Backendless 3.0 is released

We are so excited to report that Backendless has been updated with the new version 3.0.0. This is the most important release we have ever done. The importance of it is on so many levels that it will affect everyone! First of all, we made Backendless more affordable than ever. There are three variations of Backendless:

1. Backendless Cloud. This is our main, centralized installation of the service. There used to be three pricing plans, and with the 3.0 release, all the pricing plans we used to have are gone – there is only one “pricing plan” and it is FREE. You do not need to upgrade or choose a more costly plan ever. The backend includes all the Backendless features and is available so you can build very powerful and innovative apps. Of course the free level has some limitations which you can either remove or increase by purchasing individual Function Packs from our brand new Backendless Marketplace. Yes, we now have our own server-side app store and it is absolutely awesome (more about it later).
2. Backendless Standalone. This is the version of Backendless which you can run on your own servers, either in the cloud or your own data center. Starting with 3.0, we offer this version of our product to you at no cost, without any functional limitations! That’s right, you can run your own private installation of Backendless for FREE. You might be asking, what’s the catch? The product license is free of charge so long that all of components of the Backendless product run on the same server or virtual machine. Whenever you need to start introducing scalability, fault tolerance, failover, etc, or in other words, whenever you introduce a second machine or a VM in your Backendless setup, a commercial license is required.
3. Managed Backendless. This is a specialized installation of Backendless which we provide just for your applications. The backend runs in a complete isolation from all other apps, the entire installation is there to support your apps. This is the most secure and reliable installation you can get. There are no functional limitations on the functionality. Managed Backendless is monitored 24 x 7 and it is automatically scaled to provide a consistent response time and is backed by the commercial SLAs.

The release is also packed with some amazing features. Below is a list of the most notable ones:

• Backendless Marketplace. This is our own server-side app store. It is the key component of the Backendless Platform. The Marketplace is where you can find many products and services which will enhance your backend. We plan to rapidly evolve it and soon will allow anyone to contribute to it, but for now, it includes Function Packs – a special type of “product” that lets you remove or change limits of Backendless Cloud and Database Connectors (see below).
• Database Connectors. Backendless Marketplace includes 4 database connectors for the Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server and PostgreSQL databases. When you install a connector into your app, the Backendless Data Service API will communicate with the data from your own database. The connectors are available at no cost until the end of 2015.
• Backendless SDK for PHP. if you are a PHP developer, you can take advantage of Backendless with an SDK built specifically with you in mind. The SDK provides beautiful, clean, object-oriented API for all Backendless functionality. The SDK is open source and we welcome your contributions.
• Custom business logic in PHP. To support our vision of a polyglot system even further, we added support for custom server-side code in PHP. Previously it was only Java and JavaScript and we welcome PHP to the family of server-side languages we support. Backendless console can now generate service handler and timer code for PHP and we also created a special PHP CodeRunner which is a container for custom server-side business logic.
• Logging improvements. Backendless logging has been updated with integrations supporting Loggly and ElasticSearch. Using these integrations, Backendless submits log messages from your app to the corresponding service. Once the logs are available in Loggly or ElasticSearch, you can analyze them using the tools available in these services. Additionally, we added support for custom log message formats, which you can configure right from Backendless Console.
• Data constraints. This is a feature many users have asked for and now you can mark individual data columns as indexed, not null (required) and unique. This is a very powerful feature that can significantly improve the performance of your application.
• Google+ login. We have expanded support for social logins which already included Facebook and Twitter. Now you can configure your apps to allow users of Google+ can use their credentials to login to your app. Also, we modified Backendless console to allow app developers to login with the Google+ credentials.

We plan to publish detailed review of each feature in the near future. There is also going to be a series of webinars dedicated to the 3.0 release.
Enjoy!