Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS): What Is It and Why Your Business Needs It

Backend-as-a-Service provides an efficient way to handle all your backend needs and build high-performing mobile and web applications without hassles.

This technology allows developers to stay focused on writing and managing the pieces users generally touch and see. 

If you are into a business, you know how important software is for your users. Whether it is a web app or a mobile app, developers need to write the whole code in their preferred language to develop an application. 

This means developers are required to focus on both backend and frontend functions, which is time-consuming and needs extra effort.

But not anymore!

There is an evolving technology – Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) that takes care of all the backend functions so that developers can easily focus on frontend functions. 

In this article, I’ll discuss more about this technology along with its architecture, benefits, and working principles. Finally, I’ll compare BaaS with other cloud services and discuss some platforms.

Here we go!

What Is Backend-as-a-Service?

Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) is a technology used by developers to build front-end parts along with the core logic of the applications and websites easily. It is a cloud service model where developers outsource all the backend activities of a mobile application so that they only need to write and manage the front-end. 

The backend is the logic working behind the scenes. It includes several server platforms like Python, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Node.JS, along with databases. In order to build an interactive website that has frontend and backend as well, you need to learn coding using any of the languages. BaaS is a modern solution that you can use to bypass the use of the backend entirely.

Thus, BaaS enables you to focus on the front end and use backend services without developing or building them with the help of SDKs and APIs. Also, you don’t need to manage servers, containers, or virtual machines to keep your application running. This helps developers build and launch web and mobile applications more quickly.

With its ready-made features like APIs, social media integrations, cloud code functions, file storage, push notifications, and scalable databases, you can speed up your development process. BaaS helps you develop faster, keep your focus, cut engineering costs, and more. 

Key Components of BaaS

BaaS utilizes a modern architecture that combines drag-and-drop and easy-to-manage functionality to make complex backend processes easy for developers. The architecture has three components. 

Modules

Modules include content-types builder, user models, and content-types data. With the BaaS content-types builder, you can manage fields and entries to understand how the information is served to users over the backend. 

A content-types data model is used to filter out queries using APIs or GraphQL and perform CRUD operations (create, read, update, and delete). Some BaaS providers give you an option of business logic programming within this module. This helps you manage and control the application data exchange process.

User model modules help you manage authentication permissions and processes. You can use this model to visualize how users sign in to your mobile and wave applications.

Along with these modules, the BaaS platform includes multiple add-ons for content and page builders, file storage, and state machine modeling.

API

The API is the second component of the BaaS architecture. BaaS platforms utilize REST APIs to help developers perform backend operations effortlessly. REST APIs simplify the configuration and management of BaaS architecture. Whether you are developing chatbot or gaming applications, API makes BaaS valuable for the applications you are working on. 

Data Channels

Data Channels are the major component of BaaS, allowing data to travel through a channel to reach the final backend destination, i.e., a REST API. Once data from the application channels are provided to BaaS API, there will be interactions with servers, modules, and databases. These application channels work like a circulatory system. 

How Does BaaS Work?

BaaS offers a cloud-based platform to the developers so that they can handle applications’ infrastructure and operations. Let’s find out how BaaS actually works.

• Register and setup: In the first stage, developers need to choose a BaaS provider by checking the features they need. Next, they must create a new account by signing up with the details.
• Integrate applications: Developers can integrate the BaaS API or SDKs into the application’s codebase. The SDK offers tools and libraries that let developers interact with the BaaS platform in order to access features and services. 
• Configure backend: Developers can configure BaaS provider’s backend services according to their requirements. This includes configuring server-side logic, defining data models, setting up databases, and enabling services like push notifications, user authentication, and more. 
• Develop frontend: Once the backend framework is ready, developers can focus on developing the application frontend. This includes developing client-side functionality and user interface. 
• Communicate with API: The frontend applications communicate with the platform through SDKs and APIs. Developers can make API calls in order to perform data retrieval, manipulation, user authentication, and other tasks related to the backend. 
• Manage infrastructure and scalability: The BaaS platform takes care of scaling and infrastructure management, ensuring your application can drive more traffic and fulfill user demands by allocating needed resources dynamically. 
• Monitoring and analytics: BaaS platforms offer monitoring and analytics tools that let developers track performance metrics, user engagement, and usage patterns. These insights help a developer optimize the applications and make decisions easily. 
• Maintenance and updates: The BaaS provider takes care of maintenance, security patches, and updates for the backend infrastructure so that you can focus on front-end development without any disturbance. 

