As app developers, you want to focus on building functionality that increases the utility of your app for your users. Here at Firebase, our mission is to help app developers succeed, and our services like Firebase Authentication, Firestore, Performance Monitoring, Analytics and others help you focus on what's relevant for developing your app and advancing your business instead of having to build and run infrastructure and services yourself.
With Firebase Extensions, we took this concept to the next level and made it easy for you to quickly add functionality to your app. Instead of having to implement these features yourself, Firebase Extensions allow you to add pre-built and tested functionality with just a few clicks. On top of that, Firebase Extensions are configurable, so you can easily adapt them to your needs.
Solve business problems using Firebase Extensions
But sometimes, you need even more power and flexibility.
For example, you might need an easy-to-use way to set up a marketing campaign that follows all the best practices and industry standards. Sending emails is not enough - you need a solution that supports double opt-in, streamlined and beautiful templates, and a dashboard that provides detailed insights into your campaign.
Or, you might need a customer messaging solution that makes it easy to reach out to your users directly, no matter where they are, to keep them up-to-date on the status of their urgent delivery. And of course you need a solution that grows with your business and works in new markets and countries you're expanding into and supports the local messaging platforms.
Or - you might want to turn your blog about artisanal coffee into a business with a subscription service that allows you to put some of your content behind a paywall.
Implementing all these features and integrations yourself can be a daunting task, and - let's be honest - wouldn't you rather focus on building the core functionality of your app instead of wasting precious time on building solutions for challenges others have already solved? After all, other people have invested a lot of time and thought into building these services, so no need to reinvent the wheel.
With Firebase Extensions, you can leverage existing solutions solve business problems with integrations from industry leaders such as MessageBird, Algolia, Mailchimp, and Stripe.
At Google I/O this year, we announced the following new Firebase Extensions:
And last year, we launched Run Subscription Payments with Stripe and Send Invoices using Stripe, which make it easier to control access to paid content and send brandable invoices using Stripe's payment system.
All of these Extensions are built and maintained by these companies, and are available as open source on GitHub. This means you can read the source code and learn how they were built, adapt them to your specific needs, and even file feature requests for new functionality. Most of our early access users have told us that the configuration options available in the Extensions and the power and flexibility of our partners' services met most of their requirements.
The road ahead
In the spirit of our mission, we want to bring more Firebase Extensions to the platform to enable you to focus on what matters most to you: implementing the best version of your app to solve real business problems and delight your users.
If you have any suggestions for Firebase Extensions, any features you'd like to see us implement, or any partners you'd like us to bring to the platform, please don't hesitate to reach out to us using our feedback form.
We can't wait to see what you build next with the new Firebase Extensions, and look forward to hearing from you!
