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iOS Parse VS Amazon WB VS Google Platform

J

joaogfmoreira

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 24, 2015
24
0
Hello!

I have been trying to develop some apps and recently came across a question. What server should I use: Parse, Amazon, Google?
When i first learned how to create user-related apps i was taught with Parse. But after reading many things i noticed that many of the big apps go with Amazon and Google servers.
What is the major difference? For example with Parse i get specific functions for signing a user and lots of other useful ones but i can't find similar ones for Google/Amazon. Has anyone come across this issue in the early programming days? How and where can i learn to do what i do with Parse using Amazon/Google?
Thank you in advance!
 
I'm no expert, but it might be helpful to give some detail about the apps and how much data will be involved. Also, are cost constraints an issue, performance, analytics, etc. Parse is popular and I've heard Amazon can get expensive. I don't know if it applies to your needs, but can you use cloud storage offerings from Microsoft, IBM and others? I hear they are getting very competitive now.
 
The benefit of Parse is that they handle A LOT of stuff for you. From the main server parts, all the way to managing/handeling, and actually using your data.

With Amazon you basically have to create everything from scratch. You can be up and running in parse in a matter of minutes, that is not the case with Amazon.

That being said, Amazon is a lot more robust. We switched from Parse to amazon since it was just easier for us to do certain things from scratch. Great for starting out, but not so much when trying to do very custom things.

Have never used Googles platform, so no comments there.
 
As an IBM employee who deals with SoftLayer a lot, I can tell you that I vastly prefer SoftLayer to Amazon. It's a lot simpler - it's trivial to find out how much you'll be charged and what you're getting for your money.

With Amazon, they nickel and dime you for every little thing (they have a specific amount they charge you per GET request, which is separate from how much you get charged for a PUT request. Absolutely insane - you'll need to dedicate so much time to trying to calculate how much it'll all cost that you're better off just buying the hardware yourself for your server.)

SoftLayer charges you for the amount of time you use the hardware. Pick the hardware, pick if you want it billed hourly or monthly, it'll give you the price per hour or month, and press order.

Having said that, outside of IBM, I use Parse. Parse doesn't really compete with SoftLayer and Amazon. SoftLayer and Amazon rent out hardware with internet connections - it's up to you to install all the software on the hardware and to configure everything.

With Parse, they set up the software for you. You just access it from the client side via their APIs. Or you can access it via their online console and configure your table schemes and write some code to run server side (JavaScript only, unfortunately.) Parse is priced under AWS from what I've seen, but so is SoftLayer. I haven't tried comparing the cost of Parse to SoftLayer.
 
Thank you all for your answers. I have come to realize that Amazon is rather more complex than what I had imagined. That being sad and since I'm still starting out I think Parse is the best option for now!
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
As an IBM employee who deals with SoftLayer a lot, I can tell you that I vastly prefer SoftLayer to Amazon. It's a lot simpler - it's trivial to find out how much you'll be charged and what you're getting for your money.

With Amazon, they nickel and dime you for every little thing (they have a specific amount they charge you per GET request, which is separate from how much you get charged for a PUT request. Absolutely insane - you'll need to dedicate so much time to trying to calculate how much it'll all cost that you're better off just buying the hardware yourself for your server.)

SoftLayer charges you for the amount of time you use the hardware. Pick the hardware, pick if you want it billed hourly or monthly, it'll give you the price per hour or month, and press order.

Having said that, outside of IBM, I use Parse. Parse doesn't really compete with SoftLayer and Amazon. SoftLayer and Amazon rent out hardware with internet connections - it's up to you to install all the software on the hardware and to configure everything.

With Parse, they set up the software for you. You just access it from the client side via their APIs. Or you can access it via their online console and configure your table schemes and write some code to run server side (JavaScript only, unfortunately.) Parse is priced under AWS from what I've seen, but so is SoftLayer. I haven't tried comparing the cost of Parse to SoftLayer.
Click to expand...

Depending on the service, amazon charges for the actual computing hours used. For example, the EC2 server (which most people will be using) does not charge you for requests at all. Amazon also has a free tier, you can get a micro server for no charge (only for a year I think). Amazing to get you up and running.

S3, their storage service charges for actual download/upload.

Also from our experience, Parse is much more expensive than Amazon.. At least once you really start using it. The free tier of Parse is great, we ran a small private community of about ~10,000 active users off their free tier.
 
You're right. Internal traffic is not counted.
But if for some reason you are uploading/downloading directly to S3 it does start charging you for that.
 
VPrime said:
You're right. Internal traffic is not counted.
But if for some reason you are uploading/downloading directly to S3 it does start charging you for that.
Click to expand...
Oh yes, I was aware of that. My only point was that an EC2 instance that had an S3 storage backend isn't charged for storage transactions. You're only charged for the EC2 instance.
 
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