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Dropbox Datastore API Alternatives

Dropbox Datastore API Alternatives

Clifton L.
Helpful | Level 5

I'm sure you've all heard Dropbox's news that they will be deprecating the Datastore API. I'm curious to know what everyone is going to move over to.

I originally chose the Datastore API for a few reasons:

  • It can gracefully handle large datasets (my users have thousands of records each)
  • Importing lots of data is very fast (thousands of records in less than 10 seconds; doing the same thing on Parse takes ~25 minutes).
  • Dropbox is well known and trusted by many

I am currently considering a few other options, but I'd love to hear what you all are looking to do.

  1. Firebase - firebase.com - This seems to be the most similar to the Datastore API so far. Developers claim it performs really well with large datasets. The downside is that it costs money for more concurrent connections (but the prices are reasonable).

  2. Couchbase - couchbase.com - This is open source and seems pretty good. The downside is having to get your own server environment up and running.

  3. Helios - helios.io - This seems to provide a lot of flexibility, but you have to do some of your own back-end setup, and it doesn't seem to provide an object-base sync interface. Instead, you have to use Core Data and its REST API.

  4. Parse - parse.com - There is a lot to like about this option, and it can handle large datasets, but doing basic database operations like importing data and summing the numbers in a column is surprisingly difficult (for me, at least).

Anyone else found an alternative they like?

Good luck with your BaaS migration. 😕

30 Replies 30

Adam E.1
Explorer | Level 4

I've started using Firebase too and so far find it very powerful. Certainly saves a lot of time compared to rolling your own server/sync solution. It would be nice if we had more certainty about the future of these hosted sync services but for now I think I'll stick with it. I built a very basic sync engine in Python and Core Data for my first app but ran into many problems with my users' data not syncing correctly. It's great just not having to worry about sync at all and focus on actually building the core features of the app.

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    Adam E.1 Explorer | Level 4
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