Leaving Firebase for PocketBase

Hey There! Welcome to the blog!

So, if you have been reading my blogs↗, you might know that I have been using Firebase for the Backend for almost all my projects. But, that will change soon.

Recently, Firebase announced that they will shift Cloud Storage and Maybe Hosting aswell, from the Free Tier (Spark Plan) to the Paid Tier (Blaze Plan). They claimed that this action was to prevent abuse on their system. Now, I want to clear something up first. By the Paid Tier, I mean, it is dependent on usage. Firebase will charge you according to usage on their Paid Plans, which I think is a great feature, and, I think that, it will still cost you nothing, if you upgrade to the Paid Blaze Plan, if you keep your usage under the threshold. I completely understand the nessesity for them to do this, but, as a teenager, I don't have a credit card or something that I can add to my google billing account to shift my projects to the Blaze Plan, and, also because Hosting and Storage are my most used features on any BaaS, It was time to move.

To be honest, there were really not a lot of free options for backends. I did not have an issue with self hosting it, as, I do own and maintain my own server, running linux (read more about it here↗). Most of the fully managed Backends as Services were either paid, or were too much of a hastle to self host and maintain, For Example: Supabase. I tried it multiple times in the past, but, I never really could get it to work. But then, I found it.

PocketBase, the perfect database for my needs. Now, let me explain why I chose it.
First of all, PocketBase is really easy to setup and get going, it's just one command, and, it will be installed! Next, it is really lightweight, and, what I mean by that is, it uses SQLite, Not the traditional MySQL or Postgres. So, often, it is faster for many purposes. The only downside, was that it does not have a feature to Host sites, but, that was expected, because you WILL have to self host it, because there is no fully managed BaaS service for it, and, if you will be purchasing a VM in the cloud or setting it up on your own server, you will be able to host your site on that same machine aswell. I really like PocketBase for it's minimalistic design and easy to use API's that integrate with the web.

I have officially switched everything on this Portfolio, from Firebase to PocketBase. To be honest, I am not sure if Firebase has moved hosting to the paid plans, but, I am not willing to risk it, so, I migrated. Here is the official website for PocketBase: pocketbase.io↗.

Thank you so much for Reading this Blog. To Conclude, I will be using PocketBase for the Backend for all my Projects that require one.