Firebase app hosting without a cloud billing account should be possible.
Also to have a custom subdomain for the app url.
Most people use Google and other tools without any billing account. So there is a high potential of firebase users for this feature. Also to simplify to publish the app without needing to know how CLI works within the firebase studio.
I do not understand what you mean by app hosting without a cloud billing account?
App hosting is not, nor should it be free. It is not a tool, it is hosting. Everything you do in firebase has a cost associated with it in one form or another, app hosting is no different than hosting a website and that costs google money to host on datacenters just like any company you pay for website hosting. Firebase is 100% integrated into cloud.google.com. everything you do in firebase can be done directly in cloud.google.com as well. Firebase just simplifies the UI for vibe coders and people looking to get into coding using AI assist. If you look at how things are done from scratch with no ai assist, you will see that Firebase is very user friendly in comparison, is it 100% yet?.. no. but it will eventually get there.
Lets tackle a few of your concerns you mentioned.
Adding a subdomain - You can add subdomains to the app URL.
- go to https://console.firebase.google.com/ and the select your project
- then navigate to app hosting on the list on the left
- then select the backend you want to add the domain/subdomain
- then select settings.
In the settings you can select domains tab and then click add custom domain to the upper right side of the screen.. You enter the domain you want to use like subdomain.yourdomain.com. It will then tell you the settings you need to put in your DNS settings for your subdomain wo point to the app hosting. Once you have done that, they system will automatically detect if your settings are correct (this can take up to 48 hours for domain propagation to take place)
As far as easy to use and push your app out, that is also very simple and easy. Once you have attached your github account, it will auto push the build once you commit your changes and then click sync in source control. I don’t know how much easier that can get. this is a very good live service push and if users are in your app, they may not even notice a new version was rolled out. This is far better than it used to be where you needed to create a rollout, do the entire package build, then upload that build, create the roll out and then push to live.
I understand that you may feel overwhelmed if you are new to coding in general but like with anything, tools are only as good as the knowledge the user has about them. I would recommend taking a few days or even weeks to really research how the process works. Hell even just have a chat with your code assist AI. If you don’t know why something, ask it. It will explain everything in detail. You can even use gemini.google.com which is more up to date than the built in model code assist in your project since it is grounded.
If you have any further questions, I will try my best to answer them for you, just a disclaimer, I am a digital product manager and am not a dev/coder. I picked up firebase to learn how to code better and understand what my developers go through with every user story I create and lob over the fence to them. It is one thing to have a dream and then give it to someone else to “magically” build it, but its another thing to know how your dream is brought to life and the pains they go through and the sheer amount of knowledge they have to get the job done. using this platform for the past 3-4 months has made me a significantly better PM as I now have a better understanding of the pit falls to avoid and the sheer amount technical hurdles a dev must overcome to make even what appears to be a simple edit come to life.