BaaS products speed up application development and let us build MVP super fast. But there is always a dark side. Since you do not own your backend – sometime in the future it might disappear and you will not be able to change that.
One of the most popular BaaS solutions nowadays is Parse. Unfortunately, Facebook announced that Parse will shut down in a year period and a huge amount of Parse clients started searching for alternatives.
You might think that BaaS is a very new approach and therefore should not have many providers. In fact, there are dozens of providers and you can spend a week just reading a brief description about each of them! Take a look at the open sourced list of the alternatives and you will understand me. That’s why I will cover only three most popular alternatives.
1. Kinvey
Website: http://kinvey.com
Kinvey is a very popular enterprise solution. It is pretty expensive, but you receive all the main features at once with a high level of stability.
Advantage:
The good thing here is that you will get a Parse-like infrastructure and you will not have to change your development process.
Disadvantage:
Nevertheless, you have to keep in mind that tomorrow or in a year Kinvey might follow Parse path.
2. Deployd
Website: http://deployd.com
Deployd is an open source BaaS solution. It is easy to setup via npm and you can add new features via pull requests. The main idea here is that you will have to manage the hardware infrastructure by yourself and just use the BaaS software.
Advantage:
The advantage here is that you own your backend and just use open source software. It will continue working forever while you need it and ready to pay for hosting.
Disadvantage:
On the other hand, you have to spend your time and money on server maintenance and you cannot be sure that Deployd will always be supported by the community.
3. Develop it yourself
Once you have enough belief and stability it’s time to take all aspects of the project under control. You can always develop backend yourself.
Advantage:
In this case you will not have to rely on third parties or development community. You will be able to create software and setup the most suitable server at any time. That is the only way to continue growing your project without fears.
Summary
Now you know all pros and cons of the major ways that Product Owners and CTOs can choose. With these variants covered, you will be able to make a proper decision based on your Project needs. Good luck!
3 Comments
Thanks for sharing this info on parse migration. Good Work.
Thanks for sharing this information. You forgot to mention the following players:
www.back4app.com
www.stanplay.com
You’re welcome. Thanks for your additions