other things :

[https://github.com/Mparaiso/playground](https://github.com/Mparaiso/playground)
( a jsfiddle lite directly available on github , the UI is angularjs :
[https://mparaiso.github.io/playground](https://mparaiso.github.io/playground)
)

So thanks. You were the best BaaS feature wise IMHO.

EDIT: however just one point : you took 1 year to rewrite your API in Go,
which yielded performances but the product didn't evolve that much in the
meantime because of the rewrite, was the experience positive or negative?

------
parsehosting
We are gutted by this and so are our clients, so we are working to create a
Parse Hosting service for both our apps and the other developers in the
community. For more information checkout
[http://parsehosting.net](http://parsehosting.net)

------
shade23
Parse was the go-to platform for those who wanted to concentrate on their end
product.I know people with (day to week)-old ideas who could set up the
complete application using parse.It not only made life simpler for everyone
but greatly supported rapid prototyping and not having to go through the
hassle that comes with building your own stack.Yes I know there are
combinations of several SAAS and IAAS which can fill the void,but no one can
come close to the single stop solution that Parse provided. I hoped that
Facebook would do with parse what Twitter did with Fabric(Yes I know that
Fabric has ads as a business,but crashlytics is a god send for mobile
developers). Nevertheless I hope more Parse like solutions are yet come.

------
Kinnard
Why is parse shutting down?

------
yueq
This is much worse than Google closing Google Reader.

~~~
xyzzy4
Not as bad as when Google shut down Meebo though.

------
drchiu
Definitely kudos to Parse for open sourcing what is essentially their
platform.

Nonetheless, this speaks to the difficulty many of us in the startup world
face when choosing our technology stacks.

Parse, Firebase, and other similar BAAS platforms are very attractive for a
variety of reasons. But in the end, many of them get acquired and eventually
wind down, or run out of money because it's so difficult to run profitably.

Selling to developers is oftentimes a difficult thing to do. I've seen
multiple products aimed at developers that look great and get me excited, but
when I sit down and really analyze it -- each of them have yet to make even a
single dollar from me. I'm sure many of us are in similar positions.

------
csense
Can anyone explain to me what Parse actually is? Based on a quick read of
[https://parse.com/apps/quickstart#parse_data/mobile/android/...](https://parse.com/apps/quickstart#parse_data/mobile/android/native/new)
this is basically a cloud-based key-value store, is that correct? And the
value-add is basically that you can subscribe to stuff, and they did all the
finicky cross-platform stuff to get it to work in mobile devices?

And this is something that any competent developer could write in-house in a
few days, but what they were selling it for is a lot cheaper than a few
developer-days?

~~~
lazerwalker
That's correct, give or take a few other features.

The selling point of Parse, at least to me, wasn't "this is complex or
particularly high-quality engineering". It's "you want to bang out an MVP in a
day. Awesome, we took care of giving you a server to shove shit on."

------
fierycatnet
Hm. I personally haven't used Parse and I didn't even know they were with
Facebook but I've seen it mentioned as a pretty popular back-end platform for
Android apps (for example). What's the alternative then? AWS probably then?

~~~
nawazdhandala
I would not tie myself to a Cloud Platform but use open source stuff like
docker which can be moved between Clouds. Btw, There's CloudBoost.io which is
an alternative to Parse and is both on Docker (self-hosted) or as a managed
solution at CloudBoost.io

~~~
boulos
Would you mind adding a "Disclaimer: I'm the co-founder of CloudBoost.io"?
I've got nothing against you promoting your project when people need
alternatives, but it's important that people realize you've got a stake in it.
Like so:

Disclaimer: I work on Compute Engine, but not Firebase ;).

~~~
estefan
I was reading an article just the other day saying how the web has made people
feel the need to self censor, "apologise in advance", add disclaimers to
everything they write, etc. because they're afraid to offend anyone these days
since some people online are nuts. Unfortunately I can't find the link now...

Disclaimer: I don't like disclaimers. Just write what you believe;
unapologetically be you.

------
exodust
The parse blog crashes my Firefox browser. Even in safe mode and without
javascript the browser crashes.

Also, trying to close my Parse account is impossible. Then I found this on
their FAQ:

" _Currently, there is no way to delete an account. You can just stop using
it; we won 't spam you._"

But they did spam me, I got an email from "FocusVision an independent research
firm via Facebook." asking me to take a survey about Parse. I have nothing to
do with Facebook, never had a Facebook account, never will. I'd forgotten
Parse was acquired by Facebook.. now I remember the "it won't change anything,
we're not going anywhere" blog posts from 2 years ago.

------
muzani
Well, this sucks.

My company is about to get acquired for our technology. A huge part of the
tech relies on Parse. I mean they were charging for it! Who would think that
they will shutting down?

I guess we'll have to rebuild that part from scratch starting right now.

