
Ask HN: Do you use any back end as a service platform? - haidrali
Do you use any Backend as a service or Mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) platform? I remember a few years back there used to be a platform called Parse which Facebook acquired and killed it.<p>With the ever-growing frontend development frameworks and environment, I believe such services will be very common. Firebase is somewhat like Parse what else you people know?<p>If you use any such platform please do share your experience.<p>Stay Safe &amp; Thank You
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davismwfl
Just my 2 cents, I don't/wouldn't use a service like this on anything other
then an MVP or non-critical internal tool.

I say this because if you base your entire business on a 3rd party service
like Parse was or like Firebase etc, your entire business is at their mercy
and whim. If they decide to remove a feature you rely on you are potentially
stuck trying to rapidly recreate it. If the service gets bought and the new
acquirer decides you are a competitor or that they wanted the team but don't
care about the service, everything can disappear. Of course, I am not
advocating you never use/depend on a 3rd party, cause we all have too, but
just that having your entire critical core infrastructure not being something
you own is not smart long term. FWIW, Firebase as it matures within the Google
ecosystem would be one that I'd be more likely to use in production.
Technically my current solution does have Firebase integrated into Production
but we are removing it as I disagree with storing any critical production data
in a "database service" where it isn't something I can migrate easily. e.g. we
use postgres in AWS as the primary datastore, I could use postgres in
GCP/Azure or in my own datacenter and not change any code, but I can't do that
with Firebase.

I do think services like Firebase etc are great for MVP's or for some proof of
concept work, I just don't like them for live production services. I also have
used them for non-critical internal tools or tools which have a short lifespan
etc.

