TrustRadius Insights for Firebase are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Real-time Processing Capacity: Users have appreciated the increased real-time processing capacity based on demand, finding it beneficial for efficient operations and seamless performance across platforms. This enhanced capability has enabled users to handle dynamic workloads effectively.
Efficient Realtime Database: Reviewers have highlighted the surprisingly fast and efficient nature of the realtime database on both Android and IOS platforms, enhancing user experience with quick data retrieval and storage capabilities. The speed and reliability of the database have positively impacted overall system responsiveness.
User Authentication and Management: Customers value the ease of use provided by user authentication features and server-less application management, making interactions convenient while ensuring secure access control. The streamlined process of managing user authentication has simplified account security measures for users.
Firebase is used to create new native applications with a NoSQL code base. The platform allows to create any type of applications like social networks, games, news and applications like streaming video and music thanks to its video player plugin.
Pros
Helps build and run apps.
Building NativeScript apps just got a whole lot easier with Master Verbruggen's new Firebase plugin.
Reading data from Firebase is easy and only requires a few lines of JavaScript code.
Cons
Firebase is only based on NoSQL database.
Likelihood to Recommend
Firebase is a scalable, flexible, and secure solution that you can trust. It uses a NoSQL database to monitor in real time the traffic of visits to your web application.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 201-500 employees)
We use Firebase as our complete solution for authentication, analytics, testing, and monitoring for our Android, iOS, and macOS apps. We chose Firebase over all other competing solutions because of its excellent documentation, helpful community, widespread adoption, scalability, and broad platform support. Firebase enables us to use one framework for all of this across multiple platforms, devices, and languages, which has not only simplified our codebase and support footprint, but has also meant that new features and mechanisms can be rolled out more quickly across all platforms than if separate libraries and frameworks were used on each platform.
Pros
Analytics
Reporting
Cross-platform
Authentication
Cons
macOS support for all iOS Firebase features
Windows support for all features
Improved integration with all Google products (such as Admob and Adsense)
More sample applications and snippets to help developers rapidly add functionality
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 1-10 employees)
The moment you say you want to develop cross platform applications and you want a smooth implementation no matter which platform you want to deploy to, please consider FIREBASE. You see todays generation is so much obsessed with the front end part, they forget that the actual power of their application would be released when your back end support system is really backing you up. There are numerous services, and to be honest you really cant use all of them in one go.. but primarily I recommend making the start with Authentications, Databasing, CloudFunctions and Notifications. Authentications will take care of all the extra code you have previously written with how to manage users- from signing in to changing passwords. Databasing is highly efficient with the realtime Db especially when you want to listen to changes that happen to your data in realtime. The Clound FUnctions is your step towards serverless architecture, when all you have to do is keep functions to do with your project ready to fire on the cloud... rather than maintaining an entire server! And if you have a mobile user base, you have to see how easy it is to send notifications via firebase
Pros
Databasing
CloudFunctions
CloudMessaging
Crashalitics
Authentications
in App messaging
Analytics
RemoteConfig
Hosting
Cons
Cloud Functions: its a terrible let down. It is the sole reason for Firebase not to become the leader in the Cloud Wars. And that is because of only 1 single problem they dont wish to address. They want your credit card information because if you ever cross the free limits, you have to be billed. But they have provided no easy way to stop your cloud function incase there is a problem. They have provided numerous work arounds and twisted versions of what could be done to avoid the situation. But they are all nothing short of giving you a run around. Its not acceptable. The Firebase team cant expect to show "how easy and efficient" firebase is... while at the same time making stopping your CloudFuctions a nightmare! Not fair and Unacceptable.
They need to be more supportive of Googles very own cross platform tool Flutter.
No support for teachers who really want to promote Firebase in their locality. They have a twisted idea of Google developers around your city to help you out. When in numerous cases the guys at the google developer groups are really not that into firebase, and why should people who are less passionate about training the next generation, have the call about how it should reach the grass roots.