Benefits of BaaS

BaaS is an effective technology when we talk about launching faster applications because it saves your overall development time. BaaS has many benefits if you adopt it in your business. Let’s dig into the advantages:

Reduce Development Cost

BaaS offers an effective solution to this by streamlining and automating tasks, collaboration, and communications to produce high-quality apps. In addition, it is fairer and cost-effective when you have your own front-end experts. 

Increase Time-to-Market Speed

With the help of backend services, you can directly focus on the frontend part, which obviously saves you time. Hence, the final application is ready in a much faster time, and users can start using it instantly. Additionally, BaaS providers offer integrations that can again effectively give you more options to finish an application development process quickly.

Standardize Backend Development

By standardizing backend development, you can know how developers create and distribute code using Backend-as-a-Service. This helps you gain knowledge, predict the delivery of the application, and maintain compliance and security. 

Easy Operations

Building an application from the beginning is a time-consuming and complex task. In another aspect, maintaining the application is more complicated when you deal with both the front-end and back-end. BaaS makes sure you won’t need backend experts in your organization to manage cloud or server infrastructure. 

BaaS providers also offer ready-made features, such as account authentication, data search, and data storage, to make your operations smooth. 

Scalability

Organizations need to scale up or down according to their requirements and demands. Hence, they require scalable services and technologies to be able to meet unique business needs. BaaS providers offer scalability that helps you simplify the whole development process. 

How BaaS Differs from Other Services

There are other cloud services that help you build applications easily. BaaS provides backend services to the developers so that they can focus only on the front end to build a user-friendly application. Let’s see what other services can do:

• Platform-as-Service (PaaS): PaaS is a cloud service model that provides cloud-based platforms for you to build applications and manage them. But it doesn’t offer options like push notifications, user authentication, etc.
• Mobile Backend-as-a-service (mBaaS): mBaaS is an application platform that works the same as BaaS but on mobile devices. It allows developers to develop and deploy applications on all devices regardless of any operating system. Also, it includes user management, push notifications, analytics, API, and more. 
• Serverless computing: Serverless computing is an execution model of cloud computing where a cloud provider allocates different machine resources, taking care of all the servers on behalf of the customers. 

In other words, it provides backend services on an as-used basis. Here, developers can write, execute, and deploy code without worrying about the infrastructure. 

BaaS Platforms

Let’s now dive into different BaaS platforms.

#1. Back4App

Get a real-time database to store and query data on the cloud with Back4App. Make this relational data accessible over REST and GraphQL with an open-source and scalable backend. 

You can perform queries using modern resources, constraints, aggregates, geo-queries, and relational queries. It offers scalable and multi-region architecture along with CDN support to experience low latency and responsiveness. 

You can add your business logic with JavaScript functions to integrate your applications to the Back4App features conveniently. In addition, you can expand the power of cloud functions by installing new NPM modules. 

Schedule cloud functions to execute repetitive tasks, such as post notifications, running data sanitization, or sending engagement emails. Fetch data from the application using REST, GraphQL, or SDK. Back4App generates an API automatically for all the operations and allows you to interact with all the backend features using a few lines of code. 

Start building your app today for free. Choose a paid plan starting at $15/app/month to unlock more options. 

#2. Firebase

Experience an application development platform with Firebase that helps you develop and grow games and applications that your users love. You can scale and accelerate application development without the need for infrastructure management.

To build market-ready applications, you can set up your backend easily without managing servers, solve app development problems, and scale effortlessly to meet the demands of your users. It offers multiple products like Cloud Firestore, real-time database, remote config, Firebase extensions, app checks, cloud functions, and more.

The tool helps you simplify testing and troubleshooting processes, roll out features, monitor adoption, and more.

