What is Firebase?

Firebase is a Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) app development platform. It provides developers with a variety of tools and services to help them develop applications, grow their user base, and generate revenue. Firebase is considered a NoSQL database program that stores data in JSON-like documents.

It is a technology that allows you to create web apps without server-side programming, making development faster and easier. It supports Web, iOS, OS X and Android. Apps using Firebase can consume and control data without worrying about how data is stored and synchronized between different app instances in real time. Also, Firebase can help with registration and authorization of users, storage of sessions (authorized users), media files to which are easily accessible thanks to Cloud Storage.

In Firebase, a document is a collection of key-value pairs defined by a schema. A group of documents makes up a collection.

What is Firebase used for?

The main advantage of the platform is that it allows the developer not to be distracted by the creation of the backend, that is, the program part of the project hidden from the user, for example, the server code. And this simplifies and speeds up the creation of mobile applications, makes it possible to fully focus on the UX / UI. It is the combination of Firebase with the Flutter framework that allows Sannacode engineers to create fast applications for Android and iOS to solve a variety of problems.

This is a server, a database, hosting, and authentication in one platform. Firebase Realtime Database provides developers with an API that synchronizes application data between clients and stores it in the cloud.

Also Firebase acts as a file storage. Firebase Storage provides reliable file upload and download for the application. Cloud storage of video, audio, or any other type of files is supported by Google Cloud Storage. The content of the cloud storage is reliably protected by its own security system.

When creating a new mobile application in Sannacode, in general, a lot of attention is paid to security issues. It is quite expensive to create an authentication system from scratch every time, and these costs are often not justified. The Firebase Auth authentication system allows you to cope with most of the calls, in which the application user can be authenticated by password and email. Supports Firebase Auth also open authorization protocol OAuth 2.0 used by Google, Twitter, Facebook. The Firebase authentication system integrates directly into the database.

Firebase Messaging is a cross-platform solution that allows you to send messages to the devices of your app users. Notifications can be sent to devices of any type, including PCs — both to individuals and to groups, or to all devices on which the application is installed. The solution also supports the ability to send notifications even in individual topics. The solution is easily scalable and allows you to send a huge number of notifications in the shortest possible time, or customize the sending of notifications, for example, taking into account the recipient’s time zone.

How much does Firebase cost?

Firebase offers a free plan that you can actually work on. It doesn’t have a fixed or one-size-fits-all user plan that you can pick and get started.

The free plan has limitations. For example, it does not give developers access to Cloud Features.

Blaze is a pay-per-service plan such as Cloud Firestore, Cloud Features, Authentication, Hosting, Firebase Machine Learning, Realtime Database, and Storage.

These services are free, no matter which plan you choose. Take a look at the various services offered on the platform that are free.

Firebase free services

1. Using applications for testing.
2. Application indexing by search engines
3. Using multiple versions of applications for A / B testing
4. Application performance forecasting and reporting
5. Build communication with application clients through integrated messaging
6. Automatic notifications and user messaging across Android, iOS and web apps using Firebase Cloud
7. Monitoring application performance from Firebase
8. Identifying Crash in Applications with Firebase Crashlytics
9. Redirect users between different platforms using dynamic links
10. Remote application configuration
11. Using Machine Learning from Firebase to predict the number of returning users.

Firebase paid services

In the Usage tab of the Firebase console, you can check the payment status of the plan and information related to the use of various Firebase services.

1. Storage Tab — The Storage tab displays the total amount of data in the database, excluding data stored in other Firebase services.
2. Connections Tab — The Connections tab contains information about the total number of connections in real time, including WebSockets.
3. Load Tab — This tab contains a graphical display of the application load and shows this data to users for a specified period of time.
4. Downloads tab — contains information related to the total amount of data downloaded from the database.

For more details on Firebase pricing read here.