Backend as a service (BaaS), sometimes also referred to as mobile backend as a service (MBaaS), is a service for providing

web app A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with World Wide Web, web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to Dynamic web page, dynamically ...

and

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

developers with a way to easily build a backend to their frontend applications. Features available include user management,

push notifications Push technology, also known as server Push, refers to a communication method, where the communication is initiated by a server rather than a client. This approach is different from the "pull" method where the communication is initiated by a client ...

, and integration with

social networking service A social networking service (SNS), or social networking site, is a type of online social media platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interest ...

s. These services are provided via the use of custom

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific t ...

s (SDKs) and

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...

s (APIs). BaaS is a relatively recent development in cloud computing, with most BaaS

startups A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

dating from 2011 or later. Some of the most popular service providers are AWS Amplify and

Firebase Firebase was a company that developed backend software. It was founded in San Francisco in 2011 and was incorporated in Delaware. In 2014, Firebase was bought by Google. Its name continues as a set of backend cloud computing services and ...

Purpose

Web and mobile apps require a similar set of features on the backend, including

notification service A notification service provides means to send a notice to many persons at once. For example, if a flood were likely, residents of a community could be warned it's time to evacuate. If a school were suddenly closed for the day, students or paren ...

, integration with

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

s, and

cloud storage Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which data, said to be on "the cloud", is stored remotely in logical pools and is accessible to users over a network, typically the Internet. The physical storage spans multiple servers (so ...

. Each of these services has its own

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

that must be individually incorporated into an app, a process that can be time-consuming and complicated for app developers. BaaS providers form a bridge between the frontend of an application and various cloud-based backends via a unified

and SDK. Providing a consistent way to manage backend data means that developers do not need to redevelop their own backend for each of the services that their apps need to access, potentially saving both time and money. Although similar to other cloud-computing business models, such as

serverless computing Serverless computing is "a cloud service category in which the customer can use different cloud capability types without the customer having to provision, deploy and manage either hardware or software resources, other than providing customer appli ...

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...

(SaaS),

infrastructure as a service Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a cloud computing service model where a cloud services vendor provides computing resources such as storage, network, servers, and virtualization (which emulates computer hardware). This service frees users fr ...

(IaaS), and

platform as a service Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a cloud computing service model where users provision, instantiate, run and manage a modular bundle of a computing platform and applications, w ...

(PaaS), BaaS is distinct from these other services in that it specifically addresses the cloud-computing needs of web and mobile app developers by providing a unified means of connecting their apps to cloud services.

Features

BaaS providers offer different set of features and backend tools. Some of the most common features include: *

Database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

management. Most BaaS solutions provide

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

and/or

NoSQL NoSQL (originally meaning "Not only SQL" or "non-relational") refers to a type of database design that stores and retrieves data differently from the traditional table-based structure of relational databases. Unlike relational databases, which ...

database management services for applications. Developers can store their app data without deploying and managing databases themselves. BaaS usually provides client SDKs,

REST REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of ...

and

GraphQL GraphQL is a data query and manipulation language that allows specifying what data is to be retrieved (" declarative data fetching") or modified. A GraphQL server can process a client query using data from separate sources and present the res ...

s for the frontend to interact with databases. * File storage. BaaS providers often offer storage solutions for media files, user uploads, and other binary data. Applications can upload, download, and delete files through provided SDKs and

s. * Authentication and authorization. Some BaaS offer authentication and authorization services that allow developers to easily manage app users. This includes user sign-up, login, password reset, social media login integration through

OAuth OAuth (short for open authorization) is an open standard for access delegation, commonly used as a way for internet users to grant websites or applications access to their information on other websites but without giving them the passwords. Th ...

, user group and permission management etc. * Notification service. Some BaaS providers such as

and AWS Amplify have notification services that can send custom emails to users and push native notifications on mobile platforms. This is especially useful for applications that need to send messages, alerts, and reminders. * Cloud functions. Some BaaS allow developers to deploy and run serverless functions. The functions are usually stateless and can be triggered by various ways including

HTTP requests HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

, SDK invocation, background server events, and cloud scheduled executions. Different providers offer runtime support for different languages, some of the popular languages are

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

TypeScript TypeScript (abbreviated as TS) is a high-level programming language that adds static typing with optional type annotations to JavaScript. It is designed for developing large applications and transpiles to JavaScript. It is developed by Micr ...

( Node.js, Deno), Python,

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

/ Kotlin. Cloud functions extend the potential and flexibility of BaaS by allowing developers to write custom functionalities for their apps, working in a way similar to a traditional

REST API REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of ...

backend framework. * Usage analytics. Analytics data about application usage is often included in BaaS. This allows developers to monitor user behaviors and make decisions correspondingly in marketing strategies and performance optimizations. * UI design. Some BaaS providers, such as AWS Amplify and Backendless, offer user interface designing tools that help developers design the frontend UI of web and mobile apps. While this may be useful for small teams and individual developers, UI design assistance may not be conventional in BaaS as it goes beyond the scope of backend infrastructure. * Real-Time. Real-time features in a BaaS platform ensure that data updates and synchronizations occur instantly across all clients, making changes immediately visible to users. This is crucial for applications like live chat and collaborative tools, using technologies like WebSocket WebSockets to maintain continuous server-client connections.

Service providers

BaaS providers have a broad focus, providing SDKs and APIs that work for app development on multiple platforms with different technology stacks, such as

(for Web apps), Flutter,

/ Kotlin (for Android apps),

Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIF ...

Objective-C Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style message passing (messaging) to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was ...

(for

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

MacOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

WatchOS watchOS is the operating system of the Apple Watch, developed by Apple Inc., Apple. It is based on iOS, the operating system used by the iPhone, and has many similar features. It was released on April 24, 2015, along with the Apple Watch, the o ...

TvOS tvOS (formerly Apple TV Software) is an operating system developed by Apple for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software was based on Mac OS X. The software for the second-generation and later ...

apps),

.NET The .NET platform (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a free and open-source, managed code, managed computer software framework for Microsoft Windows, Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft emplo ...

(for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

) and others. BaaS providers also come in different types, suiting developers of different needs.

Cloud-based BaaS

Most BaaS providers host backend platforms on their cloud servers. They also manage the infrastructure, security, and scalability of the platforms. Developers can access the backend services via a web interface or the provided

s. Some examples of cloud-based BaaS include

(hosted on

Google Cloud Platform Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google that provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, Computer data storage, data storage, Data analysis, data analytics, and machine learnin ...

), AWS Amplify (hosted on

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

), and

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

Mobile Apps (hosted on

Self-hosted BaaS

Self-hosted BaaS allow developers to host backend on their own servers, providing more flexibility and potential to customization compared to cloud-based BaaS, which often is more difficult to migrate from. However, developers are also in charge of managing the infrastructure, security, and scalability of their servers.

Mobile BaaS

Mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) is a type of BaaS specifically for applications deployed in mobile systems. While some references use MBaaS interchangeably for BaaS, BaaS can have a wider variety of support such as for web apps and desktop apps.

Business model

BaaS providers generate

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...

from their services in various ways, often using a

freemium Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium", is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical ( ...

model. Under this model, a client receives a certain number of free active users or API calls per month, and pays a fee for each user or call over this limit. Alternatively, clients can pay a set fee for a package which allows for a greater number of calls or active users per month. There are also flat fee plans that make the pricing more predictable. Some of the providers offer the unlimited API calls inside their free plan offerings. Another business model that has been used by a lot of BaaS providers is PAYG (pay as you go), which has a flexible cost based on developers' usage of database, storage, bandwidth, function calls, user numbers etc.

References

{{Cloud computing Mobile software development As a service Web development Web applications Application software Cloud applications Software industry