What is PubNub and what are its top alternatives?
Top Alternatives to PubNub
- Pusher
Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features. ...
- Socket.IO
It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed. ...
- SendBird
SendBird is a Messaging SDK, Chat API, and fully managed chat infrastructure for your mobile apps and websites. Embeddable chat for iOS, Android, JavaScript, Unity, .NET. ...
- Stream
Stream allows you to build scalable feeds, activity streams, and chat. Stream’s simple, yet powerful API’s and SDKs are used by some of the largest and most popular applications for feeds and chat. SDKs available for most popular languages. ...
- Kafka
Kafka is a distributed, partitioned, replicated commit log service. It provides the functionality of a messaging system, but with a unique design. ...
- 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. ...
- 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. ...
- Twilio
Twilio offers developers a powerful API for phone services to make and receive phone calls, and send and receive text messages. Their product allows programmers to more easily integrate various communication methods into their software and programs. ...
PubNub alternatives & related posts
- An easy way to give customers realtime features54
- Websockets40
- Simple35
- Easy to get started with27
- Free plan25
- Heroku Add-on12
- Easy and fast to configure and to understand11
- JSON9
- Azure Add-on6
- Support5
- Happy5
- Push notification4
- Costly9
- Aa0
related Pusher posts
Which messaging service (Pusher vs. PubNub vs. Google Cloud Pub/Sub) to use for IoT?
Recently we finished long research on chat tool for our students and mentors. In the end we picked Mattermost Team Edition as the cheapest and most feature complete option. We did consider building everything from scratch and use something like Pusher or Twilio on a backend, but then we would have to implement all the desktop and mobile clients and all the features oursevles. Mattermost gave us flexible API, lots of built in or easy to install integrations and future-proof feature set. We are still integrating it with our main platform but so far the team, existing mentors and students are very happy.
- Real-time214
- Event-based communication141
- Node.js141
- WebSockets102
- Open source101
- Binary streaming26
- No internet dependency21
- Fallback to polling if WebSockets not supported9
- Large community9
- Push notification6
- Ease of access and setup5
- Bad documentation11
- Githubs that complement it are mostly deprecated4
- Doesn't work on React Native3
- Websocket Errors2
- Small community2
related Socket.IO posts
I use Socket.IO because the application has 2 frontend clients, which need to communicate in real-time. The backend-server handles the communication between these two clients via websockets. Socket.io is very easy to set up in Node.js and ExpressJS.
In the research project, the 1st client shows panoramic videos in a so called cave system (it is the VR setup of our research lab, which consists of three big screens, which are specially arranged, so the user experience the videos more immersive), the 2nd client controls the videos/locations of the 1st client.
We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.
- Active support is impressive. (Support for private deve13
- Easy to use10
- Pre-built UI for major platforms9
- Migration API for customers using other chat services8
- First chat SDK officially supports Xamarin7
- Scalability is awesome7
- Cool product5
- Because my product guy told me to5
- Unlimited number of users in public chat5
- Flexible message format ex) json, xml4
- Out of the box api and features2
- Intuitive and feature-packed2
- Policy on concurrent users leads to overages and overch2
- Prices ramp up exponentially2
related SendBird posts
I am considering which chat solution to choose between CometChat and SendBird, for our new app. The condition is, the app is going to run in a private network and has to connect with MSSQL. Any advice on other things I have to consider before choosing one, or is there another chat service you would recommend? Thank you!
Stream
- Integrates via easy-to-use REST API18
- Up and running in few minutes18
- It's easy to setup with the minimum coding18
related Stream posts
Kafka
- High-throughput125
- Distributed118
- Scalable88
- High-Performance82
- Durable65
- Publish-Subscribe37
- Simple-to-use19
- Open source16
- Written in Scala and java. Runs on JVM11
- Message broker + Streaming system7
- Avro schema integration4
- KSQL4
- Robust3
- Suport Multiple clients2
- Partioned, replayable log2
- Flexible1
- Extremely good parallelism constructs1
- Simple publisher / multi-subscriber model1
- Fun1
- Non-Java clients are second-class citizens29
- Needs Zookeeper27
- Operational difficulties7
- Terrible Packaging2
related Kafka posts










The algorithms and data infrastructure at Stitch Fix is housed in #AWS. Data acquisition is split between events flowing through Kafka, and periodic snapshots of PostgreSQL DBs. We store data in an Amazon S3 based data warehouse. Apache Spark on Yarn is our tool of choice for data movement and #ETL. Because our storage layer (s3) is decoupled from our processing layer, we are able to scale our compute environment very elastically. We have several semi-permanent, autoscaling Yarn clusters running to serve our data processing needs. While the bulk of our compute infrastructure is dedicated to algorithmic processing, we also implemented Presto for adhoc queries and dashboards.
Beyond data movement and ETL, most #ML centric jobs (e.g. model training and execution) run in a similarly elastic environment as containers running Python and R code on Amazon EC2 Container Service clusters. The execution of batch jobs on top of ECS is managed by Flotilla, a service we built in house and open sourced (see https://github.com/stitchfix/flotilla-os).
At Stitch Fix, algorithmic integrations are pervasive across the business. We have dozens of data products actively integrated systems. That requires serving layer that is robust, agile, flexible, and allows for self-service. Models produced on Flotilla are packaged for deployment in production using Khan, another framework we've developed internally. Khan provides our data scientists the ability to quickly productionize those models they've developed with open source frameworks in Python 3 (e.g. PyTorch, sklearn), by automatically packaging them as Docker containers and deploying to Amazon ECS. This provides our data scientist a one-click method of getting from their algorithms to production. We then integrate those deployments into a service mesh, which allows us to A/B test various implementations in our product.
For more info:
- Our Algorithms Tour: https://algorithms-tour.stitchfix.com/
- Our blog: https://multithreaded.stitchfix.com/blog/
- Careers: https://multithreaded.stitchfix.com/careers/
#DataScience #DataStack #Data