~~~
ergothus
Not from scratch, since they are offering the server code on github (see top
comment here)

~~~
bsaul
i would not be surprised to see a company reusing this code to provide a 100%
compatible service in the coming month.

~~~
st3v3r
Just one?

------
henrify
I don't understand their decision. Developers are crucial for Facebook's
success as platform, and the amount of distrust and bad-will they just gained
would seem to far outweigh their cost savings in grand scheme of things.

------
Everhusk
Dang. I literally just finished building my first app with React Native/Parse
two days ago. Was really amazed by how easy the stack was to get production
ready, but now? Heigh ho, heigh ho, its off to work I go... :(

------
cloud170
I think someone posted this on another thread somewhere (and sorry I could not
dig it back up). With MongoLab and Google Cloud Platform, I literally just re-
specified the Parse App ID and Keys and got the Parser server up and running
in matter of minutes:
[https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/resources/frameworks/parse-s...](https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/resources/frameworks/parse-
server) Yes, with limitation on quite a few things now. But it's a good start.

Next thing to explore is how to scale this thing out.

~~~
pseudobry
I put together that tutorial. Ping me @jmdobry (GitHub/Twitter) with
questions. Also, [https://gcp-slack.appspot.com/](https://gcp-
slack.appspot.com/)

------
samuraicode
Parse was how I got my first backend needing apps into the App Store. Always
thought they were a great company and really set the bar for how to build and
document an API. Sad to see them go, but wish them all the best.

------
conan311
Hi Guys, I am trying to set up Parse Server and a Mongo DB locally on my mac.
When I run Parse Server, I got this message "DATABASE_URI not specified,
falling back to localhost". However, I did provide the DATABASE_URI. Probably
I am so noob and didn't fully get it. The following is what I provided. Please
advice me.

var api = new ParseServer({ databaseURI: 'mongodb://localhost:27017/dev',
cloud: process.env.CLOUD_CODE_MAIN || __dirname + '/cloud/main.js', appId:
'xxxx', masterKey: 'xxxx', });

------
illuzyonist
We believe that not relying on another hosted BaaS solution is the best
strategy. Just because of this we have created an API generation tool called
API Plug that can benefit mobile and backend developers. You can export
MongoDB from Parse right now. After that you can generate & download your own
REST API source code in any language you need in minutes from
[https://apiplug.com](https://apiplug.com) Then you could deploy on your own
server and have the full control of your backend.

------
chasing
Which alternatives would people recommend?

