Ask HN: Any startups here that moved off of BaaS (ex. Parse, Kinvey, Kii)? Why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any startups here that moved off of BaaS (ex. Parse, Kinvey, Kii)? Why?

13 pointsmi3law6 comments

If you were part of a startup that was initially built on a Backend-as-a-Service, but later moved off-- why did you move off? What exactly prompted the decision? Was it cost, inflexibility, something else?

I would love to talk to you about this (no more than 15 min) to find out why-- in exchange, you will get a box of your favorite snacks or chocolate and a young startup's undying gratitude. (If you know someone from a startup that moved off BaaS, please connect me; same snacks/choco/gratitude apply.)

Please comment below or email falling.hill@gmail.com

Context: I'm cofounder of a startup that is adding a new spin on BaaS, and we want to make sure our new spin adds enough value.

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I used Parse in South Korea to build mobile apps quickly, and the entire experience has been great.

However...

The latency from Parse data centers to South Korean consumers became an issue, and our users were complaining slow response time.

The executive decision came when Parse was having scheduled maintenance, which took place somewhere between 11pm~5am in PST, which turned out to be our busiest time during a business day, in KST (Korea Standard Time).

I had to re-build the entire infrastructure from scratch, import data from Parse, but overall it wasn't a pleasant experience.

The biggest problems for me when using BaaS, was that I had no control over their business decisions, and sometimes you get screwed over and at best they can say is, "Sorry."

BaaS is like the backbone to your application, if it goes down, it could mean the end for a fragile startup.

Thank you so much for your response!

This is really helpful-- the way we're building our system gives ours customers their own instance (so update at your convenience). So this feedback makes us feel good!

And sorry to hear about your experience with Parse. Building a startup is hard enough.

If you consider using a BaaS in the future but want a different / more flexible experience, please get in touch: falling.hill@gmail.com (or drop me your contact info and I'll get in touch).

We gave Parse a spin, a few times actually. Mostly just for hobby projects. It was proposed for a production build but the general consensus on our team was "externalize anything you want except the core product...because we can't afford the implications of vendor lock-in there".

I can tell you why we're going with a Baas (Firebase).

Please do! Why Firebase specifically? And (more importantly to me) do you anticipate moving off later?

(If you'd prefer to move this off HN, can I email or call you? That way I'll also get to send you a thank-you package!)

"jtfairbank+hn" /at/ gmail /dot/ com

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