As we've evolved or added additional infrastructure to our stack, we've biased towards managed services. Most new backing stores are Amazon RDS instances now. We do use self-managed PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB for time-series data—this is made HA with the use of Patroni and Consul.
We also use managed Amazon ElastiCache instances instead of spinning up Amazon EC2 instances to run Redis workloads, as well as shifting to Amazon Kinesis instead of Kafka.
- WebSockets6
- Highly reliable6
- Message queueing5
- Global cloud network of data centers5
- Channel Presence5
- Great technical support5
- SSE5
- Channel History5
- Massive scalability5
- Free plan4
- Third-party cloud integrations4
- MQTT4
- Consistently high performance4
- WebHooks4
related Ably posts
- Realtime backend made easy367
- Fast and responsive268
- Easy setup239
- Real-time212
- JSON188
- Free132
- Backed by google126
- Angular adaptor82
- Reliable67
- Great customer support35
- Great documentation30
- Real-time synchronization25
- Mobile friendly21
- Rapid prototyping18
- Great security14
- Automatic scaling12
- Freakingly awesome11
- Chat8
- Angularfire is an amazing addition!8
- Super fast development8
- Ios adaptor6
- Firebase hosting6
- Awesome next-gen backend6
- Built in user auth/oauth6
- Speed of light4
- Very easy to use4
- Brilliant for startups3
- Great3
- It's made development super fast3
- Low battery consumption2
- Free hosting2
- Cloud functions2
- Push notification2
- JS Offline and Sync suport2
- Free authentication solution2
- The concurrent updates create a great experience2
- I can quickly create static web apps with no backend2
- Great all-round functionality2
- Easy Reactjs integration1
- Easy to use1
- Free SSL1
- CDN & cache out of the box1
- Faster workflow1
- Google's support1
- .net1
- Serverless1
- Good Free Limits1
- Large1
- Can become expensive31
- No open source, you depend on external company15
- Scalability is not infinite15
- Not Flexible Enough9
- Cant filter queries6
- No Relational Data3
- Very unstable server3
- No offline sync2
- Too many errors2
related Firebase posts
Hi Otensia! I'd definitely recommend using the skills you've already got and building with JavaScript is a smart way to go these days. Most platform services have JavaScript/Node SDKs or NPM packages, many serverless platforms support Node in case you need to write any backend logic, and JavaScript is incredibly popular - meaning it will be easy to hire for, should you ever need to.
My advice would be "don't reinvent the wheel". If you already have a skill set that will work well to solve the problem at hand, and you don't need it for any other projects, don't spend the time jumping into a new language. If you're looking for an excuse to learn something new, it would be better to invest that time in learning a new platform/tool that compliments your knowledge of JavaScript. For this project, I might recommend using Netlify, Vercel, or Google Firebase to quickly and easily deploy your web app. If you need to add user authentication, there are great examples out there for Firebase Authentication, Auth0, or even Magic (a newcomer on the Auth scene, but very user friendly). All of these services work very well with a JavaScript-based application.



























This is my stack in Application & Data
JavaScript PHP HTML5 jQuery Redis Amazon EC2 Ubuntu Sass Vue.js Firebase Laravel Lumen Amazon RDS GraphQL MariaDB
My Utilities Tools
Google Analytics Postman Elasticsearch
My Devops Tools
Git GitHub GitLab npm Visual Studio Code Kibana Sentry BrowserStack
My Business Tools
Slack
- Powerful, simple, and well documented api147
- RESTful API88
- Clear pricing66
- Great sms services61
- Low cost of entry58
- Global SMS Gateway29
- Good value14
- Cloud IVR12
- Extremely simple to integrate with rails11
- Simple11
- Great for startups6
- SMS4
- Great developer program3
- Hassle free3
- Text me the app pages2
- New Features constantly rolling out1
- Easy integration1
- Two factor authentication1
- Many deployment options, from build from scratch to buy1
- A0
- Predictable pricing3
- Expensive2
related Twilio posts
Hi, Stackshare community, I plan to build an app where people can go live, and users can watch him, 1 to many, follow each other, and text.
I am expecting a huge number of users to use the app in the first month (100k+)
I made the UX/UI design, and my designer asked me to find a developer.
I want your advice. What server is the best for video quality and fast text messages (like uplive, bigo)?
Ex. Agora, Twilio, Amazon Chime, Aws, or fiberbass
I need for both operating systems, (ios, android). Do you recommend Flutter?
- I have AWS server in my country (Bahrain), and 80% of the audience are from the same area. Does it help in the video quality between the audience?
Thank you for this helpful website.
Hello,
My app will be a live streaming app (like tango, BigoLive) An app developer asked me to choose a tech stack and a team. expected auditions from (Bahrain-KSA-UAE-Kuwait-Oman)
200 (broadcaster) at a time (minimum) (for 12 hours a day);10K watching the 200 (like 50 to 500) each live.
What servers are the best to use and give smooth high quality like Bigolive? For live streaming, and texting, and everything.
Which one is the best combination for my app? (Firebase, AWS, Twilio. Agora)
Thanks