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Firebase is a dumpster fire!
November 19, 2019

Firebase is a dumpster fire!

Jeff Burslem | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Firebase

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.
  • 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.
  • (Vaguely) Positive: We were forced to move from Google Analytics, so at least we still have analytics!
  • Negative: We have fewer insights compared to Google Analytics because Firebase isn't as configurable.
  • Negative: We've had to lose certain parts of our (Google Analytics) tagging because there wasn't a practical way of storing some of our data in Firebase.
  • Negative: The BigQuery-Firebase configuration is a chore and there's no way you'll ever get non-analytics people to use it.
If I get a suitable budget next year, I'll be switching us to Adobe Analytics. Their app/web tracking and the interface are streets ahead of Firebase.
Firebase Support is without a doubt the worst customer support experience I have ever had.

Their main skill appears to be copy/pasting articles from their Help sections and sending via email - or alternatively, sending links to articles that contradict each other (because the people at Firebase, BigQuery, and Google Data Studio don't really talk to each other).

They're also pretty tone-deaf on feedback and/or criticism.

Do you think Firebase delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with Firebase's feature set?

No

Did Firebase live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Firebase go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Firebase again?

No

If you have a basic app that doesn't have a lot of interactions/touchpoints and you just want some topline numbers, it does an okay job. It's pretty easy to tag your screens, although using Events to tag the interactions can be a bit of a head-scratch.

If you have an App where you want to learn a ton of things about your users, forget it. I'd strongly advise you to choose something else. There are too many constraints in terms of configuring the tagging to capture what you want.

You're going to struggle with adoption across the company. The Interface is terrible (even the Web + App view in Google Analytics is pretty poor) and it's hard to get product/marketing managers to log in and play around with the data.