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Fanout

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Fanout vs PubNub: What are the differences?

Developers describe Fanout as "Realtime APIs made simple". Fanout makes it easy to build realtime APIs and apps. The product is a cross between a reverse proxy and a message broker. Receivers subscribe to channels, and published data is delivered in realtime. On the other hand, PubNub is detailed as "Build real-time apps quickly and scale them globally". 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.

Fanout and PubNub can be categorized as "Realtime Backend / API" tools.

Some of the features offered by Fanout are:

  • Reverse proxy -- integrate realtime with any level of your technology stack, not just your front end.
  • Interoperable -- Add realtime to any API, no matter your backend or database, without changing any of your existing API contracts.
  • Open -- cloud or self hosted, it’s up to you. We don’t believe in vendor lock-in.

On the other hand, PubNub provides the following key features:

  • PubNub SDKs support over 50 of the most popular environments, including: iOS, Android, JavaScript, .NET, Java, Ruby, Python, PHP and many more.
  • Data Push - Establish and maintain persistent socket connections to any device (mobile, browser, desktop and server) and push data to global audiences in less than ¼ of a second
  • Presence - Automatically detect when users enter or leave your app and whether machines are online
Advice on Fanout and PubNub
Needs advice
on
AblyAblyPubNubPubNub
and
PusherPusher

I am building an IoT application that will utilize connected air quality sensors to provide real-time indoor air quality in offices. I want to be able to share this data with a few different databases, etc.

Wondering if anyone has any advice on which real-time streaming API would be best for this sort of application, or even how I should think about it?

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Replies (2)
Ben Gamble
Recommends
on
AblyAbly

For IoT, we support MQTT along with websockets and SSE. The pattern you're suggesting that involves harvesting data from devices and soaking into a database is easy to achieve with one of the Ably integrations (Serverless functions/webhook) . Here are some tutorials to do things like this: https://ably.com/tutorials/reactor-event-zapier#step2-mqtt-ably

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Philip Rossen
Recommends
on
PusherPusher
at

We use Pusher at www.justlearn.com. It works fine. When you reach more users, Pusher gets expensive. We use Pusher for live chat between users. Their software is easy to use. We have had issues with auth on Pusher.

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Pros of Fanout
Pros of PubNub
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 36
      Massively scalable & easy to use
    • 25
      Easy setup
    • 20
      Reliable
    • 19
      Great support
    • 14
      Flexible to integrate to custom applications
    • 13
      Sockets at Scale
    • 13
      99.999% availability guarantees
    • 13
      High-Performance
    • 12
      High-Reliability
    • 12
      Multiplexing
    • 7
      Scalability
    • 5
      High-Availability
    • 5
      70+ SDKs
    • 4
      Security
    • 4
      Azure Add-on
    • 3
      Heroku Add-on
    • 3
      Presence
    • 3
      Flexible
    • 3
      Easy to setup
    • 2
      Data Streams
    • 2
      Free Plan
    • 2
      Server-Side Cache
    • 2
      PhoneGap Plugin
    • 2
      AngularJS Adapter
    • 2
      Data Sync
    • 2
      Analytics
    • 2
      Support
    • 1
      Easy setup and very reliable
    • 1
      High cost, going up more in Summer '15
    • 1
      Cool
    • 1
      Angular 2+ integration
    • 1
      Documentation, easy to use, great people/service
    • 1
      CTO stephen also is A++++++
    • 1
      Real time and easy to use.
    • 1
      Easy integration with iOS apps

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

    Cons of Fanout
    Cons of PubNub
      Be the first to leave a con
      • 1
        Costly

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

      What is Fanout?

      Fanout makes it easy to build realtime APIs and apps. The product is a cross between a reverse proxy and a message broker. Receivers subscribe to channels, and published data is delivered in realtime.

      What is 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.

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use Fanout?
      What companies use PubNub?
        No companies found
        See which teams inside your own company are using Fanout or PubNub.
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        What tools integrate with Fanout?
        What tools integrate with PubNub?
          No integrations found

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          What are some alternatives to Fanout and PubNub?
          Pushpin
          Pushpin is a reverse proxy server that makes it easy to build realtime web services. The project is unique among realtime push solutions in that it is designed to address the needs of API creators.
          Pusher
          Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.
          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.
          Socket.IO
          It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.
          ws
          It is a simple to use, blazing fast, and thoroughly tested WebSocket client and server implementation.
          See all alternatives