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
HCL Domino
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino, and before that Lotus Domino) is an enterprise application development platform, boasting mobile-app capabilities to enterprise authentication and a companion low-code app builder called Domino Volt.
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.
If you're looking for a high-security environment, then Domino is great. The built-in cybersecurity features are seamless, unlike those in the Microsoft or Google environments. Large databases are easily managed, and Domino enables us to automate many of our business workflows. It's easier to use than Microsoft PowerApps, for example. It doesn't integrate easily with other systems, which can be problematic at times. And because of the long-term lack of support from when IBM owned it, the user community has dwindled somewhat, making it hard to reach out for help.
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).
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.
I am not a fan of the Domino ID for authentication purposes. Some Admins appreciate this feature, but ID aging, updating and management issues are burdensome.
Integrations with current available software applications as a result of lower Domino adoption rates.
Administration tools are somewhat dated and clunky. Even with updates and patches, the Domino administrator console hasn't changed in years.
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.
The UI is somewhat dated, and the email experience is not at all like Outlook, but we love the versatility and functionality of Domino. I would absolutely hate to give it up for anything else. We've tried to replicate some of Domino's functionality in SharePoint and found that Domino is considerably better.
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.
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.
We use SharePoint, SQL and Teams but only for the things that they excel in. For example, we use teams for small team interactions (including external participants). We use teams for meetings too. We've discovered that Teams collaboration is not as full-functional as Domino and more importantly, that our members (financial services) do not trust the Open Office365 cloud. SharePoint and Team collaborative features are often blocked in our member organizations. Domino is much easier to identify and unblock at the firewall level. It's much easier to restrict collaboration to approved options in Domino.
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.
