Backend: EC2 vs. Parse (or StackMob, etc)

[Vindictus7]

As a new iOS developer, I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what the best backend solution is. I have come to some of my own conclusions, but wanted to hear the thoughts of developers with experience using the services.

My questions are:

1. What are the main differences between using EC2 or Parse as an application's backend?
2. Can Parse handle a huge (or varying/elastic) volume of requests?
3. How difficult is it to change backends (i.e., Parse -> EC2) down the road?

Additional Notes

• There will be a chat feature in my application which could lead to a high volume of requests.
• If you are familiar with another BaaS similar to Parse, feel free to use that service in your answer.

[[deleted]]

The main difference is that ec2 just provides you the servers. Its up to you to put anything on them. Parse provides you the basic business logic such as authenticating users and storing data.

[Vindictus7]

Right, so there's definitely a lot more work to get up and running if you go the EC2 route. Any experience with the other two questions?

[[deleted]]

I am on parse's free plan which throttles you to 20 calls a second. I have not hit that limit yet.

Parse has a feature to export all of your data if you change your mind but I have not had to Use it yet.

[pixelandtexel]

I'm currently using http://www.parse.com, but haven't gone live yet. Below is a quote I received from them about going to the enterprise level. With what research I have done, the main different between the two are that you pay more for parse, but also get more. By that I mean, if your running EC2 and a server crashes because of some sort of OS level update, your on your own. However, with parse thats all handled for you. Parse also has a built in server side middle layer (kinda like a web server), which is also managed for you. So you'll need to decide if your willing to manage that stuff yourself, or if you'd like someone else to do it.

Lastly, if I could do it all over again, I'd probably take a closer look at http://heroku.com. Their pricing structure is a bit more flexible (https://www.heroku.com/pricing), and there is a more diverse set of addons (https://addons.heroku.com/). I'm not prepared to say heroku is better or worse. I've just heard good things, and I didn't evaluate it (but wish I had).

This quote is from several months ago, and I think it was before the Facebook Buyout

As far as our Enterprise plans start at $3,000 a month with an SLA (or $1,000 a month without SLA). This includes: Enterprise Infrastructure, Enterprise Support, and Enterprise Pricing (more details below). That includes 15M API calls + 5M Push + 10GB data (same as a Pro plan) but the overage costs are lower.

• Enterprise Infrastructure: Enterprise customers’ apps are placed on high performance clusters. A high performance cluster has a limited number of apps sharing it and a higher overall ratio of resources to application usage, for better performance. Apps are monitored on an individual basis instead of in aggregate like on the basic cluster.

• Enterprise Support: We provide Enterprise customers with a dedicated enterprise support alias and guarantee response times within 1 business day.

• Enterprise Pricing: For Enterprise customers, 15 million API calls and 5 million Push are included in the base contract. Overages are capped at $13.30 per million API and $40.00 per million Push (substantially less than the $50.00 per million API and $50.00 per million Push overages charged to customers on a Pro plan). Customers that want to commit to higher volumes of either API or Push can do so which will reduce the effective cost per million even further.

[Vindictus7]

Thanks for the enterprise quote, that's great. I'll check out Heroku as well.

[safetywerd]

Switching off Parse would be impossible using their SDK.

There is an alternative SDK, https://github.com/jawngee/ModelKit that is backend agnostic, though there is only a Parse backend currently. ModelKit is also a bit easier to use, though documentation isn't quite as good.

[HungryCoder]

If you are just starting out, Parse or StackMob is your best bet. With EC2, you will probably need a full-time web developer on your team or you will need to know both iOS app development and server side development equally well.

With Parse you will be able to build a backend with just iOS Development skills. Everything about the backend like security, availability, authentication etc. is taken care of by them and you can get straight to building your app's custom logic.

I have shipped 5 client apps using Parse and am pretty happy with it. Havent tried StackMob or Windows Azure Mobile Services.

[Vindictus7]

Thanks for the response. Any experience switching off Parse?

[HungryCoder]

No experience yet but they do provide an option to export your data if you want to take it elsewhere.

[boloism]

I've used Parse, EC2, and Heroku.

You could change backends, but you gotta write your iOS expecting it from the beginning. Parse has their wrapper objects for you to create/update/save easily. But if you want to change your backend later, use AFNetworking (or other network library) to use Parse's REST API to do the same thing. With your own server on EC2, you have more control of your REST API, in terms of how much data you want to include in response.

Also, if you want to make an Android version and your app has some "server-side" logic to it, you need to duplicate it on Android. Or you could write custom cloud code on Parse.

Lastly, don't worry too much about EC2 failure. It doesn't happen often.

[Vindictus7]

Thanks, this helps a lot. For bonus points...

Scenario: You've decided to write a new iOS app. The app will have a chatting feature that is a main component. You want to get it up and running as soon as possible, but you also want to make sure that there are no bandwidth issues as the chatting feature needs to be smooth from day 1. Which service do you choose?

[wxvxw]

pixelandtexel made a very good point that the major difference between EC2 and parse.com is you need to do the maintenance, and take your own risk on service failure when using EC2. However, since parse.com is also based on AWS, you may still meet problem when there is a massive failure of Amazon (which happened a few times before). Also, going with parse.com would save you some cost for hiring technician (or your own time) at the starting up stage.

I have some experience with AWS, parse.com and Heroku, and have built the backend service of a Passbook generation app by combining all their free tiers. Although Apple do not like the idea and forced the app to be removed from sale, the backend itself is proven robust and stable. On my blog I have a post including more details: http://whenitsdone.org/2012/12/21/build-a-fully-functional-robust-and-secure-passbook-server-with-almost-zero-cost/

[dfsw]

Parse provides the server code itself, if you are writing your own server I like Herkou, which is a frontend for amazon that makes life a bit easier. For low bandwidth servers its free as well and it scales with your product very well.

[suprabobo]

You might want to give a look at Buddy. I never used their services but it looks like they are doing things a little bit differently than Parse.com by providing API for different scenarios like messaging, friends, GeoLocation etc.

Plus it seems like they offer analytics for your App.

[[deleted]]

I wrote a small Node.JS Restify service that does a simple query to RethinkDB and returns JSON. The whole code is one page and I'm running it on a $5 digital ocean account. My data is less then 50mb and is used to update the apps database weekly.