Azure App Service vs. Firebase

Azure App Service is well suited in our case :

• Our website is developed by our tech partner in a full Microsoft Azure cloud based environment.
• We gave them specific access rights and the CI / CD integration helped a lot for updates and improvements deployment.
• Most of the infra issues we had with our website weren't coming from App Service

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Super quick & easy to deploy new apps in visual studio
• Easy scaling to help reduce costs during off-hours
• The powerful Azure ecosystem offers a lot of functionality that ties in well with Azure App Service

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Abstraction of computing resources like Heroku does with dynos.
• Azure Portal overall is pretty bloated and that affects managing Azure App Service applications.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

I enjoy the fact that Azure App Service can be managed by the Azure portal and a fully graphical user interface, as well as from two different flavors of command-line interface, i.e. Azure CLI and Azure Powershell. By utilizing the Azure Cloud Shell, we are able to switch between Azure Bash (CLI) and Powershell at any given moment and manage the Azure App Service settings from devices of any form-factor (Web based management).

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We had an issue where we deployed too large of a resource and didn't notice until the bill came through. They were very understanding and saw we weren't utilizing the resources so they issued a generous refund in about 4 hours. Very fast, friendly, and understanding support reps from my experience.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

In terms of deploying your apps, Azure App Service provides a solid foundation. You may use either the Azure command-line interface or the Web Portal to administer these apps. As a whole, I find You may easily deploy your apps to Azure App Service to be a really difficult platform for novices to get their feet wet. First and foremost, I'd look at Heroku's user interface and the way it abstracts compute units.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Download time is reduced because of auto scaling feature.
• Insight tool helps in finding issues quickly.
• CI/CD has helped in automation.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized