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
Yubico YubiKeys
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Yubico YubiKeys make the internet safer with phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA) by providing simple and secure access to computers, mobile devices, servers, and internet accounts. The Yubico YubiKey stops account takeovers at scale by mitigating phishing and ransomware attacks, and delivers users authentication with a simple touch or tap.
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.
YubiKeys are incredibly effective for protecting against phishing attacks, as they require physical interaction and can't be remotely compromised. They're ideal for safeguarding high-value targets (executives, IT admins, those handling sensitive data), enhancing remote access security, and often help meet industry compliance regulations. However, the initial hardware cost may be a concern for large-scale deployments with many low-risk users. Users prone to losing small items or scenarios involving older, incompatible systems might pose logistical challenges. Nonetheless, YubiKeys remain robust when addressing phishing-based attacks and securing privileged accounts. Consider a targeted rollout balancing security gain against potential hardware costs and user needs.
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 simple to use overall, the console's main menu is divided into Develop, Quality, Analytics and Grow - which have further subdivisions by their set of features and tools. Develop and Quality are relevant for product and tech. Analytics is relevant for product, analytics and Grow is relevant for marketing. This makes the overall use very easy.
I give slightly better than average rating because of the complexity in using a Yubikey. It is not as easy as native push notifications for 2FA products, however, it provides much better strength. Rating this higher or lower would be a disservice to people reading this review. If you are in the market for a hardware 2FA tool, Yubikey will be a great asset in your toolbox.
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.
Duo and Yubico YubiKeys actually work very well together. We have chosen to use these two products together to make safe and secure MFA (including Passwordless) available to all users. The ease of use that Duo allows for both OTP import and WebAuthn enrollment makes it possible for modern and legacy applications to be protected by Duo MFA via Yubico YubiKeys as the second factor.
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.
