Firebase vs Push Technology
This Firebase vs Push Technology comparison was created based on reviews from developers and our best attempts to perform analysis by looking at documentation and other publicly available resources.
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Take our APIs for a spinFirebase | Push Technology | |
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Getting started and developer experience | ||
Time to "hello world" Reviewed by 3+ independent developers Ratings were given based on the average amount of time it takes to sign up to a new account and publish the first message. | 3 / 5 5 = <30 min | 4 / 5 5 = <30 min |
Demos / Tutorials A selection of online demos and tutorials so you can test and see the code in action. Explore Ably's tutorials for our pub/sub messaging platform | ||
Documentation Reviewed by 3+ independent developers Explore Ably's documentation for our pub/sub messaging platform | 4 / 5 Getting started guides / 5 Information architecture and developer journey / 5 API reference documentation / 5 Readability, design and navigation / 5 Quality of code / 5 Breadth and quality of tutorials / 5 “Good getting started guides, across various languages. The API reference documentation is very detailed, but it lacks any interactivity, which is not great, considering that there's a lot of content. There are a few Codelabs and several multi-feature samples of apps built with Firebase, to showcase functionality, but nothing else that can be regarded as a tutorial. Documentation could be enhanced by including some extra code samples throughout. You can find a lot of samples on GitHub, but you have to do some digging. Including more end-to-end use cases directly in the docs would improve the overall developer experience.” | 3.50 / 5 Getting started guides / 5 Information architecture and developer journey / 5 API reference documentation / 5 Readability, design and navigation / 5 Quality of code / 5 Breadth and quality of tutorials / 5 “Push Technology documentation for its Diffusion product consists of several components. First, we have a quick start guide, which is pretty decent. It’s structured to provide step-by-step guidance on how to set up Diffusion and use the APIs and the SDKs. The screen is split so that you can look at documentation and code snippets in parallel - a nice touch. Then, there’s an online manual, which is significantly more detailed, with code snippets throughout. Unfortunately, there aren’t any details in the guide about the quality of service or how to architect for scalability. There’s a detailed API reference for each SDK and comprehensive release notes. The design could be improved, as it’s a bit dry, and so could the navigation experience - some links return 404, and the various sections of the documentation aren’t cross-linked. There are just a few demos available, with no source code and only several tutorials.“ |
Dashboard or dev console Reviewed by 3+ independent developers Sign up for free and explore Ably's pub/sub messaging platform | 4.67 / 5 Ease of use / 5 Stats and reports / 5 Functionality / 5 “The dev console has a wide range of features available, grouped into five main categories: Project Overview (basically your dashboard), Develop - where you handle everything from auth to storage and serverless functions invocation, Quality - where you can view crash reports and latency stats, Analytics - which includes various stats, including GA, and, finally, Grow - where you can do stuff like A/B testing. Navigation is intuitive, but all the functionality available can be a bit too much if you're new to Firebase, and it takes some time to be able to master it all.” | 4.67 / 5 Ease of use / 5 Stats and reports / 5 Functionality / 5 “The Service Dashboard is feature-rich, and it allows you to easily create, manage, and remove resources, configure settings, and view detailed stats, such as the number of messages, the CPU load, or the topic count. There’s also a nice section in the Dashboard that allows you to test your pipeline. The user experience is mostly intuitive, and the functionality is explained well (there are many tooltips throughout). However, the UI design could perhaps benefit from a refresh, as it’s a bit outdated.“ |
SDKs Note: Only official SDKs were taken into account. Explore Ably's 25+ SDKs for our pub/sub messaging platform | 9 SDKs Including:
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API structure Reviewed by 3+ independent developers | 4.50 / 5 API consistency across SDKs / 5 Well structured / 5 Intuitive / 5 Simple / 5 “APIs are well documented (even if it’s in a boring way), and the methods are generally easy to read through and can be understood fairly quickly. APIs are straightforward and easy enough to use; there are however slight inconsistencies across SDKs“. | 3.25 / 5 API consistency across SDKs / 5 Well structured / 5 Intuitive / 5 Simple / 5 “Diffusion APIs are consistent across SDKs in the sense that operations are performed in the same order. However, the APIs are quite complex - there are tens of classes and methods, with some different naming conventions across some of the SDKs, such as JavaScript, Java, or C, which is counter-intuitive. The API references are structured and presented differently, which is not great; at least they are detailed and thorough. There are examples for all SDKs on GitHub, which is useful.” |
Firebase | Push Technology |
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"Hello world" code example | |
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Firebase | Push Technology | |
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Realtime features | ||
Pub/Sub messaging Pub/Sub is a design pattern that lets any number of publishers (producers) push messages to channels (also known as topics). Multiple subscribers (consumers) can subscribe to a channel to consume published messages. Explore Ably's pub/sub messaging implementation | ||
Message queues A message queue is a form of asynchronous service-to-service communication. Messages are stored on a queue until they are processed. Note that each message is only consumed by one subscriber (consumer). Explore Ably's message queues implementation | ||
Presence Presence enables you to track the online and offline status of devices and end-users in real time and to store their state. Essential for chat apps and multiplayer games. Explore Ably's presence implementation | ||
