Learn more in this VMblog interview as we speak with Eldad Fux, the Founder & CEO of Appwrite, providing developers with a set of easy-to-use and integrated REST APIs to manage their core backend needs.
VMblog: To kick things off, why don’t you first explain what Appwrite does for the VMblog audience.
Eldad Fux: Appwrite is an open-source, end-to-end platform that provides developers with all the core APIs and services required to build any kind of modern software no matter the platform. Appwrite can integrate with Web, Mobile, Flutter and any server-side language. In essence, Appwrite takes care of all the things you would typically need to build from scratch, saving you the complexity and time to focus on your application.
Appwrite’s features include a realtime database, authentication and user management, storage, and Cloud Functions APIs along with other tools designed to work perfectly together.
VMblog: And what problem does Appwrite solve?
Fux: Software development is hard and getting harder. There are endless frameworks, tools, and services that developers have to master. Cloud platforms have done great work in abstracting the workload required to manage infrastructure, but they have created a new complexity layer and learning curve for developers who wish to enjoy their capabilities. Appwrite performs as a much needed abstraction layer, having most of the classic cloud capabilities, and allowing developers to consume them by leveraging their existing knowledge and skills.
VMblog: How is Appwrite different from Google Firebase?
Fux: The most obvious difference between Appwrite and Firebase is that Appwrite was born, built and developed by the open-source community of over 250+ maintainers and 40,000 developers worldwide, and as a self-hosted solution you can easily deploy on your own hardware and control your own data.
While Firebase was actually born as a realtime API, and transitionally migrated to become the Backend-as-as-Service(BaaS) we know today, Appwrite was designed to be a BaaS since day one. We have carefully crafted the different Appwrite services to work together perfectly, and focused on creating the best developer experience we can possibly think of. From the Appwrite docs, through integration with our SDKs, consumption of our API, and monitoring with our Console, every step in the dev-journey has been carefully assembled.
VMblog: It really seems like the Appwrite community is growing fast! Can you tell us about it?
Fux: Appwrite was initially designed to solve our real problems, and our community grew because we solved the same problems for others. Appwrite is built in a modular way that allows developers to consume only the services they need, with the technologies they already know and love. Instead of forcing developers to learn new things and create new learning curves, we leverage skills they already possess.
Growing as an open-source project has been a huge factor in our success. Building out in the open with a community of maintainers, advocates, and users who believe in our vision acts as a growth multiplier for us. Our open and transparent approach helps us grow many times faster than any other non-open-source company, especially when discussing a company focused on dev-tooling.
VMblog: Congratulations on your recent funding. What are you planning to do with the money?
Fux: We’ll continue to expand our 100% remote team, improve our open-source solutions together and continue building the Appwrite open-source community. We’ll also release the new Appwrite Cloud solution which will allow developers to start using Appwrite faster than ever without having to deal with any servers or infrastructure at all.
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