Firebase integration for Flutter apps.

Firebase is excellent for authentication, push notifications, crash reporting, analytics and quick real-time data. It is less good as the only database for a product with complex relational rules, reporting or billing — which is where a Laravel or SQL backend usually earns its place.

Most of my projects use Firebase for auth and messaging while business data lives in a Laravel API. That combination keeps the product flexible and the costs predictable.

Development, staging and production should be separate Firebase projects. Mixing them is how test notifications reach real customers and how analytics data becomes unusable. I configure flavours in Flutter, separate config files and correct package identifiers per environment.

Security rules get the same treatment: Firestore rules tested against real reads and writes, not left open because the app worked in testing.

Email and password, phone OTP, Google, Apple and anonymous sign-in all need handling for verification, password reset, account linking and deletion. Apple sign-in is mandatory on iOS if other social logins exist.

Account deletion in particular is an App Store requirement, not an optional feature.

Crashlytics and Analytics only help if the events are meaningful. I define a small set of events around activation, key actions, purchase and retention, then wire them consistently across Android and iOS so the numbers are comparable.

Alerts on crash-free rate and release regressions catch bad builds before reviews do.