Firebase Billing

Presence is built on Firebase and relies on several Firebase services to provide real-time attendance tracking, secure authentication, and scalable cloud functions. These services require an active Firebase project with appropriate billing enabled.

Firebase Plan Requirements

To ensure Presence functions correctly in production, your Firebase project must be on the Blaze (Pay-as-you-go) plan. The free Spark plan is not sufficient due to limitations on usage quotas and restricted access to several required services.

Required Firebase Services

Firebase Authentication — For secure admin and user login.
Cloud Firestore — For real-time event, attendance, and announcement data.
Cloud Functions — For backend logic.
Cloud Storage — For storing uploaded images via Cloudinary.

Credit Card Requirement

To upgrade your Firebase project to the Blaze plan, you must add a valid credit card. This step is mandatory and managed via the Google Cloud Console.

Important: Presence pricing does not cover Firebase costs. You must manage your Firebase billing separately.

Estimating Firebase Costs

Typical usage under normal conditions incurs minimal charges if used with moderate data and image volumes. However, charges vary based on:

Number of users
Volume of attendance scans
Frequency of announcements and real-time updates
Data and image storage

Use the Firebase pricing calculator to estimate based on your use case.

Account Owner Responsibility

Presence does not manage or bill your Firebase usage. As the account owner, you:

Own the Firebase project
Control billing settings and usage
Are responsible for monitoring quotas and costs via your Firebase and Google Cloud dashboard

Best Practices

Monitor usage limits in Firebase Console
Set billing alerts to avoid unexpected costs
Use optimized image sizes to reduce Cloud Storage charges
Delete unused data and events to keep Firestore lean

Presence simply integrates with your Firebase setup. All billing responsibility rests with the Firebase project owner.