Filter Ratings and Reviews
Filter 26 vetted Firebase reviews and ratings
Reviews (1-11 of 11)
November 19, 2019
Firebase is a dumpster fire!
It's being used mainly by our analytics and mobile teams. We were forced to migrate from Google Analytics, which is bad from an analytics standpoint (because Firebase has an inferior interface and is more restrictive in terms of tracking App interactions) but good from a mobile diagnostics point of view (because it has better diagnostics than Google Analytics).
It helps us understand Mobile App Version adoption, as well as gauge the success of new feature rollout and/or experience changes.
It helps us understand Mobile App Version adoption, as well as gauge the success of new feature rollout and/or experience changes.
- Diagnostics (e.g. app updates, removals, adoption of new mobile versions).
- The Firebase interface is terrible. Vastly inferior to Google Analytics - even if you create a Web + App Firebase View, it's still poor experience. It's very hard to get non-analytics stakeholders to use Firebase.
- Heavy restrictions on the number of Events that can be used to track App interactions. Even heavier restrictions on the number of parameters you can associate with those Events.
- Poor customer support - Not just in terms of advice, but also in terms of its limited scope
- Firebase Analytics technically isn't free (which is what was so great about Google Analytics) - If you want to do anything meaningful you have to pay to use BigQuery.
August 28, 2019
Firebase: More Than a Databse
I am using Firebase as a realtime database and backend as a service for a prototype real estate application I am building. I first used Firebase while I was attending a coding boot camp: we used it for one of our big projects. There are a number of advantages to using this.
- JSON storage
- Serverless
- Pretty secure
- Limited querying capability
Firebase is being used by almost all the software engineers in our organization. It is heavily used by the applications for the backend authentication and realtime database services. Firebase helps to keep the database up at all times and make sure all the user authentications are done in a very seamless manner without any interruptions and users get a very smooth experience.
- User authentications: Firebase is an amazing tool that removes the requirement for having an authentication server locally or on your private cloud. It has its own cloud and syncs your user data in realtime and securely. Firebase will run the end to end authentication process and free you to make your application a better user experience.
- Firebase Console is one of the best features of this platform. This console is one point stop for all monitoring and troubleshooting purposes. You can view data from all of your connected applications and make and changes in realtime from the console itself.
- Firebase hardly lacks in any form but one thing that I feel at times is that since this service is from Google, you may find some problems when you try and connect other vendors' online platforms. It crashes at a time which creates problems. It does not throw any error if you work with Google applications but at times if you connect it with third-party platforms, you might face some challenges.
November 12, 2019
Great prototyping tool and a time saver.
I choose Firebase for two particular reasons. 1) Implementing authentication (which is a pain point if you are building something from scratch) and 2) building a prototype for our application which in our case we used a combination of the datastore and firestore. But Firebase turned out to be useful for a couple of other things as well, particularly the hosting, storage buckets and cloud functions features were very useful for our application. Firebase is really good for building applications in a certain way, which sometimes can be restrictive or not a match for your organization's philosophy but I would definitely recommend it for people who want to build prototypes without worrying about configuration and structure.
- Documentation is pretty solid
- Authentication feature is awesome and one of the simplest to implement.
- Lots of added features like Machine Learning and Analytics that builds on top of Firebase that can add value to your application.
- To build things in Firebase you have to think in Firebase, which in some cases requires a lot of research and this is sometimes a minus due to a lot of wrong information out there which encourages people to build in whatever way they see fit without any planning.
- Tooling used to be a pain point but this is slowly improving.
- The data explorer interface in firestore and realtime db could use a bit more improvements.
August 29, 2019
An all-in-one real time cloud platform!
Firebase is being used by multiple departments across the organization, namely Technology, Product, Marketing, Analytics, etc. While the Tech team uses this for monitoring crashes and performance, the product team uses this for user funnel and user behavior analysis. The marketing team uses this for AB testing, in-app messaging, push notification, etc. Analytics uses this for creating dashboards and pulling user analytics.
- Crash reporting: it does a detailed and real-time analysis of crashes, with great insights that pinpoint the developers to the issue.
- User funnels and behavior analysis: it helps us track audience data, funnels, retention cohorts and all kinds of key events in the user journey on app and web.
- Notifications: both in-app, as well as push notifications via Firebase Cloud Manager, have the best delivery rates across the industry, this is the best tool to send out marketing notifications to users.
- Email and notifications system need to be set up, it is not plugged and play, needs some development changes on the app side too if we use Firebase, unlike other email and push CRM tools.
- User management and access controls: these are complex to manage, can be simplified.
