So what are the better priced alternatives?

I was curious about the answer myself, and bumped into kinto: http://kinto.readthedocs.io/en/latest/overview.html

- Build collaborative applications with real time updates and fine-grained permissions.

- Our JavaScript client for browsers leverages IndexedDB to work completely offline and synchronise data when online.

- It’s even possible for data to be encrypted on the client to keep user data safe on the server.

- Permissions can be set on the stored objects, making it possible to share data between users.

- Kinto is an HTTP API in front of a database. Interactions with the server are simple HTTP requests rather than complex SQL or map-reduce queries. It is meant to be minimalist and simple.

This would be a self-hosted solution. They have a pre-built docker image to spin it up.

Previous HN links:

- 641 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10994736

- 687 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10733164

Looks like Kinto uses PostgreSQL as the backend (http://docs.kinto-storage.org/en/stable/configuration/produc...). This was a little buried in the web docs and website.

I've look at that as well, but "scaling production" in 2017 roadmap worries me.

https://github.com/Kinto/kinto/wiki/Roadmap

Have you heard of RetroAnalytics? It's a predictive analytics platform that offers similar features but without the need to be locked into Firebase. https://retroanalytics.io

Disclaimer - I'm the founder :)

What's the pricing model?

We charge a monthly fee which is based on the sessions you are getting and then we have a few different tiers. We should have our pricing up on the site in the next few days and we have a 30 day free trial to make sure you are happy with the product, feel free to reach out to me - david at retroanalytics.io.

For an alternative to the predictive portions just launched, check out https://blog.set.gl/ currently in a free beta.

Use cases vary with your app need, but the Halfbrick (fruit ninja etc) case study might help: https://firebase.google.com/downloads/Halfbrick_Case_Study.p... - we worked with them during the alpha testing and I think their approach will work for a lot of apps.

For what sort of applications is it super over-priced? I'm using the realtime database to build out an app, and if I start scaling my current (beta) usage by 1000x, I'm still only getting monthly bills of $100 or so.

Fear based question: are there applications (hopefully mine) that would scale in an economic way? And there are other use-cases that wouldn't scale?

It really depends on the application. Certainly, everyone love control, but there is a trade off between control and cost. Firebase prediction is simply a simple implementation for some simple use cases, which are plenty.