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Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

supabase.io

61–70 of 374 posts

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#61
This looks great (both Supabase and Nhost)! Years ago I wanted a self-hosted version of the real-time subscription of Firebase and had come across DeepStream[1]. It now seems to be in maintenance mode due to lack of contributors and maintainers. [1]: https://deepstream.io/

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#62

Finally, waiting for something along the lines of these. Firebase is kind of the poster child for vendor lock in, and has been around for a long time. It's time we have some healthy competition.

Another solid alternative is Realm. We have used it for several projects, and the experience was light years ahead of Firebase.

But since they got acquired by MongoDB things have gone a bit quiet, so who knows?

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#63

if you can add graphql as well, that would be good for you as a business. It gives a migration path for people moving out of firebase and onto things like graphql. you bridge both worlds. quick questions - how are you doing conflict resolution ? CRDT or something.

> if you can add graphql as well We are strongly considering it, for the reasons you mention. In the meantime though, we do already offer "graph like" fetching: https://supabase.io/docs/library/get#query-foreign-tables (which you can also use over curl). > how are you doing conflict resolution Our realtime library listens to the replication functionality of Postgres. Basically its an Elixir server that listens to the…

> In the meantime though, we do already offer "graph like" fetching: https://supabase.io/docs/library/get#query-foreign-tables (which you can also use over curl).

i appreciate the sentiment, but most people will prefer to go from "npm install firebase" to "npm install apollo". anything that doesnt fall into one of those will be a hard sell

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious, what are the hot spots for vendor lock-in? I’m currently building an MVP for a large client and I’m thinking of replacing Firebase for a custom back-end if the project grows. I think with the current size it would be easy but I want to avoid passing the point where it becomes hard to undo.

[Supabase cofounder] Firebase is really only bad if/when you decide to move - usually because of scaling/performance issues. For example, you can only query one document per-second. Once you decide to migrate away, it's very painful - but the truth is all migrations are painful. This is one of the reasons we chose postgres. If you want to migrate away, you can just "take your database" with you. PG can scale with the…

>you can only query one document per-second

That's not true. You can't query any single document more than once per second, which is very different. You can certainly query many separate documents per second.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious, what are the hot spots for vendor lock-in? I’m currently building an MVP for a large client and I’m thinking of replacing Firebase for a custom back-end if the project grows. I think with the current size it would be easy but I want to avoid passing the point where it becomes hard to undo.

[Supabase cofounder] Firebase is really only bad if/when you decide to move - usually because of scaling/performance issues. For example, you can only query one document per-second. Once you decide to migrate away, it's very painful - but the truth is all migrations are painful. This is one of the reasons we chose postgres. If you want to migrate away, you can just "take your database" with you. PG can scale with the…

"you can only query one document per-second".. uhm, that doesnt sound right, it would make firestore useless for all intents and purposes. The only limitation I know that sounds close to that is 1 _write_ per second for the _same_ document.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#66
post #59

While might work great as a HN title, I don't think that's a wise product description. First of all, what is Firebase? Is literally no one else than their users your target? Also, is it OK to use someone else's trademark in your marketing?

Yeah, we don't really want to use competitors names. in saying that - we just updated the tagline yesterday and it seems to resonate

https://github.com/supabase/supabase/commit/c905edef57b4b1b0...

We will definitely come up with something better - suggestions welcome (taglines are hard)

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#67

Finally, waiting for something along the lines of these. Firebase is kind of the poster child for vendor lock in, and has been around for a long time. It's time we have some healthy competition.

AWS amiplfiy seems like its trying to do something similar

I eventually settled on Hasura but I did evaluate amplify. It looked to me like it was too complicated to break away from their db so I gave up on it (it was possible, but it felt like you had all the complexity of AWS IAM permissions, but just to access data). I didn’t go too deep so I don’t really remember the details but Hasura seemed the better approach (still a happy user of it).

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#68
post #50

Wow, I thought I created this thread in my sleep. This is exactly what we do at Nhost ( https://nhost.io ) too. I usually explains Nhost as Google Firebase, but: - SQL (PostgreSQL) - GraphQL (Hasura) - 100% open source After being both delighted and frustrated about Firebase I decided that something must be done. The developer experience on Firebase is awesome but the tech and the lock-in effect is super bad. This wa…

That sounds a lot like hasura.io as well.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#69
post #60

Their pricing model is interesting: https://supabase.io/docs/pricing/ I wonder what the "investors" mailing list is about.

Just a few growth stats and updates on key activities. Nothing too important - just a nice gesture in return for a nice gesture. Happy to add items to the email if you want them

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you can add graphql as well We are strongly considering it, for the reasons you mention. In the meantime though, we do already offer "graph like" fetching: https://supabase.io/docs/library/get#query-foreign-tables (which you can also use over curl). > how are you doing conflict resolution Our realtime library listens to the replication functionality of Postgres. Basically its an Elixir server that listens to the…

> In the meantime though, we do already offer "graph like" fetching: https://supabase.io/docs/library/get#query-foreign-tables (which you can also use over curl). i appreciate the sentiment, but most people will prefer to go from "npm install firebase" to "npm install apollo". anything that doesnt fall into one of those will be a hard sell

npm install supabase ? :)

More client libraries coming soon https://www.npmjs.com/package/@supabase/supabase-js

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