~~~
marknutter
I would recommend Parse. It's open source and used in production by thousands
of companies. [https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-
server](https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server)

~~~
xyzzy4
Looks like they don't support push notifications.

------
yamill
I think Parse is an awesome platform and was really well documented. I used it
for building my app, and will probably end up migrating to my own parse server
and then decide where to go from there.

Parse really made it easy to get an app running. Especially a couple of years
ago, when api's were complicated.

I'm going to miss the push notifications, I just implemented them and they
work really well. Hopefully an open source solution will get released so we
can continue using them.

------
fnayr
If you're making (mobile) games and looking for a replacement, I cannot
recommend Gamesparks[1] highly enough. Their documentation is way behind
Parse's (which has excellent docs), but their features (relevant to games) and
customer support are far superior, and they are actively working on improving
their docs.

[1] [http://www.gamesparks.com/](http://www.gamesparks.com/)

------
dmitriz
So is the Firebase the next one?

------
alexmk92
When the news first hit I was a little disappointed but after reading through
the "what to do next" post I am extremely impressed by the way Facebook are
handling this. A year to let us all migrate is more than generous, and an open
source server will allow us all to continue to rapidly build our applications.
I don't mind fiddling around with scaling a little through the AWS console.

------
elkhourygeorges
Why did they do this?

Parse was on track to disrupt the cloud. Why do you need a full backend when
you can easily define APIs and access them through mobile and web?

------
Yhippa
[http://www.businessinsider.com/why-facebook-acquired-
parse-f...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-facebook-acquired-parse-for-
app-acquisitions-2013-9)

> Apps currently hosted by Parse include Food Network, Hipmunk, iBart, Anypic,
> and Travel Channel. There are 100,000 apps using Parse, Graham says.

Article is 3 years old but wonder if they've moved on from Parse?

------
wkoszek
When I first learned about Parse, I started to wonder how giving away 20GBs
with 30req/s generates money, and I think now I have an answer.

------
pashakym
link to Parse customers

VEVO, Volvo, Udacity, Eventbrite, Orbitz, Ebay, Groupon, Hipmunk, MTv,
Playtika, EBATES, SAMSUNG and many many others

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZL4JyM...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZL4JyMJyYYMJ:https://parse.com/customers+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
conan311
Hi Guys, after a few hours of googling (trust me, I spent my whole Sunday
being so pissed of at Facebook and researching alternatives to Parse.com), I
arrived in this awesome page. I read a few comments below and it seems like I
just found an oasis! With this open source project, do you guys think it would
be still possible for an app to support FB sign in features?

------
Raed667
I used Parse for a dozen projects, but none in production, and all were free.
To be honest, I loved how Parse allowed me to focus on the App/product without
having to worry about APIs and backend.

However whenever I'm serious about an App I end-up investing in some PHP or
Node .. This is probably true for a lot of people and this is why it is
probably shutting down.

------
pavlov
My take on this turned out too long for a comment, so I wrote a blog post:

"Facebook’s Parse shutdown has a lesson to all tech customers"

[https://medium.com/@pauli/facebook-s-parse-shutdown-has-a-
le...](https://medium.com/@pauli/facebook-s-parse-shutdown-has-a-lesson-to-
all-tech-customers-ecc43a83e36b#.vo0vdf37f)

------
smt88
Does anyone know why this is happening? It was kinda buggy because of its
Mongo foundation, but the concept itself was pretty great.

~~~
xyzzy4
Maybe Zuckerberg isn't passionate enough about it? Like buying a stock and
then 2 years later you don't want it anymore, so you get rid of it.

------
3lux
It would be nice to see the Go server that powers Parse.com's production
servers. I recall in Gophergon 2015 there was a presentation on how they
migrated from Ruby to Go. [https://gophercon.com/talks/rebuilding-
parse/](https://gophercon.com/talks/rebuilding-parse/)

------
jramps
How important is choosing a no lock-in MBaaS? Some considerations for backend
users: [http://www.anypresence.com/blog/2016/01/29/parse-shuts-
down-...](http://www.anypresence.com/blog/2016/01/29/parse-shuts-down-reality-
of-vendor-lock-in/)

------
brooklyndude
I can say one thing?

Firebase. That's it. Just one word. :-)

------
markpiller
It is a sad day and I feel for the developers who got caught in the situation.
If migrating to your own server is not an option, consider Backendless
([https://backendless.com](https://backendless.com)). We are stable and
healthy and we have a team to help you with the migration of your app.

------
helloanand
Worth a read - The dirty little secrets of transitioning away from Parse
[https://medium.com/@suniltom/the-dirty-little-secrets-of-
tra...](https://medium.com/@suniltom/the-dirty-little-secrets-of-
transitioning-away-from-parse-15522e2ce42d#.p4u5tp97h)

------
bikamonki
Many thanks for a great product, for giving away the server code and migration
tool but...no thanks. The whole point is that many of us don't want to run the
back-end. We cannot afford to do so, we are not fully qualified to do so, our
clients will not pay us more to do so.

Anyone else selling a similar service? I'm up for grabs!

------
bogidon
Looks like the Parse dev team is going to continue development of the SDKs for
now: [https://github.com/ParsePlatform/ParseUI-
iOS/issues/189#issu...](https://github.com/ParsePlatform/ParseUI-
iOS/issues/189#issuecomment-176529129)

------
krmboya
So, just some unanswered questions in my mind concerning startups that get
bought out then shut down.

Do they end up creating more value than was invested into them in the course
of their lifetime? Who captures most of this value? What does this mean for
technological innovation and increase in productivity in general?

------
espitia
I've used Parse for all of my apps but I don't really understand what goes on
between my client (iOS apps) and them. Reading on this would help a lot before
trying to host the open source Parse Server by myself. Can anyone recommend
tutorials/videos regarding hosting your own backend?

