When comparing FeathersJS vs Firebase, the Slant community recommends Firebase for most people. In the question“What are the best backend web frameworks?” Firebase is ranked 31st while FeathersJS is ranked 35th. The most important reason people chose Firebase is:
The content is deployed immediately through the Firebase CLI. Once it's uploaded, the content is served immediately. If you have made a mistake, you don't need to re-upload a new version, through the Admin dashboard you can easily rollback to a previous version.
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Pros
Pro Can sync events between different Node instances
Feather can sync events happening in two different Node processes or even servers in real-time. For example: an event happens in server A, the user connected to server B is instantly notified of that event.
This is done through a central Redis or Mongo collection or through a websocket libraries' clustering library.
Pro Easy REST APIs
Through services, Feathers provides instant CRUD functionality, it also can easily expose a RESTful and real-time API through HTTP/HTTPS and websockets.
Pro Can be integrated in an existing ExpressJS project
Since Feathers itself is built on top of Express (it's a thin wrapper over socket.io, primus and Express) and because of Feathers' highly modular nature, it's very easy to integrate Feathers in an existing Express project.
Pro Plug-in any feature you need
Feathers makes extensive use of modules (which are called Feathers services). These services work like ExpressJS middleware and can be used with app.use('/path', serviceObject)
.
Services help developers keep their applications modular and as minimal as possible, without any unnecessary libraries or bloat.
Pro Support for different socket transports
FeatherJS uses primus which is a universal wrapper for real-time frameworks. Through primus you can easily choose which socket transport you want to use.
Pro One command deploys and rollbacks
The content is deployed immediately through the Firebase CLI. Once it's uploaded, the content is served immediately. If you have made a mistake, you don't need to re-upload a new version, through the Admin dashboard you can easily rollback to a previous version.
Pro Assured future support
Google acquired Firebase in Oct. 2014. This gives Firebase a degree of trustworthiness in their service and future support since they are backed by such a large company.
Pro Well documented
The documentation and quick start guides are informative and easy to learn.
Cons
Con Not so widely used
Could be problematic to convince the client use this framework in his/her project.
Con Not very beginner friendly
Although the documentation for Feathers is very good, it still needs some configuration in order to get Feathers up for developing something with it.
Con Hosted
Firebase locks you in to Google's service; you can't run it on your own servers.