Likelihood to Recommend
From all the Cloud systems I totally recommend Firebase. How ever, with regards to where you should not use it... I want to be very clear. DONT ever use the firebase Cloud Functions if you dont have enough knowledge in NodeJs and return values/promises. You will be billed and you wont be able to immediately stop your project. This is a terrible downside and truly costs Firebase the No.1 spot in the cloud services world. But lets say you have a scenario- where you have to sign up users, manage them, authenticate which user can access whose data, store and retrieve data in realtime, be notified about such updates or changes... and have them presented to your users, irrespective of the platform your users are using. Then this problem can be tackled like Childs play with firebase. Your steps would be to implement Authentications, RealTime Db, Cloud Functions & Clound Messaging. This is where Firebase shines. Their documentation is crisp. Their implementations are superb, no matter which platform you are developing on.. or targeting... its all a charm.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 1-10 employees)
The technical and marketing department is using Firebase. The technical department is using it for users authentication, no-SQL database, remote configuration, push notifications, and crash log. Marketing team use the analytics dashboard to get the insights into our product
Pros
Authentication
Database
Cons
Remote Config
Cloud Functions
Likelihood to Recommend
Firebase is the best tool for startups that don't have many resources and team members while creating the product. It's straightforward and cheap to have proper authentication and database. Firebase database Is not suitable for a company that needs a SQL database while I recommend it for analytics.
We used Firebase for handling our mobile push notifications. It was our platform for both sending push notifications and measuring the success of those pushes. It was used mostly by the content team, producers specifically. That was the one group that sent pushes. Our analytics folks used the platform as well. It gave us a solution for sending push notifications and measuring the impact of our pushes.
Pros
Sending push notifications in real time
Scheduling push notifications in advance
Cons
Clunkiness of the platform
Some analytics we found not to be 100 percent accurate
Likelihood to Recommend
Some scenarios where Firebase is well suited would be specifically to news organizations who regularly send push notifications to a mobile app. If organizations have an IOs or Android app, then Firebase would be suitable for them. It's less ideal for companies that don't send pushes at all, or for companies that want in-depth and highly accurate analytics.
VU
Verified User
Employee (Media Production company, 51-200 employees)
It's mainly being used by our Product, UA, and Developer Teams. The Product Team uses it to A/B test push notifications and the subscription trial period. UA team mainly uses to track users across various events as well as Google UAC campaigns. The Developer team mainly uses the crashlytics to troubleshoot and fix stability issues. This allows them to help prioritize their task better based on their priority.
Pros
Google Ads: tracks users across UAC campaigns.
A/B Testing: in-app, push, and trial period.
Cons
Not so great at tracking traffic sources outside of Google Ads and organics.
Firebase UI can be slow sometimes if you're working with large data, loading issues, or an overall sluggish system.
Likelihood to Recommend
Firebase is great for anyone looking into getting into the mobile app business or ones that already have an app and needs an extra layer of analytics along with additional added features. Firebase helps with troubleshooting the most common issues along with making sure your app remains stable. It goes much further than that if you're interested in running experiments and A/B testing to optimize the user experience you can set that up easily. It gives you the ability to discover a lot of great things about your users and their usability of different features (UI, purchases, engagement, retention, etc.) and helps you identify if the experiment is likely to succeed or not.
VU
Verified User
Director in Marketing (Internet company, 51-200 employees)
It's being used mainly by our analytics and mobile teams. We were forced to migrate from Google Analytics, which is bad from an analytics standpoint (because Firebase has an inferior interface and is more restrictive in terms of tracking App interactions) but good from a mobile diagnostics point of view (because it has better diagnostics than Google Analytics).
It helps us understand Mobile App Version adoption, as well as gauge the success of new feature rollout and/or experience changes.
Pros
Diagnostics (e.g. app updates, removals, adoption of new mobile versions).
Cons
The Firebase interface is terrible. Vastly inferior to Google Analytics - even if you create a Web + App Firebase View, it's still poor experience. It's very hard to get non-analytics stakeholders to use Firebase.
Heavy restrictions on the number of Events that can be used to track App interactions. Even heavier restrictions on the number of parameters you can associate with those Events.
Poor customer support - Not just in terms of advice, but also in terms of its limited scope
Firebase Analytics technically isn't free (which is what was so great about Google Analytics) - If you want to do anything meaningful you have to pay to use BigQuery.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have a basic app that doesn't have a lot of interactions/touchpoints and you just want some topline numbers, it does an okay job. It's pretty easy to tag your screens, although using Events to tag the interactions can be a bit of a head-scratch.
If you have an App where you want to learn a ton of things about your users, forget it. I'd strongly advise you to choose something else. There are too many constraints in terms of configuring the tagging to capture what you want.
You're going to struggle with adoption across the company. The Interface is terrible (even the Web + App view in Google Analytics is pretty poor) and it's hard to get product/marketing managers to log in and play around with the data.
Firebase is being used by multiple departments across the organization, namely Technology, Product, Marketing, Analytics, etc. While the Tech team uses this for monitoring crashes and performance, the product team uses this for user funnel and user behavior analysis. The marketing team uses this for AB testing, in-app messaging, push notification, etc. Analytics uses this for creating dashboards and pulling user analytics.
