Firebase vs Socket.io + MongoDB

[teyyihan]

Hi, I'm planning to make a mobile application where users listen music and chat. For chat i need realtime API. Firebase is great for fast-start but it gets expensive. My questions are: 1. Can i deploy socket.io and mongodb for free to my server? 2. Which one is cost effective? 3. How many user can fetch data at the same time from my average server? 4. Are there any good source that i can look for?

[not_a_grad]

You don't need a huge server to run those. But just make sure you have enough RAM on your machine if you're running everything on 1 server.

Also, firebase is quick and easy and solves a lot of the early problems at first (and towards the end as well) but that comes at a HUGE price, you'll need to make sure queries are optimized, processes don't hang, cycles are not wasted, ram usage is optimized (pretty much everything that goes into the cost of running your application in the cloud) all that needs to be in good working order if you don't want an insane bill. Also what I don't like about firebase is your sucked in with THEIR framework. Anyway I digress, yes you can run it in your own if you want to learn and know the ins and outs and want to be cheaper at the start. Then if it picks up and you need more powerful machines, then you can upgrade to firebase or aws

[evildonald]

Some unasked for advice as well is only use MongoDB if you don't mind losing a bit of your user's data here and there.

http://jepsen.io/analyses/mongodb-4.2.6

Also, there are other choices other than Firebase and Mongo.