AWS vs. Firebase for Static Content??
I found this community after getting lost in a post stating pros & cons of AWS vs Firebase..
I have been hosting my Nonprofit's static pages using an Amazon S3 Bucket as the price is right considering my current needs.
I've been introduced to Firebase by Profs and am now reading about it I'm now wondering where I would fit best considering the free tier seems to go much further than AWS'.
Plus I am planning on moving into requiring a DB and possibly more resources.
Any thoughts on where my nonprofit would fit best? It's literally 5 static pages at most.
Trending on Indie Hackers
Netlify for now it has the best UX by far out of all solutions I have tried, if you need a DB later you can use AWS/Firebase later on.
Have you tried render.com?
Haven't tried, heard great things about it though.
Didn't see their free static sites.
Yep I would look at Netlify its a brilliant platform and as long as your bandwidth is less than 100GBs a month it is free. After that it does get quite expensive so keep this mind but as its only 5 static pages i'm sure you will be fine.
If you somehow use 100GB in bandwidth per month, I'd be stunned if you weren't earning far more than the hosting cost.
+1 for Netlify. It really lived up to the hype with how easy it was to use.
Just to play to the other side here - There's lots of trade-offs with all platforms, but for a 5 page site you're already successfully hosting, I'm not sure moving elsewhere will add any tangible benefit except if you either: 1) want to learn more about how other platforms work, 2) have some specific pain-point you're encountering that another platform will solve.
I think zeit.co is good option too
I've been using this recently and love it. Zeit.co is deffinilty more for a hands-on sort of developer.
I've got several sites running on firebase right now. These include:
https://DavidGranado.com - just a static site (my personal blog)
https://indiecomicrack.com - combination static site w/ some server side rendering (some hobby stuff of mine I occasionally tinker with)
https://ShopLystr.app
https://ShopLystr.com
https://blog.ShopLystr.com - 3 static sites with under one project with the .app site being the main app that also rolls in firebase's cloud functions, firestore database, security rules, auth, and client performance monitoring.
At my day job, we use aws and azure.
In my opinion, Firebase by far the best option for boot strappers due to their simplicity that doesn't sacrifice much in terms of flexibility. As I noted for ShopLystr, I have 2 distinct domains and 1 sub domain under the same project without any issues. And can easily add more. And since everything is in your face, it's real easy to say "Hey, I wonder if I can add this feature" by piece-wise adding in additional features (again, which are all incredibly easy to use).
All that said, I'd have to add a caveat. If everything in S3 is running fine for you and you don't have any need you're trying to fill, I'd actually just stick with that. But if you want more room to grow your app easily, I'd highly recommend investigating firebase.
I agree with @tylerchurch - for a 5 page static website you are already set on AWS S3. It should be covered in free tier unless you are getting really huge traffic, and in which case the cost would be minimal for static 5 page website. Unless you are having any pain points, I would suggest to let it be on S3. If you plan to use a database then I recommend Firebase absolutely.
You can also check out this thread
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/considering-firebase-instead-of-aws-d2a238b92c
KISS, if you already are on S3 the just stick with it. none of the options would be significantly better to justify spending time on it. You might wanna put the S3 behind CloudFront to cache the website, so it is faster and you save money on the S3 API calls
Just import or redeploy your static site into AWS Amplify, you can easily use Amplify CLI to add serverless functions, databases, APIs, analytics as needed, all of these are free tier eligible.
I've hosted plenty of websites on firebase as well as utilized the real-time database, Firestore, and the their storage solution and I have yet to pay anything more than $1. If you're trying to do with then firebase has the best and cheapest solution for that as well. Honestly look no further than firebase
You mention Firebase, but are you maybe really looking at Firebase Hosting ? If so, I'd go for it, used lots of times, and it's fine.
About persistence (Db) you can always use Firebase realtime db or you can switch to a better provider, as per your needs. To me it looks like an implementation detail, and it all depends on the decision criteria of yours.
most of the projects I have hosted on Firebase, as it easier to configure and it always free.
If you going to have relational dbs I’d stick with AWS or even move to heroku. Otherwise a move to firebase sounds like the perfect move.