Message history Message history provides a means to retrieve previously published messages. For this to be possible, message data must be stored (persisted) somewhere. Explore Ably's message history implementation | ||
Connection state recovery (stream resume) In the case of unreliable network conditions, clients may suddenly disconnect.Connection state recovery ensures that when they reconnect, the data stream resumes exactly where it left off. Explore Ably' s connection state recovery implementation | Limited Push Technology operates a recovery buffer of sent messages but if a message has been lost or is no longer in the recovery buffer the server will abort the reconnection. | |
Guaranteed message ordering Ordering ensures that messages are delivered to consumers in the same order that producers publish them. Explore Ably' s guaranteed message ordering implementation | ||
Exactly-once semantics Exactly-once is a system-wide data integrity guarantee that ensures each message is delivered to consumers exactly-once. Explore Ably' s idempotent publishing implementation | ||
Message delta compression Message delta compression enables you to only send the changes from the previous message to subscribers each time there’s an update, instead of the entire message. Useful for use cases where there is a significant degree of similarity between successive messages. Explore Ably' s message delta compression implementation | ||
Native push notifications Native push notifications can be used to deliver messages even when clients are offline. Useful for geolocation updates or news alerts. Explore Ably's push notifications implementation | ||
Webhooks Webhooks provide a mechanism to get messages and other types of events (such as clients entering or leaving channels) pushed to your servers over HTTP. Explore Ably's webhooks implementation | ||
Serverless functions A serverless function is essentially an isolated, single-purpose piece of code that is only executed when it’ triggered by an event. For example, you can use serverless functions to send a welcome message to clients when they become present on chat channels. Note that serverless functions are usually fully managed by cloud vendors. Explore Ably's serverless functions implementation | Limited Can only trigger Cloud Functions for Firebase. Does not support other serverless platforms, such as AWS Lambda or Azure Functions. | |
Built-in integrations Which popular services & systems are Firebase and Push Technology integrated with? Explore Ably's library of integrations | Webhooks
Serverless functions
Streaming
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Serverless functions
Streaming
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Known limits and constraints Find out practical limits, such as the maximum message size, or the maximum number of concurrent connections. Explore the practical limits of the Ably pub/sub messaging platform | The information below applies to Firebase Cloud Messaging: Throughput 240 messages/minute and 5.000 messages/hour to a single device Maximum message size 4KB Maximum number of topics No limit on the total number of topics, but an app instance can be subscribed to no more than 2000 topics. Maximum number of concurrent connections 2.500 connections per project | Publisher throughput Unknown Maximum message size Unknown Maximum number of topics Unlimited (only applies to Enterprise customers). Maximum number of connections Unknown |
Supported development platforms, languages, open protocols and cloud models | ||
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Development platforms & operating systems Which popular development platforms and operating systems do Firebase and Push Technology support via official SDKs? Explore the development platforms supported by Ably |
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Languages Which popular programming languages do Firebase and Push Technology support via offical SDKs? Explore the programming languages supported by Ably |
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Open protocols Which popular open protocols do Firebase and Push Technology support? Explore the open protocols supported by Ably |
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Cloud models Which popular cloud models do Firebase and Push Technology support? |
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Global and reliable edge service | ||
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Edge messaging network with latency-based routing Latency-based routing ensures that clients are always routed to the nearest datacenter and point of presence. Explore Ably's routing mechanism that mitigates network and DNS issues | Limited Edge-optimized, dynamic datacenter selection is available only for the Cloud Firestore component. | |
Multi-region data replication (message durability) Multi-region data replication (storage) protects against single points of failure and ensures message data durability. Learn how Ably ensures message durability | Limited Only available for Enterprise customers. | |
Uptime SLAs Here’s what the most common SLAs amount to in terms of downtime over a calendar year: 99.999% SLA = 5m 15s downtime per year 99.99% SLA = 52m 35s downtime per year 99.95% SLA = 4h 22m 58s downtime per year 99.9% SLA = 8h 45m 56s downtime per year 99% SLA = 3d 15h 39m 29s downtime per year Source: https://uptime.is/ | 99.95% for Firebase Hosting and the Realtime Database. 99.99 % if you are using Cloud Firestore in a single-region configuration. 99.999% if you are using Cloud Firestore in a multi-region configuration. Unclear what SLAs (if any) are provided for the rest of the Firebase services. | 99.9% |
Quality of Service What QoS guarantees do Firebase and Push Technology provide natively? Explore Ably's availability and uptime guarantees for our pub/sub messaging platform |
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Security | ||
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API key authentication The simplest way to authenticate. Involves using private API keys that you can usually create and edit via a dashboard. Recommended to be used server-side, as private API keys shouldn’t be shared with untrusted parties. Explore Ably's implementation of API key authentication | ||
