AWS IoT Core vs. Firebase

End-to-end encryption is an amazing feature because we use IoT to connect to various devices in order to gather data/ stats in real-time. We're able to publish solutions with ease and at a faster rate because of AWS IoT Core. However, its inability to interact with other IoT tools is a big con that I would like them to improve upon.

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

• AWS IoT Core integrates power analytics and an AI solution for sensor data processing.
• Great protocol support including HTTPs and MQTT required to connect resource constraint IoT devices to cloud
• High security standards during data transmission
• Scalability and a great user community

Incentivized

• 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).

Incentivized

• Ability to integrate with Ethercalc software solution
• Ability to introduce NFC toolchains and systems which could be utilized in iot modular gateway solutions like drones
• Ability to reduce latency as the solution scales is very much needed
• Hybrid solution which can integrate other existing iot solutions into AWS iot core

Incentivized

• Attribution and specifically multi-touch attribution could be more robust such as Branch or Appsflyer but understand this isn't Firebases bread and butter.
• More parameters. Firebase allows you to track tons of events (believe it's up to 50 or so) but the parameters of the events it only allows you to track 5 which is so messily and unbelievable. So you're able to get good high-level data but if you want to get granular with the events and actions are taken on your app to get real data insight you either have to go with a paid data analytics platform or bring on someone that's an expert in SQL to go through Big Query.
• City-specific data instead of just country-specific data would have been a huge plus as well.

Incentivized

I give AWS IoT Core's overall usability this rating because it is very easy to use and is enjoyed by all of our staff. The only problem is that it sometimes glitches and it freezes a lot. So overall, the usability of AWS IoT Core is very good, and we will continue to use it.

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

It covers all the aspects of IoT services required for an IoT company. It supports all the industry-wide protocols for secure data transmission and integrates powerful AL and ML technology for data analytics. For data storage, Amazon S3 is a great solution. Strong tech support and user community. Since it is widely used as compared to other products, there is an abundance of training and learning material on the web.

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

Azure IoT service provides more or less the same services as compared to AWS IoT core, however the costing of AWS lead us to continued usage of IoT core over Azure IoT services. Also, considering our existing technology stack is on AWS, it was a natural selection for better integration and ease of use.

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

• Gives confidence to prototype iot solutions across lots of devices in little time
• Ability to meet requirements for managing a variety of communication protocols
• Learning iot analytics and visualization for faster insights enablement
• Onboarding devices and managing quickly without building inhouse solutions

Incentivized

• Makes building real-time interfaces easy to do at scale with no backend involvement.
• Very low pricing for small companies and green-fields projects.
• Lack of support for more complicated queries needs to be managed by users and often forces strange architecture choices for data to enable it to be easily accessed.

Incentivized