------
crudbug
Just signed up for a new account .. new beta dashboard looks sleek. Are they
open sourcing the ReactJS code ?

------
rezaqt
[Kii employee here] We've been getting many inquiries at Kii Corporation from
Parse customers about migration. To get you started:
[https://en.kii.com/parse-migration/](https://en.kii.com/parse-migration/)

------
fomojola
Is there an opportunity for a 3rd-party hosted Parse service? Seems like that
may be an option for the folks who are currently using Parse and need to move:
someone to basically run the open source service on top of AWS/Linode/Digital
Ocean/Google Cloud for a nominal fee.

~~~
pseudobry
[https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/resources/frameworks/parse-s...](https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/resources/frameworks/parse-
server)

------
hasenj
It seems that no few months can pass without some "X as a service" gets shut
down.

I basically now have the following assumption by default every time I see a
new startup:

What ever they are doing now, it will probably be shutdown within the next 4
years (assuming it gets any success at all in the first place).

------
Spoom
Parse is a great provider for push notifications, having only really gone down
once in the time we've used it (and also being, well, free). I didn't use any
other part of the system because we had our own databases and whatnot, but it
is great for push. It will be missed.

------
khamoud
Well good thing this came out just now. I was literally about to start another
parse project tonight.

------
js4all
Coincidentally we recently added MongoDB to our range. So, if you don't want
to do devops yourself, our fully managed stack may be an interesting migration
path. First app is free. [https://cloudno.de](https://cloudno.de)

------
vitalychernobyl
Very very disappointing. Parse was a great platform and Facebook killed it. I
guess it's going to be full stack AWS all the time forever. They shouldn't
have bought it if this wasn't going to be a core part of the business going
forward. Boo, Facebook!!

------
ashutoshyadav
[http://blogs.shephertz.com/2016/01/29/migrating-parse-
pushno...](http://blogs.shephertz.com/2016/01/29/migrating-parse-
pushnotification-app42-push-notification/)

------
ashutoshyadav
[http://blogs.shephertz.com/2016/01/29/seamless-migration-
par...](http://blogs.shephertz.com/2016/01/29/seamless-migration-parse-
app42-backend-service/)

------
estraschnov
There are some other tools that let you build an app without backend code.
Here is ours [https://bubble.is/developers](https://bubble.is/developers),
would love to hear from folks.

------
sehr
Any specific reasons why? Always thought they were doing well, reasonably
popular etc

~~~
steffan
Providing developer services is not Facebook's core business.

~~~
u320
So, you're saying we should prepare for the "Oculus shuts down" announcement?

~~~
steffan
If you see my other comment regarding this, that's _exactly_ what I'm saying.

It may never happen—I think Oculus may be closer to their core business—but if
you're building on someone else's platform, you should be prepared for the
possibility that the platform could disappear should it no longer be a part of
that company's strategy.

If you're building on Oculus as a platform, I applaud you, and I wish you and
your product a long, healthy life. But have a Plan B.

If it's not strategy, it's charity. And most corporations are not much given
to that.

------
maxko
Suddenly! I just finished pretty complex app which relies on Parse, can
anybody recommend some alternative service? I have looked at Kinvey, but it
seems too expensive. Does anybody have experience with Backendless?

------
elcct
I always thought of Parse as a service for someone too lazy to setup mongodb.
But to be serious, I think that was a nice tool to get ideas up and running
for testing purposes. Running in production? Hell no.

~~~
intellegacy
What would you recommend? Im' a new app developer. Debating whether I should
begin using Firebase or .. what you just said.

The thing is, there are articles guiding me through using Firebase. I'm not
sure there are articles telling me how to setup mongodb and where

~~~
simpfai
I guess it depends on what your aims are. Are you new to mobile development in
general and just want to learn how to develop for your preferred platform(iOS,
Android etc..)? If thats the case then definitely use Firebase or any other
backend as a service for that matter. This will allow you to focus on building
your app and not have to worry about implementing an API that provides access
to your mongodb database(this would also be a worthwhile exercise). Hope that
helped.

