Apache Cordova vs. Firebase

If you want to teach your team or students how to program and learn programming languages, you would not want to utilize Phone Gap software. The Phone Gap software creates an easy fix to avoid learning every programming language for mobile devices. This creates a learning curve for some programmers because they no longer need to learn every language to be successful. However, for personal growth, this could pose an issue if programmers need to change jobs and are only capable of programming in web languages and then translate them using Phone Gap. Adobe Phone Gap works wonderfully for what our company uses it for. We use it because we have app launch deadlines and our programmers are invested in the company; therefore, they are aware that output is our goal, not actually learning the various languages, but more making sure the client is happy

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

• Business Application like payment collection, application for salesperson etc.
• Used for developing the mobile application that needs to be developed faster with the same User Experience on both iOS and Android.

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

• Sometimes it's hard to configure VS Code applications with another IDE like WebStrom etc.
• Emulators are slow performing.
• Sometimes there are version conflicts with the newer codebase.

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 don't use the Firebase UI much, but rather connect it to GA4. GA4 has a great event model but the GA4 UI and analysis capabilities are limited. It's harder to measure product usage type of engagement but if you have the time and resources to leverage the GA4 to BiqQuery export you'll have all the raw event data you'll need for deep analysis, segmentation, and audience activation.

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

We selected Cordova since it provides ease of doing business and ease of use. The best thing about Cordova is that you can code once and run it on multiple platforms. Cordova provides add-ons that connect your code with native features of various mobile platforms. And you do not need to learn anything new since you can use your javascript skills

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

• Development timeline for making Cordova apps targeting multiple platform is lower than developing individual native apps for each platform.
• Its easy to learn and set up. Coming from a native app development background, the learning curve for me was fairly small to get started with my hybrid app.

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