The Developer’s Guide:Cloud Back Ends

Here are a few of the few of the best cloud back ends that would help app developers in reducing costs and speeding the development process:

CloudyRec

While it still sits in Beta phase, this one a fast grower. It has all the basic mobile cloud back end stuff like user accounts and online storage it has a code generator that really speeds up the back end setup also the free tier grants you access to analytics.

Buddy

Listed as AppHub partner, Buddy is the most versatile service provider in the list as it offers powerful picture manipulations and storage, game leader boards, messaging and more importantly it offers an easy way to implement push notifications and flexible analytics.

QuickBlox

Like it name implies, QuickBlox is really a bunch of plug-in modules. It gives you different parts to integrate into your app like locations, chat, ratings… Also it offers a pretty decent free tier that allows any startup to test its app capabilities before opting for larger tiers.

Parse

Parse is becoming more and more the de facto cloud backend for mobile apps as it is used by high profile apps. And while Parse is like the others in many ways it excels in data management and storage that appears to be its only differentiator.

Appcelerator

The cloud provider of choice for Titanium developers. This provider has it all, being the easiest way to build a multiplatform mobile social app. And it is easy to see why : users, photos, push , locations , status, chat, posts and ratings.

Kinvey

While it lacks Windows Phone support, Kinvey is a decent Back end as a Service (BaaS). What we don't like about it is the limitation of the free tier (200 users Really!). What differentiates Kinvey from the others is its interaction with third party services like YouTube to store relevant data.

Kumulos

Kumulos is the only BaaS that i found that provides true MySQL support to developers. It allows you to import your existing databases and to create new ones. Also it has the ability to process native SQL commands. It really acts like a MySQL database nothing more nothing less.