This will definitely make me more wary in the future. I considered both Parse and Firebase for my app's backend and even did some early prototypes using each. Parse ended up being closest to what I needed for the basic app features. I would have used Firebase for real time syncing in a multiplayer version but decided to put multiplayer on hold so I could actually just deploy something.

I kind of got lucky dodging the Parse bullet -- it was only because I quickly saw in my Parse-based prototype I was going to go over the ~1M interactions per month allowed by the free tier. At the time, the tier I could tell I'd be headed for ratcheted up to something like $100/month. I decided I'd rather just build it myself. Obviously, I'm glad I did now. Mostly because I'm on to some other things now and would hate to have to be rebuilding at this point just to keep my humble (yet very much alive and being used) app running.