Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Backendless VS Firestore

Compare Backendless VS Firestore and see what are their differences

Backendless logo Backendless

Backendless is a mobile Backend as a Service (mBaaS) platform.

Firestore logo Firestore

Easily develop rich applications using a fully managed, scalable, and serverless document database.
  • Backendless Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-20
Not present

Backendless features and specs

  • Codeless Development
    Backendless offers a 'Codeless' feature, which allows users to build backend logic without writing any code. This is particularly beneficial for those who are not familiar with complex coding languages.
  • Real-Time Database
    The platform provides real-time data synchronization, allowing applications to update data instantly across all clients. This is essential for interactive applications such as chat apps and real-time data feeds.
  • API Services
    Backendless allows the creation of REST and SOAP APIs effortlessly. This makes it easier to integrate with other services and provides a clear pathway for extending app functionality.
  • User Management
    The platform comes with built-in user management features such as registration, login, password recovery, and social logins. This helps in reducing the effort required to implement user authentication and authorization.
  • Mobile and Web App Support
    Backendless supports both mobile (iOS/Android) and web applications, offering SDKs for multiple platforms which streamlines the development process.

Possible disadvantages of Backendless

  • Pricing
    Although Backendless offers a free tier, many features and higher usage levels are locked behind a paywall. This may be prohibitive for startups or small projects with limited budgets.
  • Learning Curve
    Even though Backendless offers codeless development, mastering the platform as a whole can be challenging for beginners. There are many features and settings that require some time to understand fully.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Relying too much on Backendless-specific features can create difficulties if you decide to migrate to another backend service in the future. The migration process can be complex and time-consuming.
  • Limited Customization
    While Backendless offers many out-of-the-box features, there can be limitations in terms of customizing the backend behavior in comparison to building a custom backend.
  • Community and Support
    The community around Backendless is smaller compared to more established backend solutions like Firebase. This can make finding community support, third-party plugins, or comprehensive tutorials harder.

Firestore features and specs

  • Scalability
    Google Cloud Datastore can automatically scale to handle large amounts of data and high read/write loads, making it suitable for applications with growing data needs.
  • Fully Managed
    As a fully managed service, Google Cloud Datastore eliminates the need for managing servers, software patches, and replication, allowing developers to focus on building applications.
  • High Availability
    Datastore provides strong consistency for reads and writes and is designed to maintain availability even in case of entire data center outages.
  • Flexible Data Model
    The schemaless nature of Datastore allows for a flexible data model that can easily adapt to changes in application requirements.
  • Integration with Google Cloud Platform
    Datastore seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud Platform services, which simplifies the process of building end-to-end solutions.

Possible disadvantages of Firestore

  • Complex Query Language
    Datastore Query Language (GQL) can be less intuitive compared to SQL, which may pose a learning curve for developers accustomed to traditional relational databases.
  • Eventual Consistency for Queries
    While Datastore offers strong consistency for entity lookups by key, queries must be specifically configured for strong consistency, otherwise they might return eventually consistent data.
  • Cost
    As usage scales, costs can increase, particularly for applications with high write loads or those requiring many transactional operations, which might be a consideration for budget-conscious projects.
  • Limited Relational Capabilities
    Datastore is a NoSQL database, which means it lacks some of the relational features like joins and complex transactions that developers might expect from a SQL database.
  • Index Management
    Managing indexes can become complex, as every query in Datastore requires a corresponding index, and poorly planned indexes can lead to increased storage costs and slower query performance.

Analysis of Firestore

Overall verdict

  • Firestore is a robust, fully-managed NoSQL document database from Google Cloud that excels at real-time data synchronization, effortless scaling, and seamless integration with the broader Firebase and Google Cloud ecosystems, making it a strong choice for modern app development.

Why this product is good

  • Fully managed and serverless, eliminating the need for infrastructure provisioning and maintenance
  • Real-time data synchronization and offline support, ideal for responsive mobile and web apps
  • Automatic horizontal scaling to handle large numbers of concurrent users
  • Strong integration with Firebase Authentication, Cloud Functions, and other Google Cloud services
  • Flexible document-based data model with powerful querying capabilities
  • Robust security rules for fine-grained access control without a backend server
  • Multi-region replication offering high availability and strong consistency

