Parse alternatives

As you may noticed Parse will be fully retired after a year-long period ending on January 28, 2017. Most of us need to find an alternative backend service for our apps. Please help the community to find a great BaaS. Contribution guidelines can be found here.

###What features are we looking for?

• Data storage
• Push notifications
• Usage analytics
• Dashboard
• Social integration
• User Administration
• Cloud Code integration
• Multiple mobile platform SDKs
• Background jobs

The real-time providers are marked with ⚡ icon.

###General purpose providers

• AnyPresence The AnyPresence MBaaS is focused on simplifying the process of building enterprise mobile apps that run on many devices, without sacrificing developer flexibility. Users without much mobile experience or time can get started quickly, to assemble and deploy an app through a web-based designer. Advanced developers have access to the source code for all underlying components, to make customizations outside the platform or deploy server components on-premise.

• ApiOmat ApiOmat enables your enterprise processes to function as mobile applications. We mobilize complex business structures and processes by offering a mobile backend as a service solution that connects existing IT-systems with mobile applications and devices. The mobile backend as a service can be directly installed in a company’s data center, with connectors operating as a secure linkage to IT systems. This allows employees to work with data via apps and digital instances irrespective of where they are.

• Appery.io Integrated mobile backend services (MBaaS), so you can focus on your apps, not infrastructure, including database, push, and server code.

• AppWooDoo ⚡ AppWooDoo offers a simple yet powerful real-time database and push notifications backend server. Compatible for iOS and Android.

• Appcelerator Arrow ⚡ A next-gen MBaaS, Arrow consists of two primary components, Builder and Cloud. Arrow Builder lets developers rapidly assemble APIs, data models and data connectors either via visual wizard or programmatically. Arrow Cloud delivers an instant, elastically scalable cloud service for running APIs and analyzing their use, as well as full support for rich push notifications and 20+ other services (e.g. geo, photo storage, etc) along with ArrowDB, which provides a schema-less data store.

• Backbeam ⚡ Backbeam offers many services that you will use to build your web and mobile applications. Backbeam is also designed to help you in your development process, not only when your application is finished.

• Backendless A system of integrated, general purpose, mobile cloud services with native and REST APIs. Such as: User Management, Data Persistence, Geolocation, Media Streaming, Publish/Subscribe Messaging, Push Notifications, Custom Business Logic, Analytics, Mobile Code Generation.

• Buddy A lightweight, fast and flexible platform for collecting and processing IoT data.

• Built.io ⚡ Built.io's award-winning mobile Backend-as-a-Service (mBaaS) allows companies to create applications without the hassle of designing, building, and maintaining a custom backend technology stack. Built.io Backend provides a proven, enterprise-grade platform that powers engaging applications for web, mobile and loT — built in weeks or days, instead of months.

• CloudBoost.io ⚡ CloudBoost.io is a mobile Backend-as-a-Service (mBaaS) which lets you implement realtime, search and more in your app in minutes. Think of CloudBoost as Parse + Firebase + Algolia all combined into one. CloudBoost is an open platform, which is available on docker and can be installed on any server and on any cloud. It is also available as a managed service.

• CloudKit CloudKit is a framework that replaces back-end web services like old-school databases, file storage, and user authentication systems. CloudKit offers tons of APIs to access iCloud. You can create a user model inside your application linked to a user’s iCloud account. Meanwhile, you can have a public global database to store application-level data. You can also save large files and bulk data into iCloud Drive, so your users can use their data from their other devices. This works just like working on local files, but with all the operations sent to the cloud.

• CloudMine Instantly embed mobile services such as: push notification, geolocation, social, SMS and personal fitness data with out-of-box support for mission critical APIs & web services. Make sure your mobile experience is enjoyed across all devices with support for iOS, Android, Microsoft, mobile web (HTML5), and cross-platform UI toolsets.

• Firebase ⚡ You can store & sync data with Firebase NoSQL cloud database. Data is stored as JSON, synced to all connected clients in realtime, and available when your app goes offline. You can also authenticate users with email & password, Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, Google, anonymous auth, or easily integrate with your existing authentication system.

• Kii With Kii’s mobile backend, create scalable, high performance mobile apps for various operating systems that all connect with your device seamlessly. With a complete set of built-in development tools, reduce your app development time from months to hours.

• Kinvey An alternative backend-as-a-service provider very similar to Parse. Like Parse, it offers cloud storage, push notifications and custom business logic, but also provides an out-of-the-box implementation of Facebook Open Graph for apps that don't have websites.

• PubNub ⚡ PubNub powers low-latency messaging across any device, any platform, anywhere in the world. Use our simple APIs and SDKs to connect, build, and scale realtime applications on the PubNub Data Stream Network. Focus on shipping a great product instead of building and managing expensive data streaming infrastructure.

• Restdb.io Backend-as-a-service focused on a powerful interface for creating your database models and providing a JSON REST API.

• Syncano Syncano is a highly customizable BaaS that greatly reduces the need for backend code and middleware so developers can focus on building exceptional user experiences.

• Telerik Telerik Backend Services is equipped with a robust set of security measures to encrypt and securely transport data from all communications. As your business needs grow, you can be sure that Telerik Backend Services will scale to meet your requirements.

###Push notification providers

• Batch Batch is a push notification platform built around predictive analytics and smart segmentation algorithms. With Batch, you can efficiently send transactional (one to one) and marketing notifications (one to many) while leveraging our other modules to run a successful retention strategy.

• Catapush Catapush is a simple, reliable and scalable delivery API for transactional push notifications for applications. Ideal for sending data-driven transactional notifications including targeted e-commerce and personalized one-to-one messages. Get delivery confirmation with real time status for each message sent and build intelligent messaging logic in your real time applications.