------
manishkungwani
My thoughts on the closure, and options moving forward.
[http://mk.bloomcs.com/parse-com-is-dead/](http://mk.bloomcs.com/parse-com-is-
dead/)

------
flanbiscuit
Damn, I just added Parse to a small project. Does anyone have a suggestion for
a good service that handles Push notifications like Parse? I really don't want
to set up my own server for this.

~~~
hkal
I'm in a similar situation. Currently looking at OneSignal
([https://onesignal.com/](https://onesignal.com/)). Definitely open to other
suggestions if anyone has any.

------
ashutoshyadav
Seamless Migration from Parse to ShepHertz App42

[http://www.shephertz.com/parse-migration-
app42.php](http://www.shephertz.com/parse-migration-app42.php)

------
praveenweb
I would like to see a detailed explanation from Facebook on the business front
for closing Parse. Developers would now be skeptical about using any
Proprietary service for their backend.

~~~
lacker
I suggest reading [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/facebook-to-shut-
do...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/facebook-to-shut-down-parse-
its-platform-for-mobile-developers/) . I think that is a really good article
describing the situation.

------
Nemant
Next thing you know is react/react native is no longer supported

~~~
eyko
How's that even comparable. React was released as open source from the
beginning.

------
mikaelmorvan
If you want to move to an other BaaS, ZetaPush provides NoSQL as a service,
File storage as a service, Search as a service and lot's of other things for
mobile, web, server and IoT

------
vinceyuan
Facebook spent $85 million buying Parse in 2013. Now it will be closed.

I used Parse. But I found it's expensive if you want to use some Pro features.
I built my own server on a cheap VPS later.

------
tawrahim
So what happens to the parse credits? Do we get the money back?

------
pbreit
You would think they could have found someone to take it over?

------
gsklee
Seriously, any good alternatives other than Firebase?

I chose Parse because it looks better than Firebase... this latest development
is beyond me. Such a promising product...

------
chmaynard
Since this was clearly a Facebook decision, Facebook should have announced the
shutdown on their own blog instead of humiliating the Parse team like this.

------
gabrielortiz
We built a Parse Replacement Service:
[http://nimbleparse.com](http://nimbleparse.com)

------
jamesfzhang
I am shocked...time for Fabric to build a backend?

------
weakwire
So you mean Facebook is open sourcing Parse...

------
01GOD
Dashboard is essential. Thanks in advance for releasing a fully functional
open source Parse dashboard.

------
droithomme
Platforms are for the naive.

After a few turns at the merry go round the newbie developers learn this hard
lesson.

------
tranv94
I came to enjoy Parse, but alas I have $600 in credits from it. Any ideas I
should use it for?

------
01GOD
Dashboard is essential. Thanks in advance for providing an open source Parse
dashboard today!

------
ryeguy_24
This is exactly why I chose to implement everything myself rather than use a
cloud wrapper.

------
ali_oguzhan
OK. i ve read all comments here. literally. why no one mentioned baasbox? i am
building a mobile app with parse and now considering to move it to the baasbox
on my own server. And no one here mentioned them. something wrong with it?

[http://www.baasbox.com/](http://www.baasbox.com/)

------
orasis
WHAT THE FUCK!!?? Facebook just obliterated any shred of developer trust it
once had.

------
neemsky123
will you also open source the front end tools? i really loved the data
explorers

------
giarc
What is Facebook retaining? There must be something they are holding onto.
Would it make any sense for FB to give the original founders the option to buy
back Parse? With them open sourcing most of the product, what could they still
have?

------
mxstbr
That's a shame, I thought Parse was a nifty service!

------
mdevere
Er, what happened here? Parse was a great product.

------
pajop
has anyone here tried [http://www.kinvey.com/](http://www.kinvey.com/) ?

------
markatkinson
I wonder if Firebase is doing somersaults...

------
grandalf
Wow. The 30 minutes you saved by using parse turns into a major headache. This
makes me hesitant to use react and react-native.

~~~
smt88
I'd be hesitant to use anything released by a large company that they don't
use themselves for their flagship product(s). Angular 1 comes to mind.

