Google offers the Firebase suite of application development tools, available free or at cost for higher degree of usages, priced flexibly accorded to features needed. The suite includes A/B testing and Crashlytics, Cloud Messaging (FCM) and in-app messaging, cloud storage and NoSQL storage (Cloud Firestore and Firestore Realtime Database), and other features supporting developers with flexible mobile application development.
$0.01
Per Verification
Zeplin
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
Zeplin, from the company of the same name, is a platform supporting collaboration in application development by engineers and designers by providing an API with popular collaboration, development and prototyping tools and creating a space where productions can be shared and reviewed.
$0
up to 1 project
Pricing
Firebase
Zeplin
Editions & Modules
Phone Authentication
$0.01
Per Verification
Stored Data
$0.18
Per GiB
Free
$0
up to 1 project
Advanced
$15
per month per seat (up to 50 projects)
Basic
$15
per month per project
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Firebase
Zeplin
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Firebase
Zeplin
Features
Firebase
Zeplin
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Firebase
-
Ratings
Zeplin
5.2
Ratings
39% below category average
Search
00 Ratings
5.20 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Firebase
-
Ratings
Zeplin
8.0
Ratings
1% above category average
Notifications
00 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Firebase should be your first choice if your platform is mobile first. Firebase's mobile platform support for client-side applications is second to none, and I cannot think of a comparable cross-platform toolkit. Firebase also integrates well with your server-side solution, meaning that you can plug Firebase into your existing app architecture with minimal effort.
Firebase lags behind on the desktop, however. Although macOS support is rapidly catching up, full Windows support is a glaring omission for most Firebase features. This means that if your platform targets Windows, you will need to implement the client functionality manually using Firebase's web APIs and wrappers, or look for another solution.
I still have some issues, especially with color integration between the style guide and also project. When we update the colors, it's not automatically sync to every project. Aside from that, zeplin solves my problem for hand-off design from design to developer. I set zeplin is source of truth design file
Extremely robust. Has about any tool you can think of under one roof making it extremely useful as a backup platform for data analytics or small teams that need something quickly.
Intuitive and easy UI/UX. Being made and owned by Google, you expect nothing less. Very easy to use for anyone that has any marketing or analytical experience especially in Google Analytics (which I just assume all marketers do).
Safe, secure, and sturdy. Never need to worry about downtimes or misinformation as it's as clean and safe as it is being run by Google.
FREE! What else is there to say. Unless you're an extremely large application handling hundreds of thousands to millions of users, this pay as you go plan will stay free.
Firebase/Firestore has very limited support for querying more complicated items; for example, performing a simple string search is not possible.
While upfront costs are low, costs can grow quickly if you're not careful about what you are being billed for.
Dashboards have at times shown different information to what is billed, and support from Google is less than stellar and not as effective as that from Amazon or Microsoft.
Firebase functions are more difficult to use, there are no concepts of triggers or cascading deletes without the use of Firebase functions. Firebase functions can run forever if not written correctly and cause billing nightmares. While this hasn't happened to us specifically it is a thing that happens more than one realizes.
Zeplin's component management and style guide help us to be consistent across whole product and it so easy to use for non-technical person. It is now easy to collaboration for designes between different teams like stackholders, product owner, UI/UX, developers and testers. Now there is only one point of reference is Zeplin so it is so easy to get details without asking designer or developer again and again.
Our analytics folks handled the majority of the communication when it came to customer service, but as far as I was aware, the support we got was pretty good. When we had an issue, we were able to reach out and get support in a timely fashion. Firebase was easy to reach and reasonably available to assist when needed.
Zeplin has classic support with a chat from the website. It's working fine, and we're also getting the support needed when needed. However, Zeplin is very good at closing the incidents and moving on. It was a while ago we had a case with their support so that it might have improved since then.
Before using Firebase, we exclusively used self hosted database services. Using Firebase has allowed us to reduce reliance on single points of failure and systems that are difficult to scale. Additionally, Firebase is much easier to set up and use than any sort of self hosted database. This simplicity has allowed us to try features that we might not have based on the amount of work they required in the past.
Out of all of the products that I have used to support design-to-development handoffs, Zeplin is my favorite. It’s pretty lightweight and easy to use (once you get the hang of it). Zeplin also has a smooth interface and is, generally, clearer to use than other tools, such as InVision. Plus, all of the plug-ins that you can use with Zeplin have supported the design-development relationship and workflows in which I’ve been involved in more efficient, clear, and effective ways than I’ve seen with any other product.
Firebase has been able to help us understand reliably, the drop-off in our user flows with their funnel feature. This has made it easy for us to be able to pinpoint weaknesses in our funnel and test and optimize with data as the dependent variable.
From an economic standpoint, we don't pay for Firebase which is great, but as the saying goes "You get what you pay for" also holds true in this context. As we looked to grow and scale, we looked for a paid solution.
From a developer resource standpoint, Firebase has been extremely easy to integrate into our app. Whether it be the event tracking, dynamic links or crash reporting we have not had to waste too much developer time thanks to their well-organized developer docs.
We're using the free plan, so it fits in our needs, although we're limited to create only one project at a time
Sketch has some plugins that offers exactly what Zeplin does, for free
The integration with design apps (Sketch, Photoshop, XD) and collaboration (Slack and Trello) helps our team to better communicate and be notified on every update
