Parse vs Socket.IO

Overview

Parse

Stacks537

Followers479

Votes601

Socket.IO

Stacks13.6K

Followers11.0K

Votes776

Parse vs Socket.IO: What are the differences?

What is Parse? The complete mobile app platform. With Parse, you can add a scalable and powerful backend in minutes and launch a full-featured app in record time without ever worrying about server management. We offer push notifications, social integration, data storage, and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app’s backend with Cloud Code.

What is Socket.IO? Realtime application framework (Node.JS server). Socket.IO enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.

Parse and Socket.IO are primarily classified as "Mobile Backend" and "Realtime Backend / API" tools respectively.

Some of the features offered by Parse are:

Store basic data types, locations, photos
Update over the air
Data browser lets you manage, search, and update content without writing a single line of code

On the other hand, Socket.IO provides the following key features:

Real-time analytics - Push data to clients that gets represented as real-time counters, charts or logs.
Binary streaming - Starting in 1.0, it's possible to send any blob back and forth: image, audio, video.
Instant messaging and chat - Socket.IO's "Hello world" is a chat app in just a few lines of code.

"Easy setup", "Free hosting" and "Well-documented" are the key factors why developers consider Parse; whereas "Real-time", "Event-based communication" and "Node.js" are the primary reasons why Socket.IO is favored.

Socket.IO is an open source tool with 46.9K GitHub stars and 8.54K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Socket.IO's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, Socket.IO has a broader approval, being mentioned in 560 company stacks & 395 developers stacks; compared to Parse, which is listed in 92 company stacks and 44 developer stacks.

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CLI (Node.js)

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Advice on Parse, Socket.IO

Noam

Jul 16, 2020

Needs adviceon

Node.js

ExpressJS

React

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.

1.15M views1.15M

Comments

Anil

Mar 7, 2020

Needs advice

I want to add uWebSockets.js in my application for real-time chatting, for that, I have to draw a UML and ufd diagram flow then I have to implement it in my code, my stack is node js, android, express, MongoDB, Redis. how can I do this? I want to add uWebSockets.js in my application for real-time chatting, for that, I have to draw a UML and ufd diagram flow then I have to implement it in my code, my stack is node js, android, express, MongoDB, Redis. how can I do this?I want to add uWebSockets.js in my application for real-time chatting, for that, I have to draw a UML and ufd diagram flow then I have to implement it in my code, my stack is node js, android, express, MongoDB, Redis. how can I do this?i want to add uWebSockets.js in my application for real time chatting, for that i have to draw a uml and ufd diagram flow then i have to implement it in my code , my stack is node js , android , express , mongoDb, redis . how can i do a this?

46.7k views46.7k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Parse	Socket.IO
With Parse, you can add a scalable and powerful backend in minutes and launch a full-featured app in record time without ever worrying about server management. We offer push notifications, social integration, data storage, and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app’s backend with Cloud Code.	It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.
Store basic data types, locations, photos;Update over the air;Data browser lets you manage, search, and update content without writing a single line of code;Push Console allows you to send notifications directly from the Parse web interface;Connect your users via traditional logins or third party social networks with just a few lines of code;Add rich, custom logic to your app’s backend without servers with Cloud Code;Integrate with virtually any third-party service using Cloud Modules	Real-time analytics - Push data to clients that gets represented as real-time counters, charts or logs.;Binary streaming - Starting in 1.0, it's possible to send any blob back and forth: image, audio, video.;Instant messaging and chat - Socket.IO's "Hello world" is a chat app in just a few lines of code.;Document collaboration - Allow users to concurrently edit a document and see each other's changes.
Statistics
Stacks 537	Stacks 13.6K
Followers 479	Followers 11.0K
Votes 601	Votes 776
Pros & Cons
Pros 118 Easy setup 78 Free hosting 62 Well-documented 52 Cheap 47 Use push notifications in 3 lines of code	Pros 219 Real-time 143 Node.js 141 Event-based communication 102 WebSockets 102 Open source Cons 12 Bad documentation 4 Githubs that complement it are mostly deprecated 3 Doesn't work on React Native 2 Websocket Errors 2 Small community
Integrations
New Relic Mailgun Mandrill CrowdFlower Twilio SendGrid Stripe Twilio Trigger.io	Auth0 Gatsby Flutter React Backbone.js Cloud Firestore Outbrain

What are some alternatives to Parse, Socket.IO?

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.

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.

Pusher

Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.

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.

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.

Syncano

Syncano is a backend platform to build powerful real-time apps more efficiently. Integrate with any API, minimize boilerplate code and control your data - all from one place.

built.io

Built.io Backend is an mBaaS that allows you to avoid designing, building, and supporting a custom backend for your mobile & web applications. Enterprises can dramatically reduce cost, lower risk and accelerate time-to-market for apps.

NATS

Unlike traditional enterprise messaging systems, NATS has an always-on dial tone that does whatever it takes to remain available. This forms a great base for building modern, reliable, and scalable cloud and distributed systems.

SocketCluster

SocketCluster is a fast, highly scalable HTTP + realtime server engine which lets you build multi-process realtime servers that make use of all CPU cores on a machine/instance. It removes the limitations of having to run your Node.js server as a single thread and makes your backend resilient by automatically recovering from worker crashes and aggregating errors into a central log.

deepstream.io

Scalable Server for Realtime Web Apps with JSON structures that can be read, manipulated and listened to, messages that can be sent to one or more subscribers, and request response workflows, between two clients or servers.

Related Comparisons

Some of the features offered by Parse are:

Store basic data types, locations, photos
Update over the air
Data browser lets you manage, search, and update content without writing a single line of code

On the other hand, Socket.IO provides the following key features:

Real-time analytics - Push data to clients that gets represented as real-time counters, charts or logs.
Binary streaming - Starting in 1.0, it's possible to send any blob back and forth: image, audio, video.
Instant messaging and chat - Socket.IO's "Hello world" is a chat app in just a few lines of code.

Socket.IO is an open source tool with 46.9K GitHub stars and 8.54K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Socket.IO's open source repository on GitHub.

Parse vs Socket.IO