You can run experiments, customize your application, and understand your users’ requirements. It offers tools like remote config, Google Analytics, authentication, A/B testing, cloud messaging, in-app messaging, etc. 

Get started for free with limited features and tools, or choose a pay-as-you-go plan to avail yourself of extra benefits. 

#3. Microsoft Azure

Build the backend for mobile applications with Microsoft Azure and store application data on-premises or in the cloud. 

You will get options like push notifications, the option to authenticate customers, and custom backend logic in Node.js or C#. By using Azure Active Directory, you can authenticate your users more securely. Connect with on-premises resources like Oracle, SQL Server, SharePoint, and SAP to utilize cross-platform frameworks functionality like PhoneGap and Xamarin. 

Create powerful applications by syncing offline data and also connect your applications to on-premises systems. You can also broadcast personalized notifications to your customers within minutes and configure autoscale for notification hubs and mobile apps. 

Microsoft Azure never charges any upfront fees or termination fees; you will pay what you use. 

#4. Supabase

Experience an open-source Firebase alternative – Supabase, and start your unique project with authentication, edge functions, real-time subscriptions, vector embeddings, storage instant API, and Postgres database. 

The tool offers the most trusted relational database for your every project. You can add logins and sign-ups, preventing your data using Row Level Security. Also, you can write custom code easily without scaling or deploying servers. 

Supabase helps you store, serve, and organize large files, from images to videos. You can build a multiplayer experience with its real-time data synchronization. With Supabase, you can integrate your favorite machine-learning models to index, store, and search vector embeddings. 

Start building applications for free by collaborating with your team. In order to scale your application production, you can go with a paid plan starting from $25/month/organization. 

#5. AWS Amplify

Build full-stack mobile and web applications in hours with AWS Amplify, which helps you start and scale easily. It helps you create a backend for your iOS, Android, or web application with data, storage, authentication, and more. 

With the use of design-to-code Figma integration, you can build the frontend UI visually and connect the UI to the backend in a few clicks. Deploy and host secure, reliable, and fast websites along with server-side rendered applications. 

In addition, you can extend your application with over 175 AWS services in order to support DevOps practices, user growth, use cases, and more. AWS Amplify offers several tools and services:

• Amplify Studio (Visual Interface)
• Amplify CLI
• Amplify libraries (open-source)
• Amplify UI components
• Amplify web hosting

Get it for free, or contact the AWS team to get a quote. 

#6. Appwrite

Build applications faster and scale bigger using Appwrite backend services. It is an open-source community optimized for your coding experiences. You can store, manage, and query access to the application data in real-time with a powerful and scalable database. 

Get effortless management and logins with a suite of OAuth providers and authentication methods. Serve and store files and media with built-in encryption and compression. You can extend Appwrite’s functionality with your favorite language using serverless functions. 

Appwrite offers built-in encryption, SSL certificates, audit logs, abuse control, and more to ensure privacy, peace of mind, and security. You will get a real-time database, storage, and more so that you can build apps easily. 

If you are looking forward to smaller projects, you can go with a starter plan, which is free. For pro developers, the pricing starts at $15/month/member. 

#7. Backendless

Get everything you need to develop and run applications with Backendless, which is extensible, scalable, and affordable with ease. Minimize third-party dependencies and save money by building an app with a platform where you will get everything to fulfill your needs. 

Create a stunning user interface for websites and applications quickly with an amazing visual UI builder. You can integrate APIs effortlessly into your frontend, allowing smooth communication with the backend services. In addition, you can design responsive applications that adapt to mobile and web platforms. 

Get a collection of App Blueprints for free and gain valuable insights across application types. 

For small businesses and individuals, Backendless is free. You can avail of extra benefits by paying some charges depending on the feature you select. 

Conclusion 

Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) is a game-changer for businesses and backend developers. It simplifies the approach of building an app using powerful features that enable developers to build unique applications. 

This can save time, minimize the need for experts in backend operations, and accelerate development cycles. You can also use the above BaaS tools and obtain these benefits.

Next, You may also explore some backend Solutions for web and mobile applications.