I have been using Firebase since I started my coding journey; it is an excellent set of hosting and backend services but comes with some major drawbacks. After using it for about 2 or 3 years, here are some of the major issues I face with Firebase:

Both the databases don't provide a full blown querying option.

Features like adding custom claims to users required cloud functions, which required a credit card.

Other than Firebase, there are many other similar products and services; some prominent ones are Supabase, AppWrite, Nhost, and PocketBase. I chose AppWrite among all of them because others lack some features in one way or another.

Here are some of the best features I find about AppWrite:

It's super simple to self-host, and Digital Ocean already provides a one click droplet installation.

As it is self-hosted only as of now , though they have a private cloud beta programme that will be live soon, all the features they provide are up-to-date in the Docker images.

provides up-to-date SDKs for most platforms.

SupaBase does not provide a first-class self-hosting experience; additionally, the current architecture of SupaBase does not allow for the creation of multiple projects in a self-hosted instance. A workaround could be creating a stack and then deploying a new stack for every new project, but that's too much work to do, and the Docker image also doesn't support functions as of the current date. The SupaBase cloud offers a free tier of two projects, followed by a $24 per month per project plan, rather than a pay as you go plan like FireBase, which is prohibitively expensive for someone like me.

NHost also has the same pricing plan as SupaBase and can also be self-hosted, but doesn't provide a smooth self hosting experience.

I 💗 AppWrite

If you are someone like me who needs to host the backend for side projects built with NodeJS and spends hours researching cloud application hosting platforms, surfing the pricing pages, to eventually find out that your app will sleep after hours of inactivity, you can only have a total running time of 400 hours, or you have to verify your card and keep paying monthly fees but the service isn't getting a lot of live users, then creating a droplet and then using nginx to host multiple applications will be a much better option. This architecture costs around $7 but allows you to host any type of service on a single droplet, may it be a nodejs server, a pocketbase instance, or a regular web app. On a nodejs server, this architecture costs around $7, but you are not only limited to a nodejs application , you can host any type of service like pocketbase, a regular web app, just go ahead configure the nginx conf, set the reverse proxy and you are done. But this architecture is only good for hosting side projects if you are building something serious you might go with a much more industry standard approach where you create different instances for handling different parts of your application, or just go with a backend as a service like Firebase or SupaBase

I 💗 AppWrite

Host Multiple Apps On Single Droplet