BaaS revolution: Bring your next App to Back4App

Over the last two years, Back4App has proven its worth to app developers and has become a popular open source backend development platform with more than 40,000 customers worldwide and 500 million connected devices. It is a great option for hosting your App backend.

Back4App is a serverless backend development platform which allows developers to create apps at lightning speed building the backend with no code, host their apps with no infrastructure hassles and scale those apps with no technical locks.

Looking at the backend market, on the one side we can see the IaaS providers(like AWS) giving app developers the flexibility to do whatever they want, but require from them a huge effort to write code and manage servers. However, on the other side, we have the BaaS providers(like Firebase)that accelerate the software development and are really good when it comes to creating a new app, but don’t give the flexibility the developers need to keep scaling their apps up.

At Back4App, we have a different approach. We combine open source technologies with our proprietary features to provide developers a white box tool that not only gives them the speed they need to create new apps but also the flexibility to scale the app when it becomes more complex and popular.

For Parse users specifically, the best part of using Back4App is that you don’t need to worry about learning how to use a new platform. Also, if you already have an app that uses Parse Server, we have a quick migration tool that allows you to get your App running in the Back4App BaaS, without much hassle

But what makes Back4App different from other BaaS platforms?

When you start building the first version of your app, we have the power of Parse Server framework to help develop your app faster while avoiding boilerplate code. Using the Dashboard, you can quickly build your database model, setup push notifications, automatic emails, social login, and more. All of that with no code. Another key highlight is that everything you build on Dashboard is instantly deployed and ready-to -use in our servers. In other words you don’t need to worry about servers or infrastructure hassles.

Well, until here it seems the same value proposition that of other famous Backend as a Service platforms. The big problem (when using a traditional backend as a service platform like Firebase) starts when you need to scale. The vendor lock-in is really a huge downside as it limits your backend application optimizations, your backend integrations (database integration, API integration) and your portability (if you need to migrate to your own servers).

This where Back4App has an edge over its other traditional backend counterparts. We treat each App backend with a unique approach. Because of our architecture, we can customize the app on all levels: Server, Database, and Application.

At Back4App your App backend is UNIQUE.

If you have a scaling App you will have total freedom to tailor your Application, Database layers. For example, you can custom your Parse Server instances to process Geo-Queries in a different way, integrate your Database with your legacy systems using your Database URI.

On Server side Back4App offers to you the possibility to host your backend on Back4App Shared cloud, Back4App dedicated Cloud or on your own servers. This allows you to custom your backend on server levels like:change your servers instance type on AWS, increase the server memory, host your Parse Server on dedicated cloud and your database on another service provider provider. Freedom is the word here.

App scaling

Additionally if you decide to scale your Parse app on Back4App cloud servers we had developed a Parse Server scaling architecture that allowed us to reach more than 10.000 requests/seconds to some apps. Now you must be wondering how that is possible.

Our cloud structure allows us to replicate your app as much as you need horizontally. Unlike other Parse hosting solutions, Back4app is designed to provide you a trouble-free scaling experience. More than 40.000 apps access our Parse servers every minute at Back4App.

Parse Community

Another advantage of the open source model is the community of developers. Parse server is one of the most popular and viable open source frameworks with a very active community. Presently, the Parse Server is quite active, with 143 contributors(including us) and more than 14k stars on GitHub.

Open source solutions geared with big purposes often have thriving communities around them, bound by a common drive to support and improve a solution that both the businesses and the community benefit from (and believe in). The Parse purpose is to become the best open source framework to build backend faster. The global communities united around Parse are improving this solution introducing new concepts and capabilities faster, better, and more effectively than internal teams working on proprietary solutions.

Many hands can deliver powerful outcomes. The collective power of a community of talented individuals working in concert delivers not only more ideas, but quicker development and troubleshooting when issues arise.

Backend Customization

Need to install a new npm module ? We’ve got you covered!

One of the key advantages of using Back4app as your backend is that it allows you to customize your app the way you like it — that’s the primary reason why developers love developing apps on it than any other backend platform.

Using this serverless BaaS platform, you can easily install new npm modules and access them via Cloud Code. When using npm packages with cloud code sky is the limit. You can build things like: integrate with payment gateways(Stripe, BrainTree), send emails using your email tool (SendGrind, Mandrill, MailGun), improve your programming(when coding cloud codes) experience with Lodash.

So, what are you waiting for? Bring your Parse App to Back4app. Sign up for FREE today and take your mobile app experience to a whole new level!