10 Reasons Why To Prefer Parse Over Cloudkit

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insight
Enterprise Apps
By: Sagar Sharma

10 Reasons Why CloudKit is Worse Than Parse

If you must save a great deal of work in the cloud, whether for personal or work-related purposes, then you obviously need a reliable cloud-based program.

With so many different cloud-based software programs available, it can sometimes be challenging to choose the best one. The right software offers many helpful features, ample storage space and much more.

Many people opt for CloudKit as opposed to Parse or similar programs, here’s a simple question: why would someone choose Parse over CloudKit?

Simple questions don’t always have simple answers, but this one does, ten simple answers, in fact.

Both apps aim to offer easy cloud management, but one simply does it better. Both are loaded with great tools, great features, and powerful capabilities.

Unfortunately, CloudKit falls behind in many areas where Parse excels.

Here are 10 reasons why you may want to consider Parse over CloudKit

1) The Dashboard

A recent trend in design, especially user interface design, is to streamline and streamline until there’s nothing but the bare essentials, or even less, in CloudKit’s case. The Dashboard is incredibly limited compared to Parse’s.

2) Analytics

With Parse, you get support for data-based analytics, allowing you to monitor all the numbers you need to track. An old joke suggests that Apple users aren’t as technical as Windows users, but the truth is that you simply cannot compete in this age without knowing your way around analytics, even if you don’t pride yourself on being deeply technical.

3) Easy Importing and Exporting

With Parse, it’s easy to back your data up in JSON to make sure that it’s there for you when you need it, and it’s just as easy to import it back in. This makes it very easy to transfer data if you get a new phone, laptop or other devices. If you make sure to backup every night, or just right before you make the switch, you can pick up where you left off without skipping a beat.

4) Background Tasks

You don’t get Background Task with CloudKit. You do with Parse. This makes it very easy to automate and streamline your process in development, analytics, and design.

5) Cross-Platform Compatibility

With Parse, you can work on OS, iOS, Windows and Windows Phone, and Android. If you don’t have an Apple product, you can’t use CloudKit. This can create serious problems if you’re working with a team and you’d like for everyone to be on the same page. If your Android users can’t operate on the same apps as your iPhone users, there’s going to be a lot of doubling-up on the work and a lot of miscommunication.

6) Hosting

You can create a website and grab a domain name right from inside of the Parse app. If you want to do that with CloudKit, you’ll need to find your own web host and then figure out how you’re going to get your work from the app onto that site. With Parse, it’s easy to import and export to and from your website and publish web content directly from the app. CloudKit, not so much.

7) Rest API

REST API allows you to access third-party libraries in order to receive and transfer data. Parse offers REST API support, where CloudKit does not. This is one of the ways in which CloudKit could be seen as more of a “closed eco-system.”
Parse is available on platforms like Android and Windows and reflects the more liberal philosophy of those operating systems. Put simply: accessibility is key in all aspects of Parse’s design, and REST API is a big part of that accessibility.

8) Social Network Support

This is the age of social media. Parse lets users log in through Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks, and then it stores their data in a Users table. CloudKit is a little archaic in this regard, as it does have a Users table, but there’s no built-in function to collect data when users log in through their social networks.

9) Server Side Logic

Parse uses CloudCode, allowing developers to implement tasks on the server. Calculating data or accessing a library is very easy with CloudCode. CloudKit has nothing like this.

10) Support for Local Storage

Last, and far from least, Parse offers support for local storage. A simple piece of CloudCode will let you store locally anything that you need to. There’s no feature in CloudKit to let you choose whether to store your data locally or in the cloud. CoreData and Realm both allow you to do this, but the fact remains that the feature is built right into Parse, but not CloudKit.

Wrap up

CloudKit is not without its strong points, however, it is deeply lacking in many crucial areas if its developers wish to remain competitive.

The cloud allows a streamlined, efficient approach to work, no matter your field, and hopefully, CloudKit takes a cue from Parse in order to make life a little easier for its users.

Based on the features or functions requirement during development, preferably Cloudkit or Parse can be chosen.
Happy development!

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