I believe Facebook does use React for facebook.com, but not React Native for
anything in production yet.

~~~
nutate
React Native powers Groups and their ad manager:
[https://facebook.github.io/react-
native/showcase.html](https://facebook.github.io/react-native/showcase.html)

------
DivineTraube
CEO from Baqend here.

This announcement will have a huge impact for the mobile dev community that
relies on Backend-as-a-Service systems. I personally think that Facebook had
several reasons to shut down Parse:

1) The technology stack was really fragmented and often rewritten in large
parts. I still have this statistic in mind how their 200 Rails API servers
were only able to serve 15 requests/s each [1]. If you look at the database
technology inside Facebook, there is much superior infrastructure that was
never really integrated into Parse (Haystack@OSDI'10, Tao@ATC'13, F4@OSDI'14,
Extended Apache Giraph@VLDB'15, RocksDB, etc.)

2) Parse did not have a core competitive advantage: it was just the first
company to whole-heartedly pick up the BaaS-paradigm with sufficient man power
and a good understanding of developers' needs. The technology itself was not
particularly innovative in any way, just (mostly) solid engineering. However,
there remained really basic limitations that were never addressed [2]. For
instance the only (!) way to safely handle concurrency control was through
counter data types.

3) The model of Parse promotes independent apps and websites outside the
Facebook universe.

4) The pricing in increments of guaranteed 30 requests/s was okay for simple
apps but absolutely useless for anything beyond that. In particular for
websites which as of 2016 do an average of 100 requests per page load [2] a
single user can leave a Parse app rate-limited or down.

The main asset of Parse were their great client SDKs and well-written
documentation.

This is why we made a plan: we will fork the Parse SDKs to offer seamless
continuation of apps relying on them, including Push and the other features
dropped in the open-source Parse Server. We opted for this approach as the
Parse Server implementation on Github looks really brittle and the convoluted
Parse REST API is really not an option. By doing this we hope to provide a
scalable and long-term solution for developers looking to continue their
Parse-based apps.

Baqend [2] is a pre-seed startup founded out of the database research group at
the University of Hamburg (Germany). Our product launching into production
within the next months uses a new approach to consistent web-caching reducing
latency in common web workloads by up to an order of magnitude [5]. It is due
to this background that we very eager to not only provide great usability
(which Parse also did) but also acknowledge the need for complex data
processing: low latency access, partial updates, continuous queries and ACID
transactions.

We'll post a detailed plan on our blog, soon.

[1] [http://blog.parse.com/learn/how-we-moved-our-api-from-
ruby-t...](http://blog.parse.com/learn/how-we-moved-our-api-from-ruby-to-go-
and-saved-our-sanity/) [2] [http://profi.co/all-the-limits-of-
parse/](http://profi.co/all-the-limits-of-parse/) [3]
[http://httparchive.org/trends.php/](http://httparchive.org/trends.php/) [4]
[http://www.baqend.com/](http://www.baqend.com/) [5]
[http://www.btw-2015.de/res/proceedings/Hauptband/Wiss/Gesser...](http://www.btw-2015.de/res/proceedings/Hauptband/Wiss/Gessert-
The_Cache_Sketch-165.pdf)

------
partisan
Can I have the domain name?

------
leighmon
Facebook is impressing me.

------
jamessteininger
Why did this happen?

------
rhapsodyv
I'm trying to find the reason. Anyone can point me where I can find?

------
666_howitzer
I'm using parse push notification service, is it still working?

------
HBGDH
QE MEDA

------
theDevDude
So this is how companies, who offer cloud services, are trying to get us, the
devs, to trust them... WELL PLAYED FACEBOOK!!!!!!!!

------
free2rhyme214
NOooOOOoooOOOoooOOOooOOooo

------
mjrthemes
Next thing Facebook will close will be React.

Remember this comment.

------
eva1984
This is bad...Cannot imagine how many people will freak out when AWS shut
down....Just kidding

------
simple10
Anyone used CloudBoost.io and can recommend it as an alternative to Parse?

[https://cloudboost.io/](https://cloudboost.io/)

------
noodlio
We are hosting a poll on Twitter asking which competitor will benefit the most
from this. View the results and participate here:
[https://twitter.com/noodl_io/status/692856647555788801](https://twitter.com/noodl_io/status/692856647555788801)

------
sodafountan
Facebook's stock is up 15% today. If they're this quick to kill off products
and services then long term I'm bearish on them. Zuckerberg just came back
from paternity leave and he announced a one month vacation next month. I don't
think his head's in the game. Get rich and stop trying I guess?

------
ptz
I just found this: [http://yourparse.com](http://yourparse.com)

~~~
dabodmb
There is even a kickstarter:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clintjohnson/parsenext-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clintjohnson/parsenext-
an-easy-migration-to-a-parse-style-platf?ref=nav_search)

