[mayop100]

(Shameless plug) Firebase is an alternative to iCloud for many apps. It's built as a database, rather than a file store, so it's ideal for storing structured data. Conflict resolution is something we've been thinking hard about from day 1, and we think we have a pretty solid story [1].

We launched native iOS support a few weeks ago [2]. You can also access your data from JavaScript or from a REST API. Android and other platforms are in the works. We're a platform-independent service, and since you (the developer) is paying for the storage, we have the right incentives to give you maximum access to your data (unlike iCloud), and a good developer experience.

We've also put a ton of work into making it easy to learn and easy to use. See, for example, our quick tutorial [3].

If you've used Firebase as a substitute for iCloud, we'd appreciate your thoughts in the comments!

1. https://www.firebase.com/docs/transactions.html

2. https://www.firebase.com/blog/2013-03-20-new-firebase-ios-sd...

3. https://www.firebase.com/tutorial/

[ok_craig]

Hey, I've been using Firebase for a web client I've been working on for a bit and I like it a lot! Would you consider updating your transactions page with an example of a text change? Such as adding a word in the middle of a paragraph. I'm not quite sure how that would work.

[mayop100]

Collaborative text editing generally requires a bit more than a simple transaction to work well (Operational Transforms are generally involved). You can use transactions as a basis for this though. We've got some examples coming out soon to show how to to do this. Stay tuned...