Firebase + Zapier to Power Your App's Integrations

Building integrations for your Firebase app just got a lot easier.

If you're unfamiliar with Firebase, it's a scalable, realtime backend, allowing developers to build entire apps with just client-side code. Firebase both stores your app data and synchronizes it in milliseconds to thousands of other users whenever data changes.

Client apps have their limitations though. Having to deal with things like security and secret keys in a client-only app is pain—and trying to integrate with a third-party service to send push notifications, SMS, and email always seem to necessitate some backend code.

Zapier and Firebase have teamed up to offer Firebase developers a new way to add integrations to their apps.

Let's take a look at some of the use cases you can turn to Zapier to accomplish within your Firebase app.

1. Send Transactional Emails Using SendGrid

Sending email is one of the best ways to communicate with users. Wether you want to sending a welcome, password reset, or notification, email gets it done.

But sending email can be tough using Firebase if you're not writing your end server-side code. Now with Zapier and Firebase you can enable this for your app in just a few clicks.

2. Send SMS or Automated Calls Using Twilio

Similar to email, SMS offers a great platform for notifying and interacting with your users.

The easy approach is to use SMS for notifications when something happens. But you could get more creative. Consider have two-way SMS work through Zapier and Firebase where the reply to a text message performs some action on your site. It's up to you and you'll never have to write the server-side SMS code!

3. Add New Users to a Mailing List Inside MailChimp

Better than simply sending transaction email, you could add users to a MailChimp list for ongoing contact and marketing.

Building an opted-in email marketing list is one of the best things you can do to stay in contact with users who haven't committed to your app yet. You can send them use cases, case studies, promotions, and other engaging content to get them back into app.

Normally you'd need to direct users off-site to MailChimp to subscribe, or have a dedicated email signup form. Using Zapier you could subscribe users as part of your initial Firebase app signup flow.

4. Create an Email Drip Campaign Using Mandrill

Another best-practice when it comes to email is setting up a drip email campaign. If you're unfamiliar, a drip email campaign is a series of emails you can send to a user who meet some criteria. Like an on-boarding drip campaign for new users or a retention drip campaign for users likely to churn soon.

You can use Mandrill to schedule emails to be sent at a certain time in the future which is perfect for a drip campaign. And because you're using Zapier and Firebase, you won't have to write any cron scripts or server-side code to make it happen.

Get Started

You can follow the links above to use any specific Zap mentioned or you can head over to the Firebase Zapbook page to find more use cases or start building your own Firebase Zap.

We're excited to see what awesome ideas and apps get built on top of Zapier and Firebase so if you've got a cool use case, make sure to let us know!