Starting out with the BaaS solutions, more specifically the Back4App provider, the following results have been observed:

Back4App’s performance:

Cost: $4.99 for the basic plan — which was the one I tested

Maximum requests per second: 30 req/s, advertised on the site and measured

Time to handle all requests: 60.2 s

Average time to handle a request: 664 ms

Maximum time to handle a request: 1656 ms

Standard deviation/Volatility: 38.4 ms

Location of the cloud: AWS US East

In terms of ease of use, I’d say it is a an ok interface, as it is very similar to the Parse.com. Its performance handling the connections, on the other hand, look rather good. I will first check out other solutions to give a verdict.

Also, in terms of migration, Back4App offers a tool to migrate the app from Parse.com to their services, and has an article explaining that. Looks really simple to migrate.

Its location in the AWS US East places its servers in a nice central location, which absolutely won’t jeopardize any app that is US-centered, but might add latency to apps on Europe, Asia and South America.

Back4App limits the Database Storage to 1.5GB, 10GB File Storage, 100k requests per month and 1 Cloud Code Job for the $4.99 plan. These numbers look pretty nice limits for a small startup to create an app and manage their businesses.

Back4App’s Image of the $4.99 plan

Next on the list is the SashiDo provider. Here are the results that I observed:

SashiDo’s performance:

Cost: $4.95 for the smallest plan there

Maximum requests per second: 19.5 req/s, measured; site advertises that there are no limits

Time to handle all requests: 92.4 s

Average time to handle a request: 1020 ms

Maximum time to handle a request: 4571 ms

Standard deviation/Volatility: 208.7 ms

Location of the cloud: AWS — probably Europe

SashiDo’s has a simple, beautiful and intuitive interface with a lot of small things that work properly, such as the duo Tab/Shift+Tab to go back and forth through the fields.

The migration looks like a pretty painless process, in which you go to the migration page, press the migrate parse app button and follow the flow of the page. Simple and clean.

I am, however, a little bit disappointed with their promises of performance that are not really met: they promised no limits in requests per second, which were not met by the measurements that have been made. Actually, trying the very same test made on Back4App at SashiDo’s API led to a much inferior request per second rate. It looks like they invested everything they had on their interface and forgot to do their homework on the backend.

I would not say such things from a startup that is investing in their frontend and delaying optimizations to the backend, however a core product of their business is the backend and it should be at least polished.

SashiDo limits also the database to 1 GB of storage, 40 GB of File Storage, 500 GB of Data Transfer and 1 background job. They look like promising numbers.

SashiDo’s advertisement at the site

Comparing both, I’d certainly go for Back4App. Their performance is much superior and the gap of ease of use is not big. I really liked SashiDo’s interface, truly, from the unfathomable depths of my hearth, but their performance is far behind Back4App’s one, and this would really hurt the final user of every and any startup.

Now to the PaaS solutions, starting with the Heroku+mLab:

Heroku + mLab performance:

Cost: $7.00 for Heroku’s Hobby dyno + $15.00 for mLab 1GB Shared hosting

Maximum requests per second: 270 req/s, measured

Time to handle all requests: 59.914 s

Average time to handle a request: 662 ms

Maximum time to handle a request: 1362 ms

Standard deviation/Volatility: 69.5 ms

Location of the cloud: AWS US East

Heroku’s interface is nice to see, but it looks a little bit complicated to use if compared to other interfaces. There’s just too many things to look at and some things are not where I expected them to be. E.g., to view the logs of the app, which is a really common task, you have to press a “more” button that is not really at focus, it is just a button on the upper right corner. It is a pretty interface, but with things not really in the place you expect it to be.

The migration of an app to both Heroku+mLab and NodeChef require to setup a new Parse Server and upload it to the cloud, which might not be the easiest or fastest thing to do. Some configurations have to be inserted in code, which might give the admin some trouble.

When talking about performance, it is clear that the performance on Heroku is absurdly good. I can only make compliments about the results, as they look really nice for the price you pay and will of course give the user a nice and smooth run.

Limits on this PaaS provider are 512MB of RAM for the Hobby dyno — a custom, kind of fancy, name for instance — and 1GB database storage for the mLab plan.

Heroku’s plan

mLab’s plan

Now, to the NodeChef:

NodeChef’s performance:

Cost: $28.00 per month for the instance that has 512 MB of RAM, as in the site

Maximum requests per second: 180 req/s, measured

Time to handle all requests: 66.1 s

Average time to handle a request: 729 ms

Maximum time to handle a request: 1792 ms

Standard deviation/Volatility: 90.8 ms

Location of the cloud: probably US

NodeChef’s interface is also nice, with everything a DevOps team needs in the place they need to be. Looking the logs, comparing to Heroku, is also in a dropdown button, but it is not in some corner: it is at focus and you are led to the button naturally.

My comment on migration is pretty much the same I did for Heroku: might cost you time and effort that could be invested somewhere else, perhaps deploying features and increasing the value of your product.

Performance is ok in the NodeChef: you won’t have problems with performance, as the instance is dedicated for you, however it really is far behind Heroku.

NodeChef gives you also 100MB of DB memory, 1GB of storage and an app with 512MB of RAM, for the $28 plan.

NodeChef’s ads at the site

Bottom line: I’d choose Heroku+mLab, as it is cheaper and performs better. I could live with the interface, as it is just a matter of getting used to it. Also, the price is lower: and that certainly makes a difference, as your business might scale and the $6 difference might turn into $60, which could be invested somewhere else — e.g., advertising.

So, from the BaaS solutions turns out Back4App shines as in the PaaS solutions Heroku+mLab dominates. But… which one to choose? Back4App or Heroku+mLab?