> A few people here are mentioning how it's crazy to depend on external services for an app, but as an 'indie' dev, I can't spend time maintaining a secure, hig

> A few people here are mentioning how it's crazy to depend on external services for an app, but as an 'indie' dev, I can't spend time maintaining a secure, high-availability database Nobody is saying that you shouldn't rely on external services. What's wrong on the other hand is to depend on a proprietary database offered by a single vendor. Firebase is a proprietary database, which means you can't go to the competition without having to rewrite your application. It's called vendor lock-in. Plenty of SAAS provide MongoDB as a service and you can install MongoDB on your own machine, so if a SAAS is price gouging you, you can move to the competitor with a cheaper plan. If you are not using Firebase ACL or Firebase realtime features then you shouldn't even be using Firebase at all. Don't use MongoDB either. Postgres provide JSON types and queries and most Postgres SAAS are much much cheaper than MongoDB SAAS.