I have experience building APIs and backend systems from scratch, so both approaches are viable for me:
- using a Backend-as-a-Service (for example Firebase or similar platforms)
- building and operating a custom backend
What I'm trying to understand is not which is "better" in general, but where the real tradeoffs show up in practice over time.
For people who have shipped and maintained mobile apps:
- At what point did a BaaS approach start to feel limiting, if at all?
- What were the concrete issues (data modeling, scaling, cost, vendor constraints, debugging, etc.)?
- If you switched away from a managed backend to a custom one (or vice versa), what triggered that decision?
- Looking back, would you choose differently?
I'm especially interested in real-world failure points rather than early-stage MVP considerations.