Firebase Blaze Tier
It wasn't until recently that I became a believer in spending money on online services. I used to think that everything on the internet should be free, or that I should be able to achieve the same results as a service through hard work. That latter sentiment may be true, but at what point do diminishing returns transform the pursuit from noble to idiotic? Is it worth spending weeks, months, or even years trying to learn how to create and host my own online database, complete with Cloud Function capabilities? No.
If you can remember, or have recently read, my post about building my first app using Expo, you may remember Firebase's Firestore. It is the online database I chose to use when creating our racquet club's app. I've spent the last couple of months working on supporting online court reservations through the app. Admittedly, this is something that Firestore's free tier could handle. I wanted to take it a step further, however, and integrate the database with a real-time Google Sheets Spreadsheet. And here came the paid part.
Firestore's free tier does not support functions: server-side actions executed and processed outside of the app. I argued back and forth with myself about whether I wanted to upgrade the project. I had yet to spend money on Firestore, and could try a different database service if I really wanted. Firestore has done well thus far, though, so I decided to take the leap and go the Blaze tier. And I read the part about not having to pay any money upfront or until database activity reaches a certain threshold...
Since my post about vibe-coding, I've begun using an agent and IDE called Kiro, which is built on top of Claude. Or maybe Kiro has begun using me? Either way, I let Kiro do most of the heavy lifting, including writing both server-side and client-side functions. Kiro guided my app's integration with Firestore's function options and even produced instruction files to help me set up the Google Sheet part. It took less than a week to revamp the reservation system and have it synced in real-time to a Google Sheet spreadsheet.
I can't wait to continue exploring Firestore's function options and can't recommend it enough. Google (Firebase's owner) has yet to charge me for any of the services they're providing. Perfect for small-scale apps like the club's and for testing ideas during development.