which service/companies for low cost support for sharing status/content between users?

[greg886]

Would love some recommendations/pointers re which services/companies I should start looking at if I wanted to include some server side support for Corona apps/games.   To support features like:

 a) allow user to store & share a screenshot from the app

 b) allow the user to view others screenshots from the game

 c) ability to store/access state generally, so perhaps for turn-by-turn games 

So I guess the basic approach is to do it yourself & design a simple web app with REST type interface on a shared hosting service like http://www.dreamhost.com/ I suppose.  However I was more interested in companies that might have more targeted support for a game developer ready.   Even just the ability to support a) and b).  

Ideally would love a service that is free for games that don’t end up being successful else you’ll end up losing money instead of making money for a freemium game where people use the service, but never monetise.  :) Not sure if such a service offering exists?

[roaminggamer]

Have you considered Parse?  I hear lots of good things about it and I am getting ready to dive in myself:

• https://parse.com/
• http://www.ladeezfirstmedia.com/2013/06/26/tutorial-part-1-cloud-code-integrate-parse-coms-rest-api-with-your-coronasdk-app/
• http://coronalabs.com/blog/coronageek/corona-geek-hangout-77/
• http://www.sdknews.com/cross-platform/corona/corona-geek-58-accessing-data-remotely-using-json-in-corona-sdk (… “We also discussed the pros and cons of building a backend web-based service compared to using Parse with Corona SDK.” …)

Hope these links are useful.

PS - There is a Free plan: https://parse.com/plans

[greg886]

thanks - great to see they have a free plan - allows 1 million requests per month before you then have to start paying $199/month.  The scary thing for an indie/hobbyist developer is working out how many users/downloads that would be for your app/game, and whether you’d be making more than $199/month by this time to cover the costs I guess    If it were a free game and relying on advertising (which I haven’t done yet) it would almost come down to a calculation of how many ads per session a user would have to trigger compared to how many parse downloads they would use in the same session perhaps?

PS.  Found a good list of options someone posted here actually: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19811434/are-there-alternatives-to-parse-com-for-ios

[roaminggamer]

Have you considered Parse?  I hear lots of good things about it and I am getting ready to dive in myself:

• https://parse.com/
• http://www.ladeezfirstmedia.com/2013/06/26/tutorial-part-1-cloud-code-integrate-parse-coms-rest-api-with-your-coronasdk-app/
• http://coronalabs.com/blog/coronageek/corona-geek-hangout-77/
• http://www.sdknews.com/cross-platform/corona/corona-geek-58-accessing-data-remotely-using-json-in-corona-sdk (… “We also discussed the pros and cons of building a backend web-based service compared to using Parse with Corona SDK.” …)

Hope these links are useful.

PS - There is a Free plan: https://parse.com/plans

[greg886]

thanks - great to see they have a free plan - allows 1 million requests per month before you then have to start paying $199/month.  The scary thing for an indie/hobbyist developer is working out how many users/downloads that would be for your app/game, and whether you’d be making more than $199/month by this time to cover the costs I guess    If it were a free game and relying on advertising (which I haven’t done yet) it would almost come down to a calculation of how many ads per session a user would have to trigger compared to how many parse downloads they would use in the same session perhaps?

PS.  Found a good list of options someone posted here actually: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19811434/are-there-alternatives-to-parse-com-for-ios