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Firehose.io

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Firehose.io vs PubNub: What are the differences?

Firehose.io: Build realtime Ruby web applications. Firehose is both a Rack application and JavaScript library that makes building real-time web applications possible; PubNub: 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.

Firehose.io and PubNub belong to "Realtime Backend / API" category of the tech stack.

Some of the features offered by Firehose.io are:

  • Firehose embraces RESTful design prinicpals and consequently works great with any library that speaks HTTP
  • Integrates with Backbone.js and Ember.js
  • Hook it into an ORM, like ActiveRecord

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 Firehose.io and PubNub
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AblyAblyPubNubPubNub
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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 Firehose.io
Pros of PubNub
  • 2
    RESTful
  • 2
    Rails gem
  • 2
    Works with ActiveRecord
  • 1
    Clean way to build real-time web applications
  • 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

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Cons of Firehose.io
Cons of PubNub
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 1
      Costly

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    What is Firehose.io?

    Firehose is both a Rack application and JavaScript library that makes building real-time web applications possible.

    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 Firehose.io?
    What companies use PubNub?
    Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
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    What tools integrate with Firehose.io?
    What tools integrate with PubNub?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

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    What are some alternatives to Firehose.io and PubNub?
    NGINX
    nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.
    Apache HTTP Server
    The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.
    Amazon EC2
    It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
    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.
    Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    It is a comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally.
    See all alternatives