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
Jamf Connect
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Jamf Connect is a Mac device authentication solution, that lets a user unbox their device, power it on and access all of their corporate applications and resources after signing on with a single set of cloud identity credentials.
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.
Jamf Connect works particularly well in our lab environments where the central "source of truth" for student accounts is our Okta IdP. As Apple has recommended moving away from Active Directory binding (which was our previous source of truth for authentication) we needed a new central way to manage this function. Okta worked well for other services on campus, and it was a smooth integration to make it work with Jamf Connect for virtually all use cases on campus (we still have a couple of NAS/SAN systems that require Active Directory).
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.
It is almost a certainty that we will continue to use Jamf Connect, even with Apple coming out with Platform Single Sign On. Jamf Connect provides several features that PSSO does not, such as "just in time" local account creation and automatic synchronization of enterprise credentials. It is unlikely that we would investigate other options at this time or in the near future.
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.
Jamf Connect is quite easy to use and has the necessary options on the login screen (such as WiFi network connection) for getting connected and authenticated. It has a simple to use menulet that allows password changes and resets as well as temporary elevation, all with very clear workflows. It also allows us to assign field staff to their client users' computers so that they can provide support without having to resort to LAPS accounts.
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.
The only other product we evaluated was Xcreds from TwoCanoes software, which is essentially a one person shop. We already were Jamf Pro customers, and Jamf Connect fulfilled all of the requirements for this function along with providing professional customer support. Since we already had a relationship with Jamf, it made perfect sense to add this product to our toolkit, and keep technical support contained within one organization.
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.
