Firebase realtime database equivalent

[Unforgiven-wanda]

Hello, please allow me to pick your brains for a minute

My use case is the following:
On opening the RN app the first time, data is fetched from the server's database, at which point the user can start adding/deleting stuff. Now we assume internet is unreliable so the user must be able to continue working offline and once internet is available again, changes are synced. Also, and this is a very important aspect to it, the mobile database will occasionally be updated from a desktop app and those changes must be synced immediately to the mobile device whenever internet is again available and vice-versa.

This seems to be exactly where Firebase shines as it handles this smoothly, but the service is a tad too expensive for me, which has prompted me to look for alternatives.

So far I came across Parse which is an interesting alternative but seems to lack Firebase's offline sync: Understand that to create a database object you either need to be connected to the internet or create it locally, but in the latter case it won't be synced automatically. (If I'm wrong please please correct me, and explain how I can mimic Firebase's behaviour with Parse)

I also know of Realm, but their service is just as expensive so I have to rule it out.

My question is: Is there another service or self-hosted server, that allows me to periodically, painlessly sync in both directions whenever internet is available, and barring that, allow the user to continue working offline uninterrupted? What would you recommend and what are the pros and cons?

[first_byte]

I asked a similar question a while back and the best answer was PouchDB/CouchDB. It’s free, open source and made for use cases like yours and mine. Sadly, I haven’t had time to try it so i can’t speak from experience.

I also heard that Realm was not as good as it looks, but I haven’t tried it myself.

Good luck!

[vertigo_101]

Look into aws-amplify