- Nothing else specifically, overall it's a good tool.
Our marketing team and product development team uses Firebase to solve several of our mobile app problems. First, our product development team mainly uses Firebase for their crash reporting (Crashlytics), while our marketing team utilizes Firebase for multiple analytics and growth features. For analytics, we specifically utilize the Funnel, Retention, Events, and MAU features. As for growth features, we have been able to utilize their Dynamic Links, A/B Testing, Predictions, and Remote Configurations.
- 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).
- If you are looking for a mobile app analytics platform that has extremely high-quality tracking (down to an ad level), then Firebase may not be for you. While they do track basic UTMs source, medium, and sometimes campaign, Firebase's attribution only scratches the surface of what other competitors are able to do.
- Firebase has room for improvement when it comes to its Cloud Messaging aka Push Notifications. The room for improvement lies in its user segmentation capabilities. Currently, Firebase does not allow for platform users to segment app users based on in-app events, except for their predictive user events (Firebase predicts which events users will take). Rather Firebase primarily allows for app user segmentation based on demographics and locations. Also, Firebase doesn't allow for automated push notifications or adding images to the push notifications.
- While Firebase can export data into Google Analytics, it does not allow for direct data exports to a data visualization tool like Google Data Studio, or mobile app engagement platforms, etc. This would be a more advanced feature, that would ideally be in their paid plan.
April 10, 2019
The One Stop Shop For Everything Your Mobile App Needs!
Firebase for us, unlike most companies, was used in the Marketing department as a data analytics, attribution, and deep linking platform. Its main uses were for weekly customer activity reports, early stage attribution reports on downloads and in-app actions (although not the best for this use case), sending push notifications and in-app messages, and deep linking/dynamic sharing functionality.
- 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.
- 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.
July 11, 2019
Review Of Firebase
Firebase was a great choice for us to build our apps. Since it provides Mobile Backend as a Service it helps us to save our time. For our project, we needed a remote database in the cloud. After comparing most of the cloud solutions, finally, we decided to go with firebase because of its good with overall performance, great documentation and, of course, its a product by the Google brand. It was easy to use and just needed basic coding skills. It is powerful enough to make you satisfied.
- Data is structured in a simple understandable manner.
- The free version is nearly similar to premium version.
- Provides authentication services such as Google, Facebook, and email to authenticate user.
- In the free version there are a limitations on number of simultaneous connections.
- If u need relational, complicated queries, its not the best solution.
Firebase is one and only tool for all of the mobile backends, especially Android. Most of the times when creating mobile applications in the Android studio it is recommended to use Firebase. We use Firebase for JSON data pushing and parsing from Firebase bucket. We use it every place possible, for web apps, smartphone apps, push notifications and many authorization protocols.
- Web apps storage for real-time pushing and parsing for users.
- Android apps which have features like push notifications, online storage, authentication, and OAuth tokens.
- Firebase is mostly used when you have real-time data collection and traffic generation. Firebase bucket makes possible to store images, Text data and use cases like URL shorteners.
- You have to restrict yourself on single storage bucket for all of the users.
- High costs for storage. There are very limited connections in one single transaction.
- Since Firebase stores data to different servers in the world, it may take time to retrieve in real-time. Thus the latency and throughput downgrade.
We use Firebase to provide push notification services for mobile applications and some internal business tools. For us, it is used to provide push services to internal employees, and to provide push services to end users of our mobile applications. We find it to be simple to use, effortless to maintain, and effective at its job.
- Reliability - We have not noticed any significant outages or delays as long as we have used Firebase.
- Ease of use - Setting up or changing Firebase services has been nearly effortless for us.
- Organization - It feels like Firebase should be part of Google Cloud Console, but it is its own tool. This isn't a big issue, but it would be great if we could access our Firebase services within Google Cloud Console.
March 09, 2019
Firebase Review
Firebase is an extremely simple to use NoSQL data store from Google. Firebase provides front-end SDKs for the web, iOS, and Android usage, meaning there is no need for any kind of database setup or maintenance -- you just simply use the front-end SDKs. Firebase is a great tool for light workloads that do not require complex SQL queries, deep population of database selections, or complex sorting/filtering options.
- Firebase removes the need from having to run any kind of backend database -- front-end clients simply interact via the provided SDKs.
- Custom security rules allow for fine-grained tuning of what front-end security settings are allowed.
- Extremely cost-effective and has a generous free tier for new projects.
- 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.
Firebase Scorecard Summary
About Firebase
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.
Categories: Mobile Analytics, App Development
Firebase Technical Details
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application: | No |