Pros
Crash reporting: it does a detailed and real-time analysis of crashes, with great insights that pinpoint the developers to the issue.
User funnels and behavior analysis: it helps us track audience data, funnels, retention cohorts and all kinds of key events in the user journey on app and web.
Notifications: both in-app, as well as push notifications via Firebase Cloud Manager, have the best delivery rates across the industry, this is the best tool to send out marketing notifications to users.
Cons
Email and notifications system need to be set up, it is not plugged and play, needs some development changes on the app side too if we use Firebase, unlike other email and push CRM tools.
User management and access controls: these are complex to manage, can be simplified.
Nothing else specifically, overall it's a good tool.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's best suited for tech and product monitoring, as well as marketing teams to send out user notifications. Less appropriate for a detailed use by tech or marketing, for instance, it will not have pre-set templates for email notifications that can be used by marketing; or it will not have daily summary reports for key parameters that tech can use to circulate amongst key stakeholders etc.—these need to be built on top of Firebase by your own team.
VU
Verified User
Vice-President in Marketing (Internet company, 51-200 employees)
Firebase was a great choice for us to build our apps. Since it provides Mobile Backend as a Service it helps us to save our time. For our project, we needed a remote database in the cloud. After comparing most of the cloud solutions, finally, we decided to go with firebase because of its good with overall performance, great documentation and, of course, its a product by the Google brand. It was easy to use and just needed basic coding skills. It is powerful enough to make you satisfied.
Pros
Data is structured in a simple understandable manner.
The free version is nearly similar to premium version.
Provides authentication services such as Google, Facebook, and email to authenticate user.
Cons
In the free version there are a limitations on number of simultaneous connections.
If u need relational, complicated queries, its not the best solution.
Likelihood to Recommend
Best cloud solution for mobile application development. It made it so easy to build real-time apps. It's the ultimate solution for so many problems that we've been going through for a long time. It is really easy to integrate with the development application. There are a lot of guides and tutorials to learn Firebase in less time.
Our marketing team and product development team uses Firebase to solve several of our mobile app problems. First, our product development team mainly uses Firebase for their crash reporting (Crashlytics), while our marketing team utilizes Firebase for multiple analytics and growth features. For analytics, we specifically utilize the Funnel, Retention, Events, and MAU features. As for growth features, we have been able to utilize their Dynamic Links, A/B Testing, Predictions, and Remote Configurations.
Pros
Analytics wise, retention is extremely important to our app, therefore we take advantage of the cohort analysis to see the impact of our middle funnel (retargeting, push, email) efforts affect the percent of users that come back into the app. Firebase allows us to easily segment these this data and look at a running average based on certain dates.
When it comes to any mobile app, a deep linking strategy is essential to any apps success. With Firebase's Dynamic Links, we are able to share dynamic links (recognize user device) that are able to redirect to in-app content. These deep links allow users to share other deep-linked content with friends, that also have link preview assets.
Firebase allows users to effectively track events, funnels, and MAUs. With this simple event tracking feature, users can put organize these events into funnels of their main user flows (e.g., checkout flows, onboarding flows, etc.), and subsequently be able to understand where the drop-off is in the funnel and then prioritize areas of the funnel to fix. Also, MAU is important to be able to tell if you are bringing in new users and what's the active volume for each platform (Android, iOS).
Cons
If you are looking for a mobile app analytics platform that has extremely high-quality tracking (down to an ad level), then Firebase may not be for you. While they do track basic UTMs source, medium, and sometimes campaign, Firebase's attribution only scratches the surface of what other competitors are able to do.
Firebase has room for improvement when it comes to its Cloud Messaging aka Push Notifications. The room for improvement lies in its user segmentation capabilities. Currently, Firebase does not allow for platform users to segment app users based on in-app events, except for their predictive user events (Firebase predicts which events users will take). Rather Firebase primarily allows for app user segmentation based on demographics and locations. Also, Firebase doesn't allow for automated push notifications or adding images to the push notifications.
While Firebase can export data into Google Analytics, it does not allow for direct data exports to a data visualization tool like Google Data Studio, or mobile app engagement platforms, etc. This would be a more advanced feature, that would ideally be in their paid plan.
Likelihood to Recommend
Firebase is really well-suited for beginner apps that are run by a small team, with a low marketing budget. The platform gives you the 80 / 20 of mobile app analytics with some cool features such as cloud messaging, A/B testing, in-app messages, crash reporting, etc. While if you are looking to grow and scale, then Firebase is most likely not the solution for you as attribution, cost ingestion, data export, web-to-app, journey banners, and webhooks are more suitable to your plan.