Token-based authentication Which popular token-based authentication mechanisms do Firebase and Push Technology support? Note that token-based authentication is usually the recommended strategy on the client-side as it provides more fine-grained access control and limits the risk of credentials being compromised. Explore Ably's implementation of token-based authentication |
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Configurable rules and permissions Which types of configurable rules and permissions do Firebase and Push Technology support? Explore Ably's configurable rules and permissions |
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Message encryption Which types of message encryption do Firebase and Push Technology support? Explore Ably's message encryption mechanisms |
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Formal certifications Which formal certifications are Firebase and Push Technology compliant with? Explore Ably's security and compliance for our pub/sub messaging platform |
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Pricing & Support | ||
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Free package What do the free packages offered by Firebase and Push Technology consist of? Explore Ably's free package for our pub/sub messaging platform | The Spark plan includes several products from the Firebase suite that are entirely free to use, such as cloud messaging (FCM) or in-app messaging. The Spark plan also allows for free usage of most of the other products, up to certain limits. Some examples: first 125k/month Cloud Functions invocations free, 10 GB of free storage (hosting), and 1 GiB of free storage in Cloud Firestore. | The free package includes 3 million monthly messages, 100 peak connections, unlimited topics, access to all major features and adapters, and basic support. |
Pricing model How are the Firebase and Push Technology pricing models calculated? Explore Ably's pricing model for our pub/sub messaging platform | Firebase offers two pricing plans: the Spark plan (free) and the Blaze plan (pay as you go), which is recommended for building apps at scale. Most Firebase products are entirely free to use for both plans, with hard limits on some products for the Spark plan (and some missing features, too). The Blaze plan includes the free usage from the Spark plan and allows access to all Firebase features and products. On top of that, pricing is calculated monthly based on a multitude of factors, such as message ingestion & delivery, document read, write, delete operations, data storage, hosting, or function invocations. For example, Cloud Firestore storage is calculated at $0.18/GiB, and hosting is calculated at $0.026/GB. | The basic pricing for the Business package starts at $49 per month. In addition, there are charges for the number of messages - $ 0.99 per million messages and for the number of connections - $ 0.01 per connection. It’s unclear how pricing is calculated for the Enterprise package. |
Enterprise package What benefits do the Firebase and Push Technology enterprise packages offer? Explore Ably's enterprise package for our pub/sub messaging platform | The Blaze plan gives access to all Firebase features and products and has enhanced usage limits. Key benefits
| The Enterprise package benefits include enterprise scale and performance, cross-region replication, configurable cluster size, bespoke performance tuning, bespoke packages for all sizes. |
Community Reviewed by 3+ independent developers Explore Ably's community support channel for our pub/sub messaging platform | 5 / 5 Presence on multiple channels / 5 Size and activity / 5 “The Firebase community can be found on several different channels: Slack, Stack Overflow, Google Groups, Firebase forums, YouTube. The community is quite active - there are sample apps and codelabs, meetups, podcasts. If you post a question on forums, you are likely to get an answer from the community in a day or so.“ | 1 / 5 Presence on multiple channels / 5 Size and activity / 5 “Push Technology has a community forum, but there’s a very small number of posts and an even smaller number of followers (a maximum of 11 followers per forum category). Similarly, there are maybe 20 threads on Stack Overflow, and basically no community activity on GitHub. No presence on Gitter or Discourse. It’s essentially a non-existent community.” |
Support What types of support options and response times do Firebase and Push Technology offer? Explore Ably's support options for our pub/sub messaging platform | General support options Email/ticket, community (e.g. Stack Overflow and Slack), FAQs, technical documentation. Enterprise support Enterprise support is available through the GCP support console, which provides a Premium Support package. It includes 24/7 support for critical-impact issues, dedicated technical account manager, and operational health reviews. Response time Unknown for Firebase direct support. 15-minute response time for priority 1 issues when support is provided via the GCP Premium Support package. | General support options Email, web support, documentation, developer hub, phone (only for Platinum package), screenshare (Gold and Platinum packages). Enterprise support The Platinum package is the equivalent of enterprise support. It includes early access to beta features and a dedicated account manager. Response time 2 hours for Platinum package 3 hour minimum for Live Events package 24 hours for Gold package Best effort response times for the Basic package |
Disclaimer: The information presented for Firebase was last updated on 6 November 2020 and on 15 December 2020 for Push Technology. It is possible that some details may now be out of date. If you think that’s the case, please let us know so we can update them. In any case, you should not rely solely on the information presented here and must check with each provider before deciding to integrate or buy any of these two solutions.
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Ably is an enterprise-ready pub/sub messaging platform. We make it easy to efficiently design, quickly ship, and seamlessly scale critical realtime functionality delivered directly to end-users. Everyday we deliver billions of realtime messages to millions of users for thousands of companies.
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