BaaS revolution: Bring your next App to Back4App back4app Medium 12/1/17, 8(01 AM

Applause from you, Back4App, and 26 others

Alysson Melo Follow

Serial Entrepreneur/ Computer Engineer
Nov 29 5 min read

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 Fexibility to do whatever
they want, but require from them a huge eIort to write code and
manage servers. However, on the other side, we have the BaaS
providers(like Firebase)that accelerate the software development and

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are really good when it comes to creating a new app, but dont give the
Fexibility the developers need to keep scaling their apps up.

At Back4App, we have a diIerent 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 6exibility to scale the app when it becomes more
complex and popular.

For Parse users speciNcally, the best part of using Back4App is that you
dont 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 di<erent from

other BaaS platforms?
When you start building the Nrst 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 notiNcations, 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 dont 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.

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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 diIerent way, integrate
your Database with your legacy systems using your Database URI.

On Server side Back4App oIers 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.

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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 beneNt
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 eIectively 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 ? Weve 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 itthats the primary
reason why developers love developing apps on it than any other
backend platform.

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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!

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