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Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL

nhost.io

31–40 of 46 posts

Re: Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL

#31

It's interesting see people still working in this niche, I think it used to be called "backend as a service"? There were several contenders at one point, but Firebase seemed to "win" several years ago, and has been the last one standing for some time. Just curious what the market size is for these types of services? It doesn't seem like anyone really uses them; for tech people it's just as easy to spin up an instance…

Firebase is a great solution but...

It's closed source and locks you into Google Cloud.

You can't self host. And since it's pay for use, you can end up with large unexpected bills for a variety of reasons.

It doesn't have full text search.

It doesn't have a relational database.

I'm sure there are more things. Firebase is awesome but it's definitely not the ultimate solution.

Re: Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL

#32
post #29

If I understand it correctly, Nhost depends on S3. So Nhost is either not vendor-neutral, or must be used alongside with AGPL S3 implementations.

Storage is using S3. We use AWS S3 at Nhost, but you can use Minio (open source) if you self-host.

But the good thing with Nhost is that it's open source, so if you want to implement something other than S3 as the core storage layer, you can do so: https://github.com/nhost/hasura-storage

Re: Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL

#33

It's interesting see people still working in this niche, I think it used to be called "backend as a service"? There were several contenders at one point, but Firebase seemed to "win" several years ago, and has been the last one standing for some time. Just curious what the market size is for these types of services? It doesn't seem like anyone really uses them; for tech people it's just as easy to spin up an instance…

I’m primarily a frontend developer. The task i hate most is dev-ops like stuff and dealing with Aws in any capacity. If i was to create a start up I would 100% use something like this or Supabase.

Re: Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL

#34
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like it's self-hostable using docker, so a no-go for me.

Why so? If you are opposed to Docker, there are containerd and podman.

If I had to guess, they are not adverse to "Docker" the company but actually to immutable container images that are shipped from the developer and often assume that they can run as root.

Re: Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL

#35

It's interesting see people still working in this niche, I think it used to be called "backend as a service"? There were several contenders at one point, but Firebase seemed to "win" several years ago, and has been the last one standing for some time. Just curious what the market size is for these types of services? It doesn't seem like anyone really uses them; for tech people it's just as easy to spin up an instance…

We're using Hasura in production and I'm a backend developer. Saves a lot of time from building out CRUD GraphQL and enforces a consistent API.

Re: Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL

#37
post #22

It's interesting see people still working in this niche, I think it used to be called "backend as a service"? There were several contenders at one point, but Firebase seemed to "win" several years ago, and has been the last one standing for some time. Just curious what the market size is for these types of services? It doesn't seem like anyone really uses them; for tech people it's just as easy to spin up an instance…

Yea Nhost is a Backend as a Service (BaaS) but I'm not sure Firebase has "won". Whant we hear form our users is that they like Nhost because of: - Open Source - SQL (Postgres) - GraphQL (Hasura) - GitHub Integratoin (like Vercel & Netlify) > for tech people it's just as easy to spin up an instance in some cloud somewhere. I think this is the biggest missconseption. Just look at Vercel and Netlify. They host html/css/…

>Yea Nhost is a Backend as a Service (BaaS) but I'm not sure Firebase has "won".

Firebase is a nightmare since they folded it into GCP. As a standalone product it was complete, easy to grok, and simple to secure. Now I feel like I literally need to hire a CISSP to make sure my whole company wont be hosed by a single security rule misconfiguration buried somewhere in GCP.

Re: Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL

#38
post #6

why hasura instead of postgraphile?

Great way to invite a mud-slinging contest ;^) Evaluate them both, use whichever fits your usecase/you like best.

Definitely should evaluate both. Still curious about nhost's perspective.

Re: Open Source Firebase Alternative with GraphQL

#40
post #33

It's interesting see people still working in this niche, I think it used to be called "backend as a service"? There were several contenders at one point, but Firebase seemed to "win" several years ago, and has been the last one standing for some time. Just curious what the market size is for these types of services? It doesn't seem like anyone really uses them; for tech people it's just as easy to spin up an instance…

I’m primarily a frontend developer. The task i hate most is dev-ops like stuff and dealing with Aws in any capacity. If i was to create a start up I would 100% use something like this or Supabase.

Let us know if you need any help getting started! nuno@nhost.io
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