Back4app Tool Review: Pros & Cons

By Kate Gross 22 days ago, Apps and Software

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Back4App

  • Rank
    (4.5/5)
  • Platforms: Online/Browser
  • Pricing: Free/From $25 per month
back4app logo
USE

Verdict: Back4App is a full-featured tool that allows you to easily and quickly create eye-catching and trendy applications for your business. I like that I quickly mastered the feature set and created the perfect app for my photography brand. One of its advantages is that it does not require installation as it is an open source software.

As for the functionality of the product, it does not limit you in almost anything – any of your ideas can be easily implemented. What’s more, managing all your apps from one platform is also available here, which is very handy.

Pros
  • Real-time database
  • Basic cloud features
  • API-integrated
  • Quick mastering
Cons
  • The documentation interface looks outdated and lacks a search option
  • Limited plans for work as students
back4app interface

As a software solution for development tools, Back4App is a real boon for web design and software development professionals. Creating, hosting, and managing all your apps is available here effortlessly, quickly, and from one platform. Developers and designers who prefer the open-source Parse Server will find this solution particularly useful.

Back4App: Main Features

back4app logo

Back4App is a development and management center for server and app programming interfaces or APIs. Now developing and hosting APIs for web apps, smartphone apps, and the IoT will take you almost half as much time and effort. Thus, you can forget about complex and tedious designing from scratch or using app builders.

By interacting with the Parse open-source framework, you can be confident that you can build your web products efficiently and productively. What’s more, you can even bring all of your previous work done on the Parse open-source server right into Back4App and continue working on it in a safe and secure environment.

Easy Data Transfer from Parse Platform

back4app app migration

Back4App allows you to transfer your developments and ready-made apps to its specialized platform, where it will be even more convenient for you to work on the design of your products, manage them, and improve their efficiency without any third-party web design software. The solution is designed considering the Parse server structure and the database so that you do not encounter any difficulties in work.

I like that here I don’t have to reconfigure and change my API integration workflows since Back4App and Parse use the same. Thus, all you have to worry about is remembering to change the address of the API server. Accessing and downloading all migrated code at any time and running it locally on any server is another benefit of this solution.

By choosing Back4App, you can be sure that you have full control over the back end of your project. It is especially convenient that here is the same Backend-as-a-Service model as Parse.

Real-Time Database for Easy Access & Management

back4app real-time database

Creating a completely new database and defining a relational data model will take you no more than a few minutes thanks to a convenient user interface and GraphQL, REST, or SDK technologies. You can perform even more different operations and queries by using an extended set of options, including relational queries, geo-queries, constraints, aggregates, and more.

Back4App offers a LiveQuery feature that allows me to subscribe to definite queries and benefit from real-time data sync.

As soon as any changes occur to the element that is relevant to your request (for example, creation, downloading, or deletion), you will be notified immediately, which is very useful for always staying up to date with your projects and assets. This allows the photographer to be in constant contact with their clients, especially when they start a photography project that requires them to pre-register or complete any other actions in the mobile app.

Secure Cloud Storage Synchronized with Databases

back4app cloud storage

In addition to the above said, you can benefit from the cloud storage for photos (which is really estimated by photographers) and other documents that Back4App offers to make it easier to manage your apps. It is fully synchronized with application databases, so you do not need to use third-party services to store and manage files.

If you’re a photographer like me, then you’ll appreciate its ease of use, since all you need to do is upload your files and Back4App does the rest.

Full Technical Support and Step-by-Step Guides

The Back4App team does its best to make launching and managing your app as smooth and simple as possible. That is why you are exempt from cooperation with a third-party app development company, usually hired for this purpose. The technical support and reference materials that you can find on the company’s website will be more than enough to cope with this task.

You can also contact a technical specialist directly if you do not find the answer to your question and get prompt feedback.

What’s more, you can find all the information you need in Back4App’s blog. Here, highly-qualified and experienced specialists write about application development, useful app design software that may come in handy in the process of work, as well as novelties in the niche in general and Back4App in particular.

Back4App Prices

Back4App offers a free plan and 3 paid ones to choose from, which can be paid either once a month or once a year.

The Free plan is suitable for those who are going to be engaged in the development, learning, and prototyping. This is enough to get familiar with the functionality and start developing, benefiting from 25K requests, 250MB data storage, 1GB transfer, and 1GB file storage.

The MVP plan is $25/month. It is perfect for serverless architecture projects. Here you can use 500K requests, 2GB of data storage, 250 GB of data transfer, and 50GB of cloud storage.

The Pay as you go plan is $100/month. This is what you need to unlimitedly scale your applications. The package also includes 5M requests, 4 GB data storage, 1 TB data transfer, 250 GB file storage, and more.

The Dedicated plan is $500/month. With this plan, you will be able to seamlessly build apps with dedicated infrastructure. The plan also includes server capacity, 8 CPUs /16 GB, unlimited requests, 80 GB of data storage, 2 TB of data transfer, 1TB of file storage, etc.

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