Recommended for

  • Mobile and web app developers needing real-time updates and offline capabilities
  • Startups and teams wanting to move fast without managing database infrastructure
  • Applications already using Firebase or Google Cloud Platform
  • Projects with unpredictable or rapidly growing traffic requiring automatic scaling
  • Serverless architectures leveraging Cloud Functions and event-driven workflows
  • Collaborative and chat applications that benefit from live data synchronization

Backendless videos

Backendless 5 Release Overview (webinar)

More videos:

  • Review - Functionality Visibility Control in Backendless Console
  • Review - Backendless version 3.0 Overview

Firestore videos

Firestore v10: Setup & Free Tier in 4 Mins (2026)

More videos:

  • Review - Introduction to Firestore | NoSQL Document Database
  • Review - To Realtime or Not? | Get to know Cloud Firestore #10

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Backendless and Firestore)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Databases
41 41%
59% 59
NoSQL Databases
27 27%
73% 73
No Code
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Backendless and Firestore

Backendless Reviews

2023 Firebase Alternatives: Top 10 Open-Source & Free
There are three comprehensive plans of this BaaS vendor: Backendless Cloud, Pro and Managed. But it only opened the pricing details of Backendless Cloud in this regard. Here are the key components of Backendless Cloud pricing:
Firebase Alternatives โ€“ Top 10 Competitors
Backendless is a highly scalable mobile Backend-as-a-Service (mBaaS) platform providing gazillion of features, including user authentication, live audio and video streaming, message filtering, push notifications, auto-scalability, data persistence, file storage, geo-location, cloud-code, analytics, and custom business logic. It has it all what you need to build awesome...

Firestore Reviews

We have no reviews of Firestore yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Backendless should be more popular than Firestore. It has been mentiond 21 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Backendless mentions (21)

  • Ap Developer
    Go here: https://backendless.com/ . If that don't work for you, Let me know and I'll tell you what next to do. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Join the Free Database Training Course From Backendless
    This article first appeared on https://backendless.com. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • free-for.dev
    Backendless.com โ€” Mobile and Web Baas, with 1 GB file storage free, push notifications 50000/month, and 1000 data objects in table. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • How Much Does Custom Software Development Cost?
    Luckily, instead of building the backend from scratch, some backend Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are available. Consider the following options: REST API, Firebase, Backendless, and JHipster. Using APIs is a great way to adopt a functional backend with lower custom software development pricing. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • Urgent: Low code / No Code App Builders
    The best no-code/low-code platform for building both the frontend and backend in one place is Backendless. They have the best backend features and a really solid UI Builder that gives you pretty much all capabilities you'll likely need. Source: about 4 years ago
View more

Firestore mentions (3)

  • Announcing Brighter V10: A Major Release with Cloud Events, New Providers, and Enhanced Resilience
    Firestore for Inbox, Outbox, and Distributed Lock. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Guide to modern app-hosting without servers on Google Cloud
    Your app must be stateless. Don't use embedded databases. When your users hit your app again, they may be reaching another instance in a completely different state. Persist data in cloud-based storage like GCS, Cloud SQL, or Cloud Firestore. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Introduction to true serverless databases
    Google Firestore is a serverless document database providing direct web, IoT, and mobile app development access. Itโ€™s highly scalable with no maintenance window and zero downtime. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Using Google Cloud Firestore with Django's ORM
    A long time ago, a fork of Django called โ€œDjango-nonrelโ€ experimented with the idea of using Djangoโ€™s ORM with a non-relational database; what was then called the App Engine Datastore, but is now known as Google Cloud Datastore (or technically, Google Cloud Firestore in Datastore Mode). Since then a more recent project called "django-gcloud-connectors" has been developed by Potato to allow seamless ORM integration... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • How to deploy flask app with sqlite on google cloud ?
    In that case use Cloud Datastore (aka Firestore in Datastore Mode). It's a NoSQL db that was initially targeted just for GAE (you needed to have a GAE App even if empty to use it) but that requirement has been relaxed. Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Backendless and Firestore, you can also consider the following products

Firebase - Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications for mobile and web.

MarkLogic Server - MarkLogic Server is a multi-model database that has both NoSQL and trusted enterprise data management capabilities.

Datomic - The fully transactional, cloud-ready, distributed database

Valentina Server - Valentina Server is 3 in 1: Valentina DB Server / SQLite Server / Report Server

Datahike - A durable datalog database adaptable for distribution.

DynamoDB - Amazon DynamoDB is a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for all applications that need consistent, single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. It is a fully managed cloud database and supports both document and key-value store models.