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Ably

The platform to power synchronized digital experiences in realtime, at scale.

What is Ably?

Ably offers WebSockets, stream resume, history, presence, and managed third-party integrations to make it simple to build, extend, and deliver digital realtime experiences at scale.
Ably is a tool in the Realtime Backend / API category of a tech stack.
Ably is an open source tool with 287 GitHub stars and 56 GitHub forks. Here’s a link to Ably's open source repository on GitHub

Who uses Ably?

Companies
9 companies reportedly use Ably in their tech stacks, including lido, Ably Website, and Gantt.io.

Developers
43 developers on StackShare have stated that they use Ably.

Ably Integrations

JavaScript, Node.js, Java, PHP, and Ruby are some of the popular tools that integrate with Ably. Here's a list of all 12 tools that integrate with Ably.
Pros of Ably
8
WebSockets
7
Highly reliable
6
SSE
6
Massive scalability
6
Great technical support
5
Channel Presence
5
Free plan
5
Channel History
5
Message queueing
5
Global cloud network of data centers
4
WebHooks
4
MQTT
4
Consistently high performance
4
Third-party cloud integrations

Blog Posts

Jan 7 2020 at 5:09PM

Ably Realtime

KafkaAbly+2
7
1954
Oct 3 2019 at 7:13PM

Ably Realtime

JavaScriptPythonNode.js+8
5
3819

Ably's Features

  • Pub/Sub Channels API: built-in user presence, message history, token auth, guaranteed message ordering, stream continuity
  • Protocol Adapters API: stream data over open protocols like WebSockets, MQTT, SSE, and more
  • Reactor API: link your other systems to Ably so you can use your existing compute to queue and consume high volumes of realtime messages in bulk, transform or filter messages by executing functions on them, or pass messages on to other systems for onward processing
  • A unified API to provide native push notifications using APNS and GCM
  • Data Stream Network: Ably's cloud network of 16+ datacenters and 175+ PoPs.

Ably Alternatives & Comparisons

What are some alternatives to Ably?
Pusher
Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.
PubNub
PubNub makes it easy for you to add real-time capabilities to your apps, without worrying about the infrastructure. Build apps that allow your users to engage in real-time across mobile, browser, desktop and server.
Socket.IO
It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.
Firebase
Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
SignalR
SignalR allows bi-directional communication between server and client. Servers can now push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR supports Web Sockets, and falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers. SignalR includes APIs for connection management (for instance, connect and disconnect events), grouping connections, and authorization.
See all alternatives

Ably's Followers
95 developers follow Ably to keep up with related blogs and decisions.