• OneSignal OneSignal is a completely free push notification delivery service. We fund our product development through products offered to enterprise clients. We provide a suite of APIs and tools for mobile developers to send, schedule, localize, and A/B test their notification campaigns. Our highly reliable service has all the features of Parse and developers can use our Parse data importer to ease their switch.

• Pushwoosh Pushwoosh is a multi-platform push notifications service, which enables developers, marketing reps and product owners to keep in touch with their app users, drive engagement, promote products, push up sales, and track the progress of the campaign with notifications.

• Urban Airship Urban Airship helps leading brands engage their mobile users and build high-value relationships from the moment customers download an app. Thousands of companies and some of the most demanding brands in retail, media & entertainment, sports and travel & hospitality, trust Urban Airship to deliver the mobile moments that matter to their customers and to their business.

###Backends for Game developers

• AppWarp ⚡ AppWarp is a powerful, yet simple platform for developing multiplayer real-time games and applications. We provide awesome features to developers that enable you to build seemingly complex applications with little effort.

• brainCloud brainCloud is a ready-made backend for the development of feature-rich mobile+social games and gamified apps. brainCloud features include cloud data, cloud code, push notifications, social integration, gamification, in-app purchases, pricing controls, promotions, segments, analytics, external authentication, shared accounts, dataStream architecture, scheduled jobs and more.

• GameSparks GameSparks is a cloud-based platform on which to build ALL the server-side components of your game, including Player Management, Social, Multiplayer, Economies and Catalogue Management, and Meta-Game systems. All features are fully customisable, and you can create any custom API and write any custom server logic. You have full database access, and sophisticated access control for different users.

• Heroic Labs Heroic's API makes it easy for developers to rapidly add social and competitive features to apps/games without the need for a server backend. The API is designed and optimised for high volume mobile apps/games, and readily provides all the necessary features without requiring additional code or configuration on top of basic building blocks.

• Photon ⚡ Easily Add Multiplayer to Your Games, Run Them in the Global Photon Cloud or Host Your Own Photon Servers. Fast, reliable, scalable. Made for anyone: indies, professional studios and AAA productions.

• PlayFab PlayFab offers the most complete backend platform built exclusively for live games. Start integrating with your mobile, PC, or console game for free, and go live for a fraction of the cost of one backend engineer. You bring the fun, we'll do the rest.

• SmartFoxServer ⚡ SmartFoxServer is a comprehensive SDK for rapidly developing multiplayer games and applications with Adobe Flash/Flex/Air, Unity, HTML5, iOS, Windows Phone 8, Android, Java, Windows 8, C++ and more. SmartFoxServer comes with a rich set of features, an impressive documentation set, tens of examples with their source, powerful administration tools and a very active support forum.

###Open-source solutions

• Apache Usergrid Usergrid is an open-source Backend-as-a-Service (“BaaS” or “mBaaS”) composed of an integrated distributed NoSQL database, application layer and client tier with SDKs for developers looking to rapidly build web and/or mobile applications. It provides elementary services (user registration & management, data storage, file storage, queues) and retrieval features (full text search, geolocation search, joins) to power common app features.

• BAASBOX BASSBOX provides a web administrative console, user management API and signup with Facebook and Google+, content managment with grant/revoke permissions on documents on user and roles, geospatial queries, store big file, file custom metadata and file links, integrated friendship APIs based on "following" concept, push notification for iOS and Android, Server scripting for extending the features via plugins.

• Couchbase Mobile ⚡ A full-stack open-source NoSQL database. It includes an embedded database (for iOS, OS X, tvOS, watchOS, Android, Linux, Windows, Unity, Xamarin, PhoneGap/Cordova, and HTML5), a database server, multi-master replication with automatic and custom conflict resolution, fine-grained user/role based security, pluggable authentication, web-hooks, REST APIs, and Stream/Batch APIs. Apps using Couchbase Mobile work offline with data being automatically synchronized between the embedded databases and database server. It is designed to be easily integrated with other systems.

• GUN ⚡ GUN is a highly modular, open-source, real-time, offline-first, distributed cache storage engine. By default gun uses localStorage for data storage, but with gun-level there are many more data storage engines just a module away. GUN defaults to pushing all data. The gun team is regularly releasing new modules, new and improved functionality, and improving performance. If you have any questions, please feel free to ping the team on Gitter.

• Helios An extensible open-source backend framework for iOS apps from Mattt Thompson. Helios is built on the Rack webserver interface and is comprised of a collection of backend components that you can mix and match to provide features including data synchronisation, push notifications, in-app purchases, Passbook, Newstand, logging and analytics.

• Kuzzle ⚡ Kuzzle is an open-source back-end as a service (BaaS). Kuzzle combines a high level API, a database, a real-time engine, subscription and notification mechanisms as well as some advanced search features. The API is accessible through several standard protocols.

• LoopBack ⚡ LoopBack is an open-source Node.js framework built on top of Express optimized for building APIs for mobile, web, and other devices. Connect to multiple data sources, write business logic in Node.js, glue on top of your existing services and data, connect using JS, iOS & Android SDKs.

• Marlin ⚡ Marlin is a fast REST API library built on top of redis server. Its has no specific clients like Android or iOS. But it has got developer API for custom APIs which can be written in Python.

###Parse Server providers

• Google Cloud Platform You can migrate your app from the hosted Parse backend to Google App Engine by running Node.js on App Engine Managed VMs and using MongoDB preinstalled on a Compute Engine VM instance or by using MongoLab.

• IBM Bluemix Bluemix is IBM's platform service, built with Cloud Foundry and running on IBM SoftLayer. It supports the Node.js runtime required for Parse Server. Bluemix also comes with many database options, including MongoDB from IBM's Compose.io acquisition. Link includes migration instructions.