Parse is a “backend as a service”, supported by Facebook. We actually had been talking about switching the server side of Horizon to Parse off and on for the past year. It does geo fairly well out of the box (which is one of the areas we need to improve).

You’d think with Facebook behind it, it would be around forever, right?

Well, there was some shocking news last week. Parse is shutting down (to be discontinued on January 28, 2017).

I’d be curious to know whether any developers reading were using the service, and what you plan to switch to?

One alternative I came across today is Cloudboost, which is actually another member of the Start-Up Chile community (Horizon was Gen 10).