Parse is indeed taking up the mobile-backend services by storm. As much as I love to use parse, I don't see why any serious app would stick with them. They are good to get started but eventually I feel apps will move away into their own backend infrastructure since it is not hard to implement and allows more flexibility and control. Glancing over parse's client portfolio I could hardly recognize 3 apps that are average popular.<p>EDIT: Please don't get me wrong. My proposition was in terms of how many serious apps will adopt Parse. I currently use parse for 3 of my apps and love it. But I am a free user and never bother paying for their service coz there is no need for it.
Saw a good roundup of the MBaaS providers, here:
<a href="http://apievangelist.com/2012/08/22/mobile-backend-as-a-service-roundup-and-the-future-of-web-apis/" rel="nofollow">http://apievangelist.com/2012/08/22/mobile-backend-as-a-serv...</a><p>We use Parse for some apps and roll our own Rails backend too. Of all the MPaaS providers we've investigate, Parse seems to be getting things right: SDK's are solid & the documentation is up-to-date, 3rd party integration with Twitter / FB / S3 work great. It's a joy to get started.<p>The biggest problem we've seen so far are on caching, user models, analysis and emails:<p>- Local native caching on devices seems capricious, and we've often reverted to writing our own caching schemes on top of Parse (had to do the same for server-side, too, but maybe that's a given...)<p>- User data model is pretty basic, and although the ACL capabilities are nice, it's not easy to build (FB invite requests work, but outside of that framework you have to roll your own invite / accept / reject / exit logic)<p>- Custom emails on User model CRUD / password are supported, but not for any other user interaction (ie., weekly roundup emails, status updates, etc.)<p>- API introspection is tough, it's not easy to optimize (ok, minimize) API calls and some form of introspection & analysis would be helpful (eg., just when do the SDK libraries synchronize, and how often?)<p>All that being said, I don't think any of their competitors have done a better job on these topics and certainly Parse seems to be pulling away from the MPaaS pack.
I've never used Parse before, haven't really needed it, but I just bought a Surface and have my developer license ready to go. Time to have a stab at it tomorrow night.
The Buddy Platform provides a similar service to Parse, but is more scenario focused. They too are on fire (I'm an investor and advisor).<p>Buddy has had a Win SDK available for months [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.buddy.com/documentation.aspx#SDKs_and_Samples" rel="nofollow">http://www.buddy.com/documentation.aspx#SDKs_and_Samples</a>