How To Choose the Best Backend Provider for your iOS App: Parse vs Stackmob vs. Appcelerator Cloud and More!

[rwenderlich]

This is the official thread to discuss the following blog post: How To Choose the Best Backend Provider for your iOS App: Parse vs Stackmob vs. Appcelerator Cloud and More!

[sidneyallen]

Hi Antonio,

Nice work! I appreciate you taking the time to create this comparison and including StackMob in your post.

One thing I wanted to add for your readers. StackMob has revamped their pricing to eliminate what they call a "success tax" on developers. Rather than charge for API calls and numbers of users, they have added a Marketplace to their offering where they -- and an ecosystem of partners -- offer modules for sale that help you develop your app faster and with richer functionality. http://marketplace.stackmob.com

Pricing varies, depending on modules purchased from the Marketplace, but most functionality is free, including:

Unlimited API calls
Custom Code
Access Control Lists
Collaboration (multiple developers on the same app)
Analytics
S3 Integration
Twitter Integration
Facebook Integration
Geoqueries
Work Flow (development and production environments)

[markwilcox]

Maybe best to check the features and pricing when you finish your article before publishing next time.

As StackMob have noted, they have completely revamped their pricing model. It's now free for everything "basic". Unfortunately it seems "basic" doesn't include push notifications (which are essential for many apps), the old integrated HTML5 web hosting (which was a nice differentiator) or a few other parts of features that used to be included in the cheap plans - if you need any of that it's not quite so free.

I was a little puzzled by your initial evaluation of Parse:
"While the free plans are very good, the price does seems to ramp up more quickly than other services if you exceed your free allocation."
The price doesn't ramp up quickly, you pay the overage charge until you get to about 3m API calls/day then it starts to make sense to pay the $199/month for 15m.
Unless I'm very much mistaken, under the old pricing Parse was cheaper than StackMob at every single usage level. StackMob used to have the key advantage of custom code, which Parse has now had for a while but is not mentioned in your review - probably why StackMob needed to change their model to compete. What this has done is made if very difficult to make a like-for-like comparison between the two. The key thing Parse do to get you to pay before you hit the kind of usage level that needs it is restrict collaboration and customised user interaction features.

Something that should be noted is that in either case, the pricing is likely to be significantly less than the cost of building and maintaining your own backend.

[sidneyallen]

Hi Mark,

Actually, we now have a Push module that includes 1 million per month Free.
https://marketplace.stackmob.com/module/push

Thanks for reminding me. We added the free tier recently.

[markwilcox]

Thanks, didn't spot that. You have Urban Airship at the top of the marketplace and your own offering, which is more limited but much, much better value for basic push, waaaaaay down the bottom.

Re-reading my previous post, it came off a little too negative about your free offering, which is truly awesome for those with basic technical needs and the potential for massive scale.

Mark

[AMG]

Hi Antonio,

Nice work! I appreciate you taking the time to create this comparison and including StackMob in your post.

One thing I wanted to add for your readers. StackMob has revamped their pricing to eliminate what they call a "success tax" on developers. Rather than charge for API calls and numbers of users, they have added a Marketplace to their offering where they -- and an ecosystem of partners -- offer modules for sale that help you develop your app faster and with richer functionality. http://marketplace.stackmob.com

Pricing varies, depending on modules purchased from the Marketplace, but most functionality is free, including:

Unlimited API calls
Custom Code
Access Control Lists
Collaboration (multiple developers on the same app)
Analytics
S3 Integration
Twitter Integration
Facebook Integration
Geoqueries
Work Flow (development and production environments)

Hello,

I'm the writer of the tutorial, thanks for that update, at the moment of writing the tutorial the prices were different. I'll update it with the new ones!

[cncool]

I have only used Parse, and looking at the code for the other ones, Parse seems to be way easier to develop with.

[jcstone]

Antonio, your article is outstanding in its depth and breadth - major kudos! You diligently, comprehensively, and objectively nailed all the granular details of all the very important criteria of selecting a backend provider - thank you for your time and guidance; very much appreciated. In my limited research, and I probably fall well below the coding capability of most readers and contributors to this forum, I just thought, in the spirit of collegiality, that I would suggest another provider that may have been overlooked for whatever reason; if that's okay, I hope - I don't mean to cause any friction. I recently caught a news item about two or three weeks ago here in the States and checked 'em out, a company called Kii based in Asia that has been doing some interesting platform work with docomo and kddi and softbank. Not that they're better than Parse, Stackmob or Appcelerator but I just read about them and they seem to be a quality provider as well. imho Thanks again, Antonio.

[jcstone]

sorry, I live in Humboldt County, if you catch my drift, and forgot to mention the site: http://developer.kii.com

[olli]

it's great !! l needed to learn to do a social APP.Hope more tutorials