Building my own tools
Another tool I’m thinking about replacing with my own version is Firebase Remote Config. In reality all it does is store a dictionary of values for your app to fetch and your app connects to it with a web socket. If the dictionary gets an update any app connected updates right away, or at least that’s the theory. In reality would it really that important for a config to be that responsive? Wouldn’t a single request to your own server, delivering a JSON payload on app launch solve the same problem? For my purposes, yes.
I’ve also been having trouble with Firebase real time data options because they don’t always behave like I expect them to. I may spend some time putting together a quick Vapor web socket server to replace that as well. Then I can have a little more control over my data, I can add image sharing capabilities as well without worrying about running over some small cap of data. For $35/month I have a nice DigitalOcean server with unlimited subdomains, 2GB to play with and an additional 100GB of storage attached. I